ALL ARTS, the Emmy-winning streaming platform and TV channel, will present the premiere of Dangerous Acts, a House Seats special, March 21 at 9 PM ET on ALL ARTS TV, the ALL ARTS app, and AllArts.org/HouseSeats.
Produced by New York’s Lucille Lortel Theatre in partnership with the Howard University Department of Theatre Arts, the one-hour program is directed by Tony winner and Dean of Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts Phylicia Rashad.
Dangerous Acts explores the work of two prolific African American playwrights, Mary P. Burrill and Willis Richardson, through a staged reading of Burrill’s Aftermath and Richardson’s The Deacon’s Awakening, performed by Howard University students under the direction of Rashad. The program will also feature a series of critical reflections on the enduring legacy of Burrill and Richardson.
“We are delighted to partner with the Lucille Lortel Theatre and Howard University to celebrate the long lineage of Black theatre makers with the next generation of actors and audiences through the visionary early 20th-century work of Mary P. Burrill and Willis Richardson,” says ALL ARTS Senior Artistic Director James King. “Dean Rashad offers a renewed understanding of the historic and contemporary significance of these singular playwrights and their work for audiences today.”
“With these long-neglected works by Mary P. Burrill and Willis Richardson, we are thrilled to inaugurate an exciting and fruitful partnership with Howard University and ALL ARTS. Most of all, we are overjoyed to collaborate with the gifted students and brilliant faculty at Howard. With this program, the Lucille Lortel Theatre strives to uplift powerful Black voices that have inspired generations of artists, while fostering the education of the next wave of Black theatre makers,” adds George Forbes, executive director of the Lucille Lortel Theatre.
Rashad continues, “This was a labor of love from start to finish—exquisite and fulfilling; truly, this represents a full circle moment in time for me.”
The associate producers for House Seats: Dangerous Acts are MECCA Filmworks and T.L. Benton.
