Passages of Martin Luther King February 28, 2009

The MLK Project presents "Passages of Martin Luther King", an internationally acclaimed play by Clayborne Carson, history professor and director of the Martin Luther King Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

Under the direction of Andrida Hosey, the 7:00 pm show Feb. 28, 2009 at The Palladium Theater will feature a dramatic reading from the script with live performances of music from the Civil Rights Movement. The Performance will be followed by a 15 Minute video clip from the developing documentary "Bringing King to China", the tale of the international performance of the play in Beijing, China in June 2007.

The show will conclude with a Q & A session with Clayborne Carson and Ray Arsenault, two of the nation's leading experts on the Civil Rights Movement. Carson was a senior adviser for the Emmy-award winning documentary "Eyes on the Prize" and was commissioned by Coretta Scott King to edit the King Papers, leading to his play "Passages". Arsenault, a University of South Florida history professor, is author of the book "Freedom Riders". The Q & A, the culmination of Black History Month presentations, will be moderated by St. Petersburg Times television and media critic Eric Deggans.

The Performance features Aldo Billingslea, an associate professor and chairman of theater and dance at Santa Clara University who has starred in "Othello", as Martin Luther Kin Jr. St. Petersburg's own September Penn, a singer, songwriter, and actor, will ply Coretta. The Honorable Darryl Rouson of the Florida House of Representatives, will play Daddy King, along with singer and actor Joye Watkins as Alberta "Bunch" King. Dr. Cody Clark, guidance counselor for the Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School, will play Malcom X, and Tampa actor Shawn Hill will play Stokely Carmichael.

Music selections will be performed by five singers from the international premiere of "Passages" in Beijing under the direction of Kenneth Alston, a tenor/counter tenor, actor and member of the cast of renowned singing sensation Three Mo Tenors, with September Penn co-directing and joined by singers Chelsi Butler, Jessica Re Phillips, and Frederick Alexander of Stanford University. Musical selections will be accompanied by dancers from the Soulful Arts Dance Academy, who will perform choreographed pieces by Paulette Walker Johnson.