On January 31, 11am – 12:30pm, Voices of Conscience: Toward Racial Understanding will present a performance and discussion event at Lehigh Valley Friends Meeting at 4116 Bath Pike, Bethlehem, Pa. The event will be free and open to the public, with parking in the lot next to the meetinghouse.
The event will feature performances by guest artists Basement Poetry and Grace Adele Hochella, followed by a facilitated discussion. Basement Poetry will perform selected poems from their January 8 event Identify, which focuses on themes of racial identity and discrimination. Each piece powerfully explores how race affects our ability to learn, grow, and navigate through life. Grace Hochella, accompanied by Ken Purcell, will share a segment from her one-person play, Spirituals, Stories and Songs – a historical journey through African American experience as shown by way of slave narratives, personal accounts, stories, and music. Hochella is sponsored by Mock Turtle Marionette Theatre.
Conceived last September by theatre groups Allentown Public Theatre and Crowded Kitchen Players, Voices of Conscience is a year-long, Lehigh Valley-wide arts series designed “to create a climate that encourages the arts community to engage in production of socially-conscious art.” This year, the focus is racial understanding. “In today's increasingly divided America,” says Allentown Public Theatre artistic director Anna Russell, “we believe that art can provide the space and the spark to create the kind of dialogue needed to bring communities together.” The performance and discussion event on January 31 is designed to foster this kind of "courageous conversation" about race in the Lehigh Valley.
So far, the series has included theatrical performances by Crowded Kitchen Players, Moravian College, and Lehigh University. Also this month will be the January 17 opening of This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement, an exhibit held by the Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley. In February, the Voices of Conscience series will include Allentown Public Theatre's 7:00pm public reading of Suzan-Lori Parks's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Topdog/Underdog at Hava Java Cafe (526 N. 19th St.) on February 16, and Northampton Community College's production of Honky in the Lipkin Theatre at 7:30pm on February 19 and 20, and at 3:00pm on February 21.
For more information about the series, the performance and discussion event on January 31, or other upcoming events, please visit: www.lehighvoc.com.
Caption: (Left to right:) Company members of Basement Poetry, Torez Mosley, Chloe Cole-Wilson, Alisha Andino, Kristina Haynes, and Sarah Tyler, in a piece about subtle and not so subtle racism in the workplace, from their performance of Identify. [credit: Susan Weaver]