'Voices of Conscience: Toward Racial Understanding' is a year-long, Lehigh Valley-wide arts series designed to encourage and promote socially-conscious art on issues surrounding race. The series features music, photography, poetry, theatre and other events on this topic, plus related community performances and discussions. As today's America struggles with questions of identity and growing inequality, we need a sensitive and socially-conscious public, now more than ever.
The series was originally conceived by Crowded Kitchen Players and Allentown Public Theatre to encourage more conversation about, and greater sensitivity to, these issues. It has since expanded to include a wide cross-section of organizations across the Lehigh Valley committed to furthering thoughtful engagement of meaningful topics through art. Also participating are: Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley, Basement Poetry, Bethlehem Public Library, Godfrey Daniels, Lehigh University, Lehigh Valley Friends Meeting, Mock Turtle Marionette Theatre, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College Multicultural Center, Northampton Community College, Selkie Theatre, and Sing for America.
For more information, please visit www.lehighvoc.com
LINEUP
The Fall of Heaven
8:00pm November 6-7 & 13-14 and 3:00pm November 8 &15, 2015
at Trinity Episcopal Church, Bethlehem
Crowded Kitchen Players
by Walter Mosley
This ironic comedy about social injustice tells of Tempest Landry, a streetwise young black man from Harlem, who finds himself at the Pearly Gates after a run-in with police. When Saint Peter orders him to hell, the quick-witted Tempest refuses to go. A technical loophole forces heaven to send Tempest back to Earth with an angel to keep him out of trouble. The resulting battle of wills takes an intriguing look at good versus evil and what it means to be human.
Exhibit A
8:00pm November 5-7 and 1:00pm November 8, 2015
Moravian College Theatre Department
in the Arena Theatre (Haupert Union Building)
by Christopher Shorr and Sam Weinberg
Exhibit A shines a spotlight on issues of identity. It asks how expectations about gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, and religion influence the way we see ourselves and each other. “Think circus sideshow meets 'Saturday Night Live,'” says Christopher Shorr, who wrote the play with Sam Weinberg. “Bring an open mind and a tough skin. These are sensitive issues, and we're poking them with a stick!” A moderated discussion will follow each performance. The post-show discussion on Saturday will focus on race issues. Guest moderator of the discussion will be Omar Barlow, Chief Executive Officer and Principal of Eastern University Charter School, Philadelphia, PA. Friday's performance offers audio description for patrons with blindness or low vision, as part of the Arts & Access program.
This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement
Sunday, January 17 – Sunday, May 15, 2016
Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley
photography exhibit, This Light of Ours
Presents the Southern Freedom Movement through the visions and voices of eight men and one woman who lived and worked in the South between 1963 and 1967. These nine photographers lived within the movement—primarily within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) framework—and documented its activities by focusing on the local people and student activists who together made it happen. The exhibition conveys SNCC's organizational strategies and development, resolve in the face of violence, impact on the nation's politics, and influence of the nation's consciousness. "This Light of Ours" expands public understanding of the Civil Rights Movement by presenting the actions and achievements of young organizers and "ordinary" people who fashioned a movement that changed America. “This Light of Ours” was organized by the Center for Documentary Expression and Art.
Violet
7:30pm November 13, 14, 18, 19, 20 & 21
2pm November 15
Lehigh University Theatre Department
Diamond Theater at Zoellner Arts Center
420 E Packer Ave, Bethlehem, PA 18015
Music by Jeanine Tesori, Book and Lyrics by Brian Crawley
Straight from the Broadway production of 2014, Violet is the story of a woman’s search for beauty and her place in the world. Physically scarred by a tragic childhood accident, Violet fervently desires the healing powers of an Oklahoma revivalist preacher. Her journey by Greyhound bus toward physical healing becomes so much more as she befriends two soldiers and discovers the true meaning of beauty, courage, and love. With a musical score equally influenced by bluegrass, gospel and Broadway, and a backdrop of the American South in 1964, an era of great social change, this winner of the Drama Critics’ Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical of 1997 will inspire, challenge, and uplift. Based on The Ugliest Pilgrim by Doris Betts
Directed by Pam Pepper; Music Direction by Bill Whitney A Virginia M. & Bernard R. Hale ‘30 Production
610.758.2787
Topdog/Underdog
February 16, 2016
Allentown Public Theatre
Hava Java Cafe, Allentown
featured in the Theatre Cafe reading series
reading of Suzan Lori-Parks's play
A Pulitzer-winning play about the contentious relationship between two brothers named Booth and Lincoln. Parks is the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer.
Gem of the Ocean
7:30pm April 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16
2pm April 10
Lehigh University Theatre Department
Diamond Theater at Zoellner Arts Center
420 E Packer Ave, Bethlehem, PA 18015
by August Wilson
Pittsburgh, 1904—the eve of Aunt Esther’s 287th birthday. A former slave, Aunt Esther is a keeper of tradition and a cleanser of souls. When Citizen Barlow comes to her home seeking asylum and redemption, she sets him off on a poetic and spiritual journey to find the City of Bones at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, a repository of the memory and tragedy of the Middle Passage. Gem of the Ocean is the ninth play in Wilson’s ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle that chronicles a century of African-American life. Directed by Akin Babatunde, Theodore U. Horger ‘61 Artist-in-Residence for the Performing and Visual Arts.
610.758.2787
Performance by Kim and Reggie Harris
2016
Godfrey Daniels
musical performance
Consummate musicians and storytellers, Kim and Reggie Harris combine a strong folk and gospel legacy with a solid background in classical, rock and pop music. As a result of their CDs "Steal Away" and “Get On Board" and materials developed in their work with the Kennedy Center, the Harrises have earned wide acclaim for their contributions to the resources and knowledge base on the Underground Railroad and the modern civil rights movement.
The Island
April 23-May 8, 2016
Allentown Public Theatre
Full theatrical production of Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona's play about South African Apartheid through the lens of two political prisoners on Robben Island, rehearsing the Greek tragedy “Antigone”
Identify
showcase 4pm November 14
full performance January 8 2016
Basement Poetry
featured in the Icehouse Tonight series
performed poetry event
Confederate Flag Discussion
Spring 2016
Bethlehem Area Public Library
public forum and discussion