On stage, it was a fairly loose performance, stretching in whatever ways Smith and Thompson choose to take it. Newton and responding to questions asked by sound designer Marc Anthony Thompson (who is better known in some circles as the creative force behind the eloquent soul music collective known as Chocolate Genius). The work developed into a dialogue with Smith playing Black Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton Story over several years, including a handful of “in progress” and workshop performances before it had its official world premiere at San Francisco’s Magic Theater in the fall of 1995. This was a natural side project for him to take on. What’s more, Lee had established a newly modified career track that found him alternating between the fiction films for which he was best known and documents of stage performances, having filmed John Leguizamo’s Freak and the concert film The Original Kings of Comedy. Lee had also made it quite clear by this point that he was the only director suited to projects about the more militant voices in the Civil Rights movement, having raged against the notion that someone like Norman Jewison might be qualified to bring Malcolm X’s life story to the screen. and Malcolm X to the wall of Sal’s flaming pizzeria. Smith had appeared in no less than six of Spike Lee’s films to this point, including the prominent role that involved tacking the photo of Martin Luther King Jr. Newton to film, there was clearly one man for the directing job. When Roger Guenveur Smith was given the opportunity to transfer his award-winning one-man stage play about Huey P.
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