Series of Programs Offers Rich Explorations of Black Past, Present, and Future
The Umbrella Stage Company presents George C. Wolfe’s The Colored Museum, May 20 - June 5 64
Discover CONCORD
| Spring 2022
Photos courtesy of The Umbrella Arts Center
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The Umbrella Arts Center has set the stage for a bold season of artistic and cultural programs exploring the experience of being Black in America, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. From May 20 - June 5, The Umbrella’s professional Stage Company will present George C. Wolfe’s The Colored Museum, directed in a fresh, relevant way by Pascale Florestal, one of WBUR’s Artery 25: Artists of Color Transforming the Cultural Landscape. The powerful satire centers on a kind of character museum featuring eleven “exhibits” or vignettes that undermine Black stereotypes old and new, explore inter-community conflicts, and ultimately return to the facts of what being Black means. While tackling the racial legacy of America’s history seriously, the play does so with defiant humor. Parodying everything from classic Black theater to fashion models, from popular culture to traditional notions of the museum or cultural institution itself, Florestal says it “humanize[s] Black experiences so
Boston artist Cedric “Vise1” Douglas (shown with samples from his “Tools of Protest” project), curator of The Colored Museum: Past / Present / Future in The Umbrella Main Gallery
often presented merely as entertainment” and creates opportunities for positive dialogue around future race relations. In addition to talkbacks and community discussions, audiences will find its thoughtprovoking messages enhanced by and in dialogue with other Umbrella programs and partner events around town. In The Umbrella Main Gallery, curated by noted Boston artist Cedric “Vise1” Douglas, The Colored Museum: Past/Present/Future is a distinctive complementary exhibition of emerging and well-established Black artists from throughout the Northeast that loosely echoes, responds to, and challenges the play’s themes. From photography and comic illustration to fiber arts and algorithmic digital portraits, the diverse selection is organized into a mixed-media journey from African traditions to civil rights to Black Lives Matter to Afrofuturism. Also included is work from One Day I Will Walk Into The Umbrella, by late outsider artist Justin Printice Douglass, created through an Umbrella outreach
program while incarcerated in Concord and originally scheduled to show in 2020 when COVID closed the Gallery to the public. In addition, The Umbrella will partner with The Robbins House (RobbinsHouse.org) and the town’s African-American History of Concord Walking/Biking Tour (VisitConcord. org) series to offer collaborative theater and history packages and other community engagement events leading up to Juneteenth. A concurrent exhibition of work by regional teen artists curated by Nayda Cuevas on themes of race and racial justice will hang in The Umbrella’s Black Box Theater, in association with the “June Journeys” event series coordinated by the Concord/Carlisle/ Boston-based Communities Organized Against Racism (COARAction.org). Located at 40 Stow Street in Concord, The Umbrella Arts Center is open to the public 10 am-9 pm daily, is ADA-accessible, and operates under enhanced COVID safety measures following current health guidelines. (theumbrellaarts.org)
