“I always feel like if you can see it, maybe you can change it. You can’t make people change if they’re not moved to do it, but that’s why we have writers, poets, fighters, and dancers.” — Alice Walker
Great storytellers tend to gravitate to one another. William Shakespeare would have loved Alice Walker. Love, loss, and redemption. You’ll find elements of each throughout the Bard’s body of work as well as that of Walker, author of The Color Purple, one of the defining novels of the twentieth century.
Courtesy Tennessee Shakespeare Company
This Sunday, Tennessee Shakespeare Company presents In a Purple Mood: Alice Walker, the latest production in TSC’s Dr. Greta McCormick Coger Literary Salon. Curated and directed by Carmen-maria Mandley, In a Purple Mood will present and celebrate Walker’s poetry as well as material from interviews. Excerpts from The Color Purple will be read.
“Ms. Walker writes with daring and tenacity,” says Mandley. “She has a deep belief that anything we do is in service of our ancestors and our elders; that we are all storytellers. And in order to continue as a species, we must, with diligence, continue to tell the truths we have, be they celebratory, dangerous, romantic, or grief-stricken.”
The show will be presented both on TSC’s Tabor Stage (with limited seating, and face coverings required) and online, the latter via a one-camera setup on TSC’s web site (tnshakespeare.org), with a time-stamped, specific password provided on the day of the Salon.
Mandley has been profoundly impacted by The Color Purple (published in 1982) and looks forward to extending Walker’s reach to a TSC audience. “My group of friends was diverse, and [The Color Purple] started many conversations for us that we could not have in front of any adult. Conversations about race, gender, abuse, and sexuality. More than that, it allowed us to tell our own stories to each other, just like Celie, Shug, Sofia, and Nettie.”
“Parents and children seeing the Salon together would create a welcoming opportunity to discuss humanity’s experience of equality for all races and genders,” adds Dan McCleary, TSC’s founder and producing artistic director. “And what we can consider now in personal response.”
TSC is located at 7950 Trinity Road. For more information call (901)759-0604.