Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage
By Aishah Rahman
Directed by Judyie Al-Bilali
March 7, 8, 11, 12, 13 at 7:30 p.m. | March 8 at 2 p.m. | March 11 at 10 a.m.
The Curtain Theater
$5 students, seniors, Card to Culture, $17 general admission
Content advisory: Racial slurs, discussions of sexual activity and assault, discussions and depictions of drug and alcohol use and death. Recommended for children age 15 and up.
Tickets on sale through the Fine Arts Center Box Office (413-545-2511 and online), as well as at the door on the night of the show (subject to availability). To make our shows more affordable, we offer Card to Culture pricing for qualifying patrons.
There’s past, present, and future wrapped up in our production of Aishah Rahman’s Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage, which opens in the Curtain Theater on March 7.
In dual story lines, virtuoso saxophonist Charlie Parker contemplates his life as he dies, while a group of young unwed mothers wrestle with their sense of the future and the fates of their children. Music suffuses the atmosphere as the breath of life in these parallel stories where pleasure, pain, heartbreak, and desire comingle.
Aishah Rahman’s text provides the blueprint for Theatrical Jazz, an approach to theater-making that centers Black aesthetics and creativity. This play was co-produced in the department with New WORLD Theater in 1987 as a part of a conference celebrating Black Theater. Director and Professor Judyie Al-Bilali’s early training was in Theatrical Jazz and she brings this form to a new generation of theater students — who, in turn, are looking ahead to how they’ll make their mark on theater.
“It helps us to look backwards to that earlier performance and to support Black theater now. This production affirms our commitment to the ongoing legacy of Black theater on our campus,” said the play’s dramaturg, Dr. Priscilla Maria Page.
The play was originally proposed for the season by Professor Gilbert McCauley, who planned to direct. McCauley, also an accomplished actor, has since stepped into the titular role of Charlie Parker, with Al-Bilali taking on directing duties. The three faculty members are frequent collaborators; they participated in the first national conference on Theatrical Jazz at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where Page was a key organizer.
Theatrical Jazz practitioners follow tenets that include a focus on breath, deep listening, presence, virtuosity, community, the holding of simultaneous truths and being in one’s body — all important values for moving through life as well as art. Both for the theater-makers and the audience, Page said, our presentation of this play is “beautiful and necessary.”
Unfinished Women is presented in the Curtain Theater, an intimate space, so make your reservation now before performances sell out!