City Theatre has announced the second installment of its anniversary reading series, City Rewinds: 50 Years of New Plays, with Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years by Emily Mann. Based on the book Having Our Sayby Sarah L. and A. Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth (1994), City Theatre produced the stage adaptation in 1997.
This one-night reading will take place on Monday, November 18th at 7:00 pm and feature actors Etta Cox (Past City Theatre credits: Avenue X, From the Mississippi Delta, Constant Star, Crowns, and Spunk) and Sharon Washington (Feeding the Dragon, 2016). City Theatre Co-Artistic Director Monteze Freeland will direct.
Said Freeland on directing this reading: “City Theatre has had a decades-long commitment to presenting stories from the African Diaspora, highlighting monumental playwrights such as Lorraine Hansberry, Cheryl L. West, and Dominque Morisseau, to name a few. Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years premiered on our mainstage in 1997. This true story of two Black women candidly illustrating their life journey in America over more than a century of experiences was the most produced play in this country for nearly two years. The lessons from the Delany sisters may ring louder today than 30 years ago; maybe now we will listen. I am honored to bring this story of heroism and tenacity back to City Theatre for one night only, featuring audience favorites Etta Cox and Sharon Washington. Please join us for an extraordinary evening of history and entertainment as City Rewindscontinues to highlight 50 years of new plays.”
The play opens as 103-year-old Sadie Delany and 101-year-old Bessie Delany welcome us into their Mount Vernon, New York home. As they prepare a celebratory dinner in remembrance of their father’s birthday, they take us on a remarkable journey through the last hundred years of our nation’s history, recounting a fascinating series of events and anecdotes drawn from their rich family history and careers as pioneering African-American professionals. Their story is not simply African-American history or women’s history. It is our history, told through the eyes of two unforgettable women as they look not only into the past but also ahead into the twenty-first century.
The 1997 production at City Theatre featured actors Linda Hunt and Claudia Robinson and was directed byJacqueline Diane Moscou. The creative team featured Tony Ferrieri (scenery and properties design), Andrew David Ostrowski(lighting design), Lorraine Venberg (costume design), David Pascal (sound design), and Patti Kelly (stage manager). It ran on the Main Stage between November 28th – December 21st, 1997.
About the reading’s performers:
Etta Cox, originally from St. Joseph, Missouri, has performed in the tri-state area for many years. She appeared on Broadway in I Love My Wife with Lawrence Hilton- Jacobs, the 1940’s Radio Hour with Dee Dee Bridgewater, as well as a starring role in Showtime’s production of The Me Nobody Knows and multiple films, I’m Your Woman (2020), Me, Earl and the Dying Girl (2015), Warrior (2011), The Next Three Days (2020), The Cemetery Club (1993), Bump in the Night(1991), Criminal Justice (1990), Silent Witness (1985) and numerous shows for City Theatre and Pittsburgh Public Theatre.
Etta Cox has been voted “Best Jazz Vocalist” in Pittsburgh for eight consecutive years and has received the Harry Schwalb Award for Excellence in the Arts, was selected as one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Pittsburgh by Pittsburgh Magazine, voted Performer of the Year by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, received Talk Magazine Walter Harper All That Jazz Award, Arts and Letters Award from YWCA and Lifetime Achievement Award from Covenant Church on the Hill.
Sharon Washington: As an actor, Sharon can currently be seen in Joker: Folie À Deux reprising her role as Debra Kane from the first Joker film, and in Sing Sing, starring Academy Award nominee Colman Domingo. This winter, she returns in her recurring role as Joyce Thomas the family matriarch, in the fourth season of Power Book III: Raising Kanan. Celebrating over 30 years as a working actress and her new journey as a writer, Sharon is proud to have been selected as a 2024 MacDowell Fellow. She was also awarded a Princeton University Library Research Grant for her new play A Colored Mirror. Sharon was nominated for a 2023 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical as co-writer of New York, New York. She made her debut as a playwright at City Theatre with the world premiere of her solo play Feeding The Dragon which subsequently played at Hartford Stage and made its Off-Broadway debut at Primary Stages, where she was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Lucille Lortel Award and won an Audelco Award.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
The readings are held in City Theatre’s Gordon Lounge on Monday nights throughout the year. For tickets call 412.431.CITY (2489) or visit CityTheatreCompany.org. Tickets are $25. City Rewinds subscriptions to attend all five readings are available at a reduced rate.
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