But Gerry Patton sounded upbeat. She is the executive director of N.C. Black Repertory Company, which presents the festival every other summer in Winston-Salem.

“It appears that we’ve been successful,” she said, though she cautioned that her assessment didn’t have any hard numbers behind it.

The festival ended late Saturday evening with Afro-centric dancing and drumming, as well as a ceremony invoking the spirit of Larry Leon Hamlin, who founded the festival in 1989 and ran it until his death in 2007.

“I’m very, very pleased. Everything’s turned out better than we anticipated in view of all the things going on,” Patton said, referring to the recession.

Attendance might have dipped from the last festival in 2007; several shows took place in venues that appeared one-third to half full. And ticket revenue accounts for a sizable portion of the festival’s $1.1 million budget. Donations, projected to be about $750,000, make up the bulk of revenue.

Patton said she has surveyed festival patrons and welcomes more comments.

She may hear what festival patron Josephine McGriff said Saturday, namely that “$42 for some plays is too much,” particularly for locals who have lost jobs and are struggling to make it in a tough economy.

“This is not Broadway,” McGriff said, responding to festival officials who say their ticket prices amount to a bargain when compared with those charged by big-city theaters.

Still, Patton, N.C. Black Rep’s executive director since 2007, can look back on several excellent productions.

These ranged from those in the new Larry Leon Hamlin Solo Performance Series to several musicals, including Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope and I Am Who I Am: The Teddy Pendergrass Story. John Amos (Good Times and Roots) also returned to present another stellar performance of Halley’s Comet.

And the National Black Theatre Festival may be following the lead of the American Dance Festival in Durham, which now devotes a kind of festival-within-a-festival to the works of choreographers from a foreign country. NBTF presented Fatima Dike’s The Return, introducing a South African company called Artscape in the process.

“It’s so important for us to be seen in a neutral setting,” said Roy Sargeant, who directed Return. “It gives us a lot of gravitas when we come back.”

The team that put together the program includes artistic director Mabel Robinson and Sylvia Sprinkle-Hamlin, Larry Leon Hamlin’s widow, who now serves N.C. Black Rep as a board member.

One challenge for the future remains the festival’s inability to attract a more diverse audience. With the exception of some musicals, such as Cope, very few audience members were white.

Festival officials seem to have become more creative in their strategies for attracting a more diverse audience, by reaching out to whites at receptions and by giving away tickets to veterans, as was the case at Friday’s performance of Halley’s Comet.

Patton sounded optimistic about the festival’s future audiences.

“We have a ways to go,” she said. “But we’re beginning to make progress. Every time I see a different ethnic group, that encourages me. They go tell a friend.”

■  Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.

But, when she does, the pushy and snooty Celeste (Marcelle Gover) is bound to cause problems, which she does in high-comedic fashion in The High Priestess of Dark Alley.

Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, Priestess explores a host of taboos—from the clashes between light-skinned and dark-skinned blacks to the often-fragile relationships between mothers and daughters.

At the center of the storm is Celeste, who makes an unannounced visit to her daughters’ home for Claire’s birthday.

Long separated from her philandering husband, Claire (Mari White) is trying hard to move on with her life, finding a new church and a potential new love in handyman/minister, Franklin, (Zeb Hollins III) who volunteers to fix her leaky roof.

Celeste has other plans for Claire, namely that she return to her husband, Charles (Michael Chenevert). To Claire, Charles is perfect—wealthy and light-skinned, a part of her Creole caste.

The first half of the play revolves around the drama and comedy caused by Celeste’s visit and her interaction with her daughters’ love interests, both of whom are dark-skinned and working class.

At one point, Celeste, given the nickname “The Priestess” by Janae’s boyfriend, Sweet, (Nicoye Banks) boldly states that Katrina, “gave the city a bath that was long overdue,” a reference to the storm’s destruction of poor black neighborhoods.

The cast’s reaction to her declaration draws chuckles from the audience and sets the tone of Priestess, which flies along at breakneck pace.

Unbeknownst to Celeste, Claire harbors a deadly secret. And it is that secret that causes the end of her marriage to Charles (Michael Chenevert). It also makes her resist Franklin’s calm sweetness.

The cast, particularly Banks and Aura Vence, who plays party girl Janae with aplomb, handles the weighty material with ease, drawing outright laughs and applause from the nearly packed house.

White deftly handles Claire’s lines, playing straight woman to both Vence and Gover. And her monologues are at times heartbreaking, as she tries to make sense of her life.

In the second half, Priestess slows down slightly. The introduction of Claire’s secret spells the end of the some of the play’s rapid-fire fun.

Overall, though, Priestess is sprightly romp.

■  Jeri Young can be reached at 727-7307 or at dyoung@wsjournal.com.

■  The High Priestess of Dark Alley will be performed at 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday in The MainStage Theatre, Wake Forest University. Tickets, $37, are available at Benton Convention Center.

The show, which opened Thursday at Reynolds Memorial Auditorium, is a revival of a 1998 production that eventually wound up on Broadway. It has several authors: Charles Bevel, Lita Gaithers, Randal Myler, Ron Taylor and Dan Wheetman. The performers, directed by Myler, include Bevel, Eloise Laws, Sandra Reaves-Phillips, Carter Calvert, Chic Street Man, Gregory Porter and Danny Wheetman. They are backed by several excellent musicians.

The performers sit, play instruments or sing along as they wait their turn to get up and solo. Photos on two large screens remind us of the context in which the music was created—from the farm fields of the Mississippi Delta to the streets of Chicago. The blues’ roots in the African diaspora are honored as well.

Blues, which includes a racially diverse cast, makes several important points. One is that “the river of the blues flowed through the white South,” giving rise to innovations by whites and influencing musical styles, such as country, that are largely associated with them.

After intermission, we land in Chicago, where Southern blacks migrated to find jobs in the 1940s and ‘50s. We’re reminded of how radically the blues sound changed in this urban environment. Acoustic instruments give way to electric guitars and drum sets, resulting in more rhythmic, charged and explosive sensations.

Before intermission, the show detoured into gospel territory and some lovely harmonizing by the entire cast. What is one to make of this? Here’s one interpretation: Gospel and blues aren’t like apples and oranges; they are like oranges and tangerines. When one dies down, the other emerges.

■  The Crossroads Theatre Company will present It Ain’t Nothin’ But The Blues at 3 and 8 p.m. today in Reynolds Memorial Auditorium. Tickets, $42, are available at the box office at the Benton Convention Center and at the theater before the show.

■  Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.

And it’s easy to see why in this revival by the Ensemble Theatre, which drew renewed acclaim in 2008 during a run in Houston. It now comes to the National Black Theatre Festival.

The four-person character study takes place entirely in the living room of a rundown Chicago apartment in the late 1950s. The occupants are Alberta Warren (Cheray Dawn Josiah), a melancholic, thirtysomething spinster who yearns for a different life, and her mother Weedy (Deborah Oliver Artis), a fussy, overly protective woman who clings to religion and doesn’t want her little girl to grow up and grow away from her.

Weedy’s ne’er-do-well brother Doc (Wayne DeHart) is a frequent visitor, and provides some comic relief with his wry quips and fondness for alcohol and gambling. But he has a good heart, and wants to look after his sister and niece.

The monotony of Alberta’s life—going from the drudgery of her day job as a maid to spending her nights bickering with her mother—takes a turn when she meets Blind Jordan (Timothy Eric), a charismatic, blind street musician.

Weedy is immediately suspicious of the interloper, but Alberta is intrigued by him.

The play revolves around pent-up emotions, which sometimes lead to breakdowns—some downright uncomfortable in their intensity—and revelations of inner secrets.

The performances are solid all around, and the stress between the characters is palpable on stage.

And there is a subtext revolving around the dawn of the civil-rights movement, something the older generation of Weedy and Doc can’t fathom, not knowing why young people are so prone to change.

■  Tim Clodfelter can be reached at 727-7371 or at tclodfelter@wsjournal.com.

■  The Sty of the Blind Pig will be performed at 3 and 8 p.m. today at the Arts Council Theatre. Tickets, $37, are available at the Benton Convention Center.

Ayinde Hurrey wrote the one-man performance piece more than 10 years ago as part of a requirement for his master of fine arts degree in acting from the University of Florida. And over the years, Hurrey has updated the show.

As he proved last night, Hurrey is an engaging performer blessed with the ability to morph easily into a myriad of characters. He goes from being a mischievous kid who loves to dance and is teased for his Jheri curl to a sassy female college student whose motto is “Love, leave me, or groove me.”

He is a natural comedian, eliciting loud laughter. Hurrey uses the humor to slip in serious messages about how his hair has helped shape his identity and how he has been judged by others because of his hair.

“Hair is an expression of history, my history,” he says in the play.

And it is.

To some, nappy may connote negativity. But to Hurrey, nappy is nothing to be ashamed of.

What makes the show particularly enjoyable is Hurrey’s insistence on audience participation, making the show feel like the call and response of some church services.

The one mishap was the lighting, which darkened and brightened at weird times, becoming distracting in some instances. But it was not enough to ruin either Hurrey’s comedic brilliance or the power of his message.

■  Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.

■  Nappy Journeys will be performed at 3 and 8 p.m today at the Shirley Recital Hall, Salem College. For tickets, $37, go by the box office at the Benton Convention Center.

Gaffney, in The Resurrection of Alice, explores the world of a young Southern black girl who finds herself married off at 15 to an older man who has always befriended the family and helped them with jobs, gifts and money.

The marriage isn’t her choice, but she becomes the older man’s wife anyway because of the fear of what would happen to her family if she were to leave.

Gaffney makes lightning-fast changes between characters and mood and across time. She can scamper around the stage like a 5-year-old girl or hobble around like her older husband.

But Alice triumphs in the end.

It’s a hard act for Berry to follow, but Berry takes the intensity up more than a few notches in her riveting depiction of The Sheneequa Chronicles: The Making of a Black Woman.

Sheneequa grows up in Harlem in the 1960s and goes through generational clashes, the awakening of her sexuality and the black power movement, along with degradation and humiliation.

Much of the performance explores the meaning of being a black woman in a white country, and trying to live up to white standards of beauty.

Sheneequa confronts the self-hatred implied by constantly trying to be what she’s not, but ultimately comes to terms with her identity and forges a spiritual connection with her African ancestors.

Both plays are for mature audiences.

■  Wesley Young can be reached at 727-7369 or at wyoung@wsjournal.com.

■  The Resurrection of Alice and The Sheneequa Chronicles: The Making of a Black Woman will be performed on a double bill today with shows at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the RJR Black Box Theatre at Reynolds High School, 301N. Hawthorne Road. Tickets are $37.

Said actor would be John Amos (Good Times, Roots). He has presented Halley’s Comet for 18 years in more than 300 American cities and several foreign countries, having kept the material remarkably fresh in the process.

Halley’s Comet will run through tonight at the Stevens Center.

Make every effort to see a show that got its legs at one of the first presentations of the National Black Theatre Festival—a fact for which Amos thanked the late Larry Leon Hamlin in program notes. Hamlin founded and ran the festival until his death in 2007.

Comet tells the story of John Henry Halley, an elderly man who travels to the top of a mountain to catch a glimpse of Halley’s Comet, which he saw before when he was a child.

He is eager to tell the comet what he has been up to for the past 76 years, and how the world has changed in that time.

Halley has lived—and then some, having married three times and fathered 14 children.

Two of his wives have passed on; three sons never came back from foreign wars; and a daughter died in Mississippi during the civil-rights struggles there.

The recollections about his family range from the tragically sad to the unbelievably comic.

He doesn’t just say that he lost a son to a nightmarish conflict in the Pacific (Amos likens it to a rain of blood, referring to American soldiers who shot Japanese paratroopers before they landed); he reads a moving letter about it from his son.

The funny recollections about Halley’s family will have you in stitches as when, for example, he recounts how he had to evade the brother chaperones that surrounded his first wife at a dance.

Live by the Golden Rule. Turn off the television and rely on your imagination. Look out for your own children as well as those in the neighborhood. Respect the environment.

These are not new insights, but when Amos relates them, he does so in a way that makes us sit up, laugh and perhaps shed a tear.

■  Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.

■  John Amos will present Halley’s Comet at 3 and 8 p.m. today at the Stevens Center. Tickets, $42, are available at the box office at the Benton Convention Center and at the theater before the show.

They were working the hospitality desk in the lobby of the Winston-Salem Marriott on Sunday when actress Barbara Montgomery arrived with one shoe wrapped in a plastic bag.

The other shoe was missing.

Miles and Swinton immediately sprang into action.

“We had a call put in to the airport,” Miles said. “Somehow the airline let one of her shoes fall out of her bag.”

It turned out that the shoe was going around and around on the luggage conveyor belt, unclaimed amid all the baggage. After finding the shoe, volunteers working in transportation made the next move. A volunteer who was going to the airport to pick up someone else’s baggage also retrieved Montgomery’s shoe and brought it to Winston-Salem. “We just left it over at the desk,” Swinton said.

Montgomery—known for her role in the sitcom Amen—thanked the volunteers with a bowl of candy for their desk.

It takes about 2,000 volunteers to make the festival work, organizers said. The volunteers move people back and forth, sell merchandise, serve as ushers for performances, handle tickets and take on a variety of other jobs.

“I like the arts,” said volunteer Diane Sockwell, who is helping out at the festival for the eighth time. “I think it is good for the city so they don’t have to pay the people. They can put money back into the performances. I like a crowd, and we don’t get much action in Winston-Salem.”

On Monday, Sockwell was driving a 15-person van and waiting for instructions on where to go and whom to pick up. Soon, she and volunteer Joe Bailey were on the way to the Charlotte airport to bring someone to Winston-Salem for the festival.

A lot of volunteers get their pictures taken with celebrities they encounter. Sockwell said she makes up a photo album each year that includes the celebrities she has posed with.

Volunteers have to attend meetings to learn their duties. They fill out signup sheets so that organizers know who will be available and when.

For Miles, it’s her first time as a volunteer. She said it is a lot of fun to see the celebrities come and go. “They have all been very friendly,” she said. “They have come in just like family.”

Actress Ella Joyce, who is putting on a one-woman show in tribute to Rosa Parks, called the volunteers vital to the festival. “This festival couldn’t operate without them,” she said. “They treat us like royalty. They drive us anywhere we want to go, they feed us, and they treat us with love and warmth. Some of them I have gotten to know through the years, and watched their kids grow up.”

■  Wesley Young can be reached at 727-7369 or at wyoung@wsjournal.com.

Cynthia G. Robinson, a college professor, wrote the play, presented by Robinson Williams Productions, a New York-based company that Robinson founded with her husband, Ronald “Cezar” Williams.

In the play, Ruth, played by Annie Lee Moffett, is a slave engaged to be married to Jacob, played by Williams. But she is caught up in a forced relationship with Master Carlisle, played by Damien Langan.

As did most slave masters, Carlisle saw Ruth as his property and not even her impending marriage to Jacob could loose her from him.

The play explores the power dynamics in the relationships between slave and master. Jacob, angered to know that Carlisle can have his way with his soon-to-be wife, must contain his emotion or else risk death. Ruth must give in to her master’s wishes so that Jacob isn’t sold off to another plantation.

Langan gives Carlisle enough menace without going over the top. Moffet and Williams give seemingly effortless performances as a young couple eager to start a new life together and live in freedom instead of slavery.

Richarda Abrams as Mathilda manages to break the drama with humor and at the same time anchors the play with strength and wisdom.

The word “ascension” is about rising, and this play certainly lives up to its name.

■  Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.

■ 

Pendergrass himself can’t work that magic anymore. In the early 1980s, at the height of his musical powers, he became paralyzed from the chest down in a terrible car accident.

But the Black Ensemble Theatre of Chicago is giving us the next best thing, presenting Jackie Taylor’s I Am Who I Am: The Teddy Pendergrass Story. The show, a highlight of the National Black Theatre Festival, opened last night in Williams Auditorium at Winston-Salem State University.

In Pendergrass, we experience the warts-and-all milestones of Pendergrass’ story in a way that leaves plenty of room for performing by the Younger Teddy (Rashawn Thompson) and the Mature Teddy (Kevin McIlvaine), who also occasionally provides pithy commentary from a wheelchair.

We learn how Pendergrass became a solo artist and how he dealt with women, be they real lovers or fans overcome with fantasy. We are introduced to his stalwart and God-fearing mother, Ida (Rhonda Preston).

In Mature Teddy, the one in the wheelchair, we meet a man who has accepted some very hard knocks and gotten on with his life as best he can. He can also be quite funny—especially in comments about his condition and the sometimes-inane questions it provokes.

One last note: Don’t be surprised if women, overcome with rapture, rush to the stage as they did Thursday night to give one of the Teddys a kiss.

■  Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.

■  The Black Ensemble Theatre will present I Am Who I Am: The Teddy Pendergrass Story at 8 p.m. today, and at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday in Williams Auditorium at Winston-Salem State University. Tickets, $42, are available at the box office at the Benton Convention Center and at the theater before the show.

The French still loved her, as they had since 1928, when she first wowed them with her risque song-and-dance cabaret act.

But Baker, often considered the first black international superstar, was at a crossroads. Her beloved mother had recently died, leaving her in a tailspin of grief. Creditors hounded her. And the United States, her native country, continued to treat her like a second-class citizen.

Sloan Robinson takes audiences back to this unsettled period in Baker’s life in her one-woman show, Bananas, which is being performed during the National Black Theatre Festival.

As befitting a tribute to the multitalented Baker, the show combines drama, comedy and music to recount her rise from the slums of East St. Louis to the grand stages of Europe.

Robinson, who also wrote the play, has been playing the role of Baker since May 2008.

She slips easily into her skin, whether she is prancing around in tights and a corset or hysterically imitating a drunken Bessie Smith.

The 65-minute play is set in what appears to be Baker’s bedroom in her Paris apartment.

She is exhausted after rehearsing for a tour that she hopes will fill her coffers and allow her to keep her chateau.

While sorting through her mail, Baker reads a request from a long-time fan who wants to write her biography.

That prompts Baker to turn to the framed picture of her mother and reflect on some of the highlights of her life.

And what highlights they are—rubbing elbows with Picasso and Hemingway in Paris’ Jazz Age, serving as a spy for the French resistance in World War II and driving French men wild with her racy costumes, including a skirt made of bananas.

Beyond entertainment, the play is a revealing look at a woman whose legacy is an important one, despite that banana skirt.

■  Lisa O’Donnell can be reached at 727-7420 or at lodonnell@wsjournal.com.

■  Bananaswill be performed at 8 p.m. Friday and 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday at the Ring Theatre at Wake Forest University. Admission is $37. For tickets, go by the Benton Convention Center.

The musicians and singers, performing alongside Dawes on stage, contribute immensely to the power of the production, as do the photographers whose work is projected on a large screen behind the performers.

The first piece, HOPE: Living & Loving With HIV in Jamaica, is a poignant reflection on the people Dawes met while working on a magazine article about HIV and AIDS in the country where he grew up.

Through poems and songs, the piece tells the stories of people trying to maintain their dignity while dealing with illness. Some are wistful, some defiant, some resigned to their fate.

Throughout, the words are accompanied by evocative photographs showing the faces of those afflicted and both the beauty and the squalor of where they live.

The music comes from a group of singers, including Dawes and music director Kevin Simmonds, as well as classical musicians and a duo of a guitarist and percussionist.

The performances were splendid, Thursday’s show marred only slightly by a few technical glitches, such as a buzzing speaker that proved distracting during the quieter passages.

The second half of the show, after a short intermission, is Wisteria, another examination of dignity in the face of adversity, this one focused on black women in the segregated South of the early 20th century. That piece was accompanied by photographs from Columbia, S.C., in the 1920s and ‘30s.

■  Tim Clodfelter can be reached at 727-7371 and tclodfelter@wsjournal.com.

■ 

Whatley and Gwatiringa portray two women, thousands of miles apart, who have to cope with an all-too-common condition.

Abigail, a TV news reader in Zimbabwe, and Nia, an unemployed 19-year-old in Los Angeles, fill the sparse stage with their shared experience—getting HIV from their male partners.

First, there is the diagnosis that leaves the women, who are both pregnant, in disbelief and anger. Then, the actresses gracefully transition through portraying the co-workers, friends and family that surround the women as they reckon with their state.

Playwrights Nikkole Salter and Danai Gurira embrace each woman’s struggle to handle the situation and move forward.

Through the fear of a husband’s retaliation, a mother’s disdain and a culture’s judgment, they unveil the humor and sorrow of a harsh reality.

While each woman’s outlook is bleak, the play draws the audience in and allows them to witness the women’s fight to maintain their dignity and identity.

■  Christian Kloc can be reached at 727-7270 or at ckloc@wsjournal.com.

■  In The Continuum will be performed at 8 p.m. today and Saturday at The Thrust stage at UNC School of the Arts. For tickets, $37, go by the Benton Convention Center.

Despite some success in show business, Wayans is feeling overshadowed by her more successful brothers. Despite her sustaining mother’s love, she is made to feel unlovable by other influences. Despite her tremendous talent, Wayans is unhappy and discontent, so her yoga teacher suggests she go on a 10-day silent meditation retreat instead of taking medications that her doctor has suggested.

Handsome Woman is a tour-de-force, a rollercoaster ride through Wayans’ life. As she sits quietly, possibly for the first time in her life, all her buried memories, hopes, disappointments, heartaches and loves come bubbling to the surface. She can’t joke them away. All she can do is experience them and come out the other side.

In the course of her 90-minute autobiographical show, Wayans drew tears from the audience — and lots and lots of laughter. Wayans is one funny woman.

But she is far more than that. She is a multi-dimensional actor: whimsical, witty, romantic, poignant, zany and wacky, to name just a few of her qualities. And yet the only roles she’s offered in Hollywood are for “sassy” women. Her agent tells her she’s being considered for the role of the first black female astronaut, “but she’s sassy.” She’s being considered for the role of a deaf mute, “but she’s sassy.” You get the picture.

Wayans impersonates her smug Jehovah’s Witness father; her indomitably loving and creative mother; and her imposing, disdainful ballet teacher, all with wonderful humor. She fills the large stage set with her even larger personality, making use of her great talent for physical comedy.

Run, don’t walk, to see this show. Then let it wash over you — in waves of laughter and a few grateful tears. Wayans is the real deal.

  Kim Wayans will perform A Handsome Woman Retreats at 3 p.m. Friday in the Loma Hopkins Theatre at Summit School, 2100 Reynolda Road. Tickets are $40 at the box office at the Benton Convention Center and at the theater before the show.

By Lynn Felder
Journal Reporter