Under the unfussy helm of Lee and director of photography Daniel Patterson, with strong contributions from editor Randy Wilkins, the film comprises a potent single-take, 10-camera recording of Smith’s play. He leads a performing history workshop for the California Institute for the Arts.'Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992': Film Review Smith’s theater credits include directing Katori Hall’s “The Mountaintop” for the Memphis Martin Luther King 50 Commemoration and “The Hendrix Project,” for the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival. He has appeared in eight films by Spike Lee, including “Do the Right Thing,” “Malcolm X” and “He Got Game.” Recent screen credits include roles in “Behind the Movement,” “Dope,” “The Birth of a Nation” and “Queen Sugar.” Newton Story,” which he adapted into a Peabody Award-winning telefilm, and the Bessie Award-winning “Rodney King,” which is currently streaming on Netflix. His original works include the Obie Award-winning “A Huey P. He is the creator of several one-man shows that put African-American issues center stage. Los Angeles-born Smith’s youth and body of work have been impacted by the South-Central race riots. ambassador to the Dominican Republic and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti. A renowned orator and author, his legacy includes several autobiographies eloquently describing his experiences during slavery and after the Civil War. Frederick Douglassĭouglass (1818–1895) was born into slavery and died the first African- American to hold a high U.S. He continues to hone and refine it with material culled from newspaper headlines, rap music and gaffes made by celebrities and politicians revealing how far America has come and still has to go in race relations. Smith began work on “Frederick Douglass Now” when he was a student at Occidental College and has been performing it for more than 20 years. “Slavery had broken up the family, and because his siblings were not taught to read and write, they were unable to maintain a connection.” “The great tragedy for Douglass, which he communicates in that letter, is being separated from his sisters and brother,” Smith said. There was a Fugitive Slave Act, and even though he lived as a free man in the North, he had to flee to Europe to work and raise money to purchase his freedom. “He had to reveal people he knew as a slave to prove it, which was dangerous. “People didn’t believe a black man could have written the letter, or believe he could have been a slave,” Smith said in an interview with public radio station KCRW in Los Angeles. The show is based on Douglass’ writings, including a letter he wrote to his master 10 years after escape, in which he revealed his connection to the institution of slavery. The show is hosted by the departments of performance studies and theatre, and is also part of the 50 th Anniversary Commemoration of the Bursar’s Office Takeover programming. It is co-sponsored by the departments of African-American studies and history, the Black Arts Initiative and the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion. “Frederick Douglass Now,” is sponsored by Northwestern’s political science department. Seating is limited and reservations are recommended. Friday, April 6, in the Josephine Louis Theater, 20 Arts Circle Drive on Northwestern University’s Evanston campus. The free public performance will be presented at 7 p.m. “Frederick Douglass Now,” a one-man show by award-winning writer and actor Roger Guenveur Smith, weaves together contemporary tropes on American race relations and politics with writings from the former slave and famous 19th-century social reformer. “The chief injury lies in the absence of moral feeling in the utterance of our rulers,” abolitionist Frederick Douglass said about Lincoln, when the president indicated his indifference to abolition in a letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley.
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