KIND OF BLUE Staged Reading - Slideshow

On August 15, 201, Ritual Theatre Company held an invitation-only Staged Reading of KIND OF BLUE, an new play by Kuamel Stewart.

STARRING

Frankie Faison* Andrea Frierson* Andre Garner* Hannelore Williams Stage Directions read by Mike Hodge* *Member of Actors' Equity Association

Lerner Auditorium at the LGBT Center: 208 West 13th. Street, 3rd. Floor, NYC ASL interpreted by Stephanie Feyne & Rick Rubin Reception catered by Chef Matthew Tivy of Cafe du Soleil

In early 1940s New York City, George Evans (a middle-aged bartender) is beginning to struggle mightily with the patriarchal role he has been seeking his entire life. When his wife Ruby, a nurse, attempts to help solve some of the problems that George's shortcomings are starting to create for their marriage, it only makes matters worse. But when George and Ruby are suddenly surprised by the arrival of their daughter Nia from college with her new fiancée Joseph, a young poet and budding novelist who is failing to channel his own machismo (in Nia's undying opinion), the Evans household becomes a powder-keg in which conflictng ideals of masculinity ignite an explosion of conflict between its four inhabitants.

"Kind of Blue" explores, through a provocative and gritty naturalistic drama, how varying understandings of male roles in society affect interpersonal relationships.

"Kind Of Blue" is Kuamel Stewart's 1st full-length play in his Companion Play Cycle. He was deeply inspired by August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle, which entailed a decade-by-decade dramatization of the African American experience throughout the 20th century (in essence, paying homage to a contextualized experience that Stewart is attempting to emulate by paying homage to jazz), the categorically threaded plays of William Shakespeare via The First Folio (from which Stewart was inspired to devise his own categorically threaded plays), and the commitment to dramatize the most profound existential questions rooted in provocative affection for societal critique akin to Edward Albee. From the combination of those muses, Stewart conceived of completing what he has titled, The Companion Play Cycle.

Stewart's cycle is comprised of eight distinct groups of plays, with five plays in each group, written as companion pieces to eight distinct styles of jazz respectively. These styles include Dixieland, Swing, Bebop, Cool, Hard Bop, Modal, Free, and Fusion. The narrative structures in each group of plays mirror their jazz style companions in any combination of technicality, aesthetic, and context.

This four-character piece is the first of his five Modal Plays in the Companion Play Cycle, written as a companion piece to the style of Modal Jazz. It is also the namesake of the iconic Modal Jazz album by Miles Davis. The physical structure of "Kind Of Blue"s narrative is inspired by its jazz style companion in technicality. Modal Jazz employed the use of musical scales, which were colloquially called "modes". Inspired by that technicality, this play explores different "modes" of masculinity.

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Entertainment

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• Theater
• Theatre
• Jazz
• Ritual
• Reading
• Arts