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Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is considered by many to
be the greatest play of August Wilson, the most acclaimed
American playwright of the past two decades and a two-time
Pulitzer Prize-winner who has also been honored with seven
Best Play Awards by the New York Drama Critics Circle. Set
in 1911, this eloquent drama is about a stranger newly arrived
at a Pittsburgh boarding house after years of forced labor.
The warm mood of the boarding house changes abruptly with
the arrival of the mysterious stranger, Herald Loomis, and
his young daughter. Loomis is a man on a mission to discover
his lost past and construct a new life. Missouri Repertory
Theatre’s production will be directed by Marion McClinton,
who has worked twice with Peter Altman in Boston, and is considered
by many to be the leading interpreter today of Wilson’s work.
With this production of Joe Turner, McClinton will become
the first person to have directed all eight of the extant
plays in Wilson’s cycle of works presenting African American
experiences in each decade of the 20th century. Wrote The
New York Times, “Joe Turner is at once a teeming canvas
of black America at a specific moment in time and a spiritual
allegory with a Melville whammy.” Said Variety, it confronts
“the lingering effect on turn-of-the-century black Americans
of slavery, their African heritage and the sense of disorientation
many suffered after the Civil War.”
And also wrote The New York Times, “If history is sad,
Mr. Wilson’s writing boasts humor – the deep laughter that
comes, as one line says, from letting
‘life blow right through you.’”
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