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Event finished. This event was in the past: 2:00pm on Sunday, April 14, 2024
Join us at the MLK Library for a live performance of the one-act play, Alma W. Thomas, Imagine That! by local playwright Caleen Sinnette Jennings on the life of abstract artist.
Alma W. Thomas: Imagine That! by Caleen Sinnette Jennings was commissioned by The Phillips Collection to celebrate the museum's centennial year. The premiere performance took place on Oct. 13, 2022, as part of the museum's theater programming initiative.The Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum is cosponsoring this event as part of its programming for its current exhibition: A Bold and Beautiful Vision: A Century of Black Arts Education in Washington D.C., 1900-2000.
The performance at DC Public Library is produced with the support of the DC Public Library Foundation. Learn more about the creators and actors below and register to reserve your seat!
CALEEN SINNETTE JENNINGS has had seven plays published by Dramatic Publishing Company, and her play Classyass appears in 7 play anthologies. She has been nominated for 5 Helen Hayes Awards and has won awards from The Actors’ Theatre of Louisville and the Kennedy Center. Plays in her Queens Girl Trilogy have been produced nationally and her children’s play, Darius & Twig did a Kennedy Center national tour in 2017. She is Professor of Theatre Emerita at American University where she taught theatre for 31 years. There she received the 2003 Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award and the inaugural award for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in 2019. Jennings has been commissioned to write for The Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, Signature Theatre, Imagination Stage, Roundhouse Theatre, Everyman Theatre, and South Bend Civic Theatre. She has been a faculty member of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Teaching Shakespeare Institute since 1994, and she is Senior Consultant to the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Lolita Marie is a two-time Helen Hayes award recipient is excited to remount Caleen Jenning's Imagine That with the Phillips Museum! D.C. area credits include Tempestuous Elements (Arena Stage), Brothers Paranormal and The Joy That Carries You (Olney Theatre); Well and Doubt (1st Stage Theatre); The Royale (Olney and 1st Stage in Rep); Sweat, The Outsider, N - A Play, God of Carnage, and American Daughter (Keegan Theatre); Hurricane Diane (Avant Bard); This Girl Laughs…, Flood City, For Colored Girls…, and Brownsville Song (Theater Alliance); The Adventures of Pericles (Chesapeake Shakespeare Company); Native Son (Mosaic Theater): The Skin of Our Teeth and Blood Wedding (Constellation Theatre); The Secrets of the Universe and Leto Legend (Hub Theatre). Independent film and television credits include Too Saved and Nocturnal Agony (Nubia Filmworks), and Who the (Bleep) Did I Marry (Investigation Discovery).
Cara Gabriel is a writer, director, performer, and educator. She was an assistant professor of theatre at American University for 16 years, where she taught theatre history, acting, the moving body, politics and performance, intro to theatre, and more. She is currently teaching at The Theatre Lab, and has directed locally for 1st Stage, Rorschach Theatre, Urban Arias, Keegan Theatre, Adventure Theatre, Catholic University, and over 30 productions at AU. Gabriel served as co-producer for the Women on Fire Festival at Keegan Theatre for four years. You can hear her performing her own writing in her serialized memoir podcast, I AM THE GENTRY anywhere you listen to podcasts
AGE GROUP: | Seniors | Adults | 13 - 19 Years Old (Teens) |
EVENT TYPE: | Exhibit | Educational Program |