"Blues for Mister Charlie" June 23, 2011

Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:00 PM, matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 PM.
Tickets $25 general admission, $15 students and seniors, $10 with CUNY ID.
Free on-site parking is available in South Campus Parking Lot (enter at 133rd Street and Convent Ave.).
Subways: #1 to 137th Street or A, B, C, D to 135th Street.

NEW YORK, June 1 -- New Haarlem Arts Theatre (NHAT), the new professional theater company of City College of New York (CCNY), will present "Blues for Mister Charlie" by James Baldwin, directed by Eugene Nesmith, from June 23 to July 17 at Aaron Davis Hall, located at W. 135th Street and Convent Avenue, Manhattan (Hamilton Heights). This will be the play's first major New York presentation since its Broadway debut in 1964. The timely production, designed to entertain and provoke, will re-imagine Baldwin's notions of race, class and gender relations, casting actors beyond racial lines to present a modern complex picture of American culture today.

"Blues for Mister Charlie" is based on the historic case of the murder of Emmett Till, a young black man who was killed in Mississippi in 1955 for supposedly whistling at a white woman. The play follows a cyclical structure, opening and ending with the crime while utilizing a series of flashbacks to illuminate the social, racial, sexual and religious forces behind the young man's death. "Mister Charlie" is a slang term for a white man. The murder victim, named Richard Henry in the play, is a pastor's son who has returned from Chicago to the segregated Southern town of his birth, aiming to start over and recover from drug addiction. A shop owner named Lyle Britten, a bigot who shoots him and throws his body in the weeds, is acquitted by an all-white jury. The play forthrightly exposes the wounds of racism and its toll on both black and white members of the polarized community who attempt to intervene, notably the publisher of the town's newspaper.

Director Eugene Nesmith, founding Artistic Director of NHAT, told the New York Times (in an article published May 30, 2011) that he chose "Blues for Mister Charlie" for the troupe's inaugural production because "a lot of the issues we were dealing with in the '60s--the racial, the economic, the gender issues--are coming around again." His innovation is to mount the play with a multi-ethnic cast, causing the audience to challenge its perceptions of race and prejudice in the more nuanced mindset of today.

The actors are a mixture of New York working professionals, recent graduates of CUNY's undergraduate theater program, and student actors.

New Haarlem Arts Theatre (NHAT), a new professional theater company in residence at Aaron Davis Hall, is producing its first season this summer. In its productions, emerging professional actors from the CCNY community will work alongside the most daring, imaginative, and creative artists in their field on a high professional level. The troupe has been founded by Eugene Nesmith, with crucial support from CCNY, to establish a professional theater uptown that will rival the best college-based repertories in the country. It aims to produce bold theatrical works that express the true history, culture, and diversity of America. It also aims to attract audiences from around the city to Harlem again.

Official Website: http://newhaarlemartstheatre.org/