Shallow Brown: Thessalonia and the Free Sailor
A Staged Reading
October 26, 2018
6 – 8 pm
Langston Hughes House
20 E. 127th Street
Harlem, NY
Take 2/3 to 125th St./Malcolm X Blvd. or 4,5,6 to 125th St./Lexington
Stories & Sea Shanties of Antebellum Black Sailors
Hear Vienna Carroll & Keith Johnston Perform Sea Shanties Sang by Black Sailors in Antebellum Times
Saturday, October 27, 2018
4 pm to 6 pm
(come early for more fun, read to bottom)
Gowanus Dredgers’ Boathouse
125-153 2nd Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Nearest subways:
G to Carroll St. (three avenues walk)
R to Union Street (two avenues & three blocks walk)
2,3,4,5,B,D,Q,R to Atlantic Terminal/Barclay’s Center (three avenues & 13 blocks walk)
Come early! This event is part of the Gowanus Oktoberfest
2 – 6pm
Free local food samples
Free canoeing
Kid-friendly
Quality beer and food available for purchase
Vienna Carroll performs on Monday Morning Blues Show on WBAI
Vienna Carroll and The Folk
Big Eyed Blues Festival
Saturday, June 30, 2018 – 6-10pm
– Vienna Carroll & The Folk
– Irving Louis Lattin Trio
– Beareather & Brown Liquor Sounds
Brooklyn Historical Society
128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, NY (map)
6-7 pm– Odysseus Bailer & Erin Beebee Blues Dance Demo & Lesson
7 pm– Vienna & The Folk, don’t be late!
Spirituals, work songs, and blues
$25 in advance ($30 door)
Read more & Buy tickets
HOKUM – Jersey City, June 2
Come join us on Saturday, June 2, 2018 – 7pm
at the Jersey City Theater Center’s Merseles Studio
339 Newark Avenue, Jersey City NJ
7 pm-midnight (Vienna & Keith perform first)
$10
The last Hokum! sold out, so buy advance tickets to be sure of entry.
Come on out, Git Down, Have Fun!!
Theater conveniently located 10 blocks from the Grove Street Path Station (just walk west on Newark Ave). See map. See PATH schedule. See parking lot map. More info.
SHALLOW BROWN: Thessalonia and the Free Sailor. New play!
In SHALLOW BROWN, Thessalonia falls hard for a free sailor, one of the many who smuggles pages of the radical Black self-defense manifesto, “David Walker’s Appeal”, from Boston up and down the eastern seaboard in 1829. She helps her serious father circulate the prohibited document. Two short years later, her suspicions about her dad are confirmed. He turns out to be a respected organizer in the Nat Turner rebellion of 1831.
HISTORY
Prior to the Civil War, when the primary channel of transport was via the water, one in five boatmen and sailors in the US were Black. Largely independent, both enslaved and free, and often with crews of their own, these Black men moved goods through Northern and Southern US ports and along international waterways.
Their skill and particular knowledge afforded them respect and stature otherwise unknown on land. An under-appreciated axis of resistance, they brought back stories to their communities of how other colored people lived, they smuggled freedom documents and they helped runaways escape.
As was common in that era, they created sea chanteys songs to help them in their daily chores, to lighten their hearts and to document their experiences.
We’re very excited to be part of the upcoming Langston Hughes Playwright Showcase. May 3, 2019 7pm
20 East 127th St (between 5th and Madison) Stay tuned for more details.
Past Shows:
Friday, May 25, 2018: 9 pm
Lower East Side Festival of the Arts
Theater for the New City, NYC
155 First Avenue (bet. 9th & 10th Sts)
New York, NY 10003
http://theaterforthenewcity.net
Sat., June 9, 2018: 11 – 11:45 am
(entire day begins at 8:30 am)
Excerpt AND Research Findings
Symposium, 39th Annual Sea Music Festival
Mystic Seaport, CT
https://mysticseaport.org/event/sea-music-festival/
Get Vienna’s full-sized flyer.
More performances to come!
