Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Advertisement
Tags The Lower Bottom Playaz

Tag: The Lower Bottom Playaz

Wanda’s Picks for April 2017

We continue our celebration of the fairer sex this month with Amara Tabor-Smith and Ellen Sebastian Chang’s House/Full of Black Women Project: Episode: Black Women Dreaming, a Ritual Rest, March 26-April 7. In this 10th episode of House/Full, perhaps its largest and longest episode, Black women are invited to sleep, stop during the middle of the day or evening and rest, dream. Black women rest least of all people across race, gender and class.

The Lower Bottom Playaz proudly presents ‘Mama at Twilight: Death by...

“Mama at Twilight: Death by Love” is a love story that offers a frank examination of family life in the inner-city as it intersects mass incarceration, poor access to health care, religious taboos and struggles under the burden of imposed tropes of man and womanhood. The Lower Bottom Playaz traditionally offer works that interrogate the experience of being human through the lens of the North American African experience. “Mama at Twilight: Death by Love” follows this tradition.

Wanda’s Picks for February 2016

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing (“Isis Papers”) made her transition Jan. 2, 2016. She was 80. The psychiatrist who challenged white supremacists on what she called “The Cress Theory of Color Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy)” to look at their own melanin deficiency for what it is, “envy,” stirred and continues to stir the waters. She always stated theoretically that “Black lives matter,” way before the #blm movement.

‘Radio Golf’ opens Dec. 18: Hiero Imperium presents Oakland’s Lower Bottom...

August Wilson is considered one of America’s greatest playwrights, and the work that comprises The American Century Cycle, one of the outstanding achievements of the modern theater, is performed across the globe. But only Oakland’s premiere North American African theater company has performed the entire cycle in chronological order. Don’t miss the final installment of The Lower Bottom Playaz’ American Century Cycle Project.

Self-sufficiency, self-defense and self-determination: August Wilson’s ‘King Hedley II’ – on...

Directed and performed by Dr. Ayodele Nzinga and The Lower Bottom Playaz, “King Hedley II” is the ninth of the late Afrikan playwright August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, a 10-play docudrama of Afrikan life in the U.S. during the 20th century. This all Afrikan theatre company is on its way to performing the cycle in its entirety, a feat unparalleled in world history, and delivers a riveting performance. Hurry! The play closes Sunday.

Wanda’s Picks for November 2013

Gina M. Paige explained that the organization, African Ancestry, started with Dr. Rick Kittles, genetic researcher at Howard University who was interested in isolating the gene that caused prostate cancer, one of the leading causes of death in our community. He found this research methodology applicable in other genetic detective research and so in 2003 African Ancestry was founded with Ms. Paige.

‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,’ directed by Ayodele ‘Wordslanger’ Nzinga, is coming...

Storytelling is one of the most ancient forms of entertainment – before radio, television, paper and cinema. Ayodele “Wordslanger” Nzinga is one of the Bay Area’s most talented griots who tells stories of the past through her West Oakland-based theater company, The Lower Bottom Playaz. The legendary August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” opens July 13.

Buy Black Wednesdays: What does it mean to be a born-again...

First of all, let’s not get it twisted: You can be a born-again African and a born-again Christian at the same time! Being a born-again African has nothing to do with religion, other than religiously going out of your way to support Black people and Black businesses. Being a born again African means you realize that you and your people have been stripped of your land, language, culture, heritage and spirituality and you know it is your responsibility and delight to reclaim it for yourself and your kin.

When the word becomes flesh: an interview wit’ poet and playwright...

Ayo the Wordslanger is one of the most intense poets that I have ever met in Oakland. She is not just somebody who can rhyme – she can do that. She is somebody with the life experiences to back up her lyrical passion. She doesn’t do cafe poetry; she does street poetry for the masses. There’s nothing Afro-bourgeois about her lyrical content; it’s straight hood. Check her out in her own words.