Joe Turner’s Come and Gone in New York
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, by August Wilson, is currently playing at The Lincoln Center Theatre in New York. It was recently nominated for Best Revival of a Play at the 2009 Tony Awards. This production was directed by Bartlett Sher, who was also nominated for Best Direction of a Play. In total, this production received 6 Tony nominations including those for Best Scenic Design, Best Lighting Design, Best Sound Design and Best Performance by a Featured Actor in Play. It won 2 of the awards and they went to Roger Robinson for Best Performance and Brian MacDevitt for best Lighting. Tourists who were in town for the Tony Awards and consequential celebrations stayed at best Manhattan hotel to catch some of the pomp and circumstance of the evening.
The play was originally produced on Broadway in March of 1988 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. It ran for 105 performances and was nominated for Best Play in that year’s Tony Awards. The script is the second installment of Wilson’s decade by decade chronicle of the African American experience, The Pittsburgh Project. It was staged by Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, Connecticut before it moved to Broadway. The play is set in the 1920s and deals with the lives of freed slaves. It deals with post slavery racial identity issues and on a more personal level it addresses the struggles of self-discovery and expression.
The play is a drama though it is deals with some supernatural elements such as possession and it incorporates music into the action. Most of the characters either play an instrument or sing. The dialogue in the script is an essential component, well, this actually true for all plays, however in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, the dialogue’s structure is a representation of the character’s spirit. Each of the characters has a specific rhythm to their speech and unique patterns. The dialogue is also reflective of the specific accents that each of the characters would have.
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