The Erasmus Hall Dutchman came into last Saturday’s showdown undefeated at 7-0. The team faced a very tough task as they went head-to-head with another powerhouse team in Curtis, who also came in with a 7-0 mark. For both teams, this was without a doubt the most anticipated game of the year. A victory for one team will solidify them as one of the best, if not the best, across the city.
The beginning of the game for the Dutchman did not go smooth as the team found themselves in a 22-6 hole to the Warriors early on; however, in the second quarter, the team appeared to have gotten their swagger back led by their talented junior quarterback Aron Cruickshank. He was simply outstanding, throwing for 73 yards, using his legs as a weapon to rush for an astonishing 219 yards and four touchdowns after cutting Curtis’ lead to just two points after three quarters. The Dutchman were able to complete the comeback in the early minutes of the fourth quarter and with the lead, the momentum shifted towards Erasmus’ side. After building on a 12-point lead, the Warriors came storming back and it was the heroics of their quarterback Quincy Barnes who was able to tie the ball game on a fourth and inches run. Barnes then followed that great play with a pass to teammate Amad Anderson that would ultimately seal the game for Curtis by a score of 44-42. It was the first time the Warriors have defeated the Dutchman since 1986.
Although it was a heartbreaking loss for the young men of Erasmus, they will tell you themselves, no matter what the win-loss record is, you can’t get overconfident at any time during the course of the season, something the young QB Cruickshank feels the team did during the late stints of the game. “I think we were just getting a little too cocky and now it’s time to wake up,” he said. Cruickshank and company will get a shot at redemption on November 6 as they will wrap up their season in front of their home crowd against Fort Hamilton. After a game like last Saturday, you have to think this team is ready, willing and able to finish off the 2016 campaign on a good note.
Sports Notes: (Football) Don’t look now but maybe, just maybe, the New York Jets are finding their stride to be able to compete in a division that has just been owned by the Patriots. The team will head to Miami seeking a third straight win as they play the Dolphins on Sunday afternoon. Fresh off their bye week, Eli Manning and company will look to get things back on track when they welcome divisional rival the Philadelphia Eagles. (Basketball) As we go to press, both the Knicks and Nets are 1-2 after the first week of the season. What will the season look like for both teams as the season unfolds? E-mail me at castroeddie714@gmail.com and share your views with me.
Director Walter Dallas, Dr. Indira Etwaroo, Billie Holiday Theatre Executive Director and Richard Wesley, playwright.
Tickets are moving fast for playwright Richard Wesley’s must-see “Autumn” at the LIU’s Kumble Theatre in Downtown Brooklyn, ongoing through this Sunday, November 6.
Wesley gleans a jewel of a story from the world of politics in this production starring Jerome Preston Bates and directed by Walter Dallas. The play is inspired by experiences and people who have come in and out of Wesley’s life over the years, and play’s not all about politics, he told Our Time Press in a recent interview.
“Autumn” is the story of an ambitious big-city mayor, Franklyn Preston Bates, who is ultimately running up against himself and the winter of his life. Bates came of age during the civil rights struggle and Black power era. He has benefited from gains out of all those confrontations that created the apparatus for Black political power. Now the mayor must confront a new generation with a different worldview. The mayor learns on the eve of his party’s nomination that his party is going to endorse a younger man, his protégé. The play appears to head in one direction, but turns to another, as the mayor confronts the challenge of turning over the reins to another generation.
Here are some excerpts from our recent phone conversation with Mr. Wesley, who teaches writing at NYU and authored such classics as “Uptown Saturday Night”, “Let’s Do It Again”, “The Mighty Gents”, “Mandela and de Klerk,” among others.
On the intergenerational theme of “Autumn”
The play is set in the political arena, but in the theatrical, film and television arenas, there has been tremendous change since the beginning of my career. I’m not at the center of things as was 20 years ago. But I don’t stop writing and commenting on the things around me.
One generation’s legacy is supposed to inspire, uplift and serve as a platform for the next generation that comes along. It’s about what happens when an older generation fails to do this, has failed to perform their responsibility to do the best of its ability. It is about what we give back and what we leave behind. It also is about how you don’t give up (once the reins are handed over), you keep going on.
The thing that keeps artists going is the continuing need to explore and to exercise creative energy, the constant search for ways to express self. Not being in the center of things as you were when you were younger is tough, but you don’t stop writing, painting, even though you may not be at the center of things as you were when you were younger, but you don’t stop. Life does not stop. Things continue to happen around you. You find other pathways.
The line between stage writing and film writing
When you’re writing for stage, you’re always trying to get the characters into a scene, but when you’re writing for screen or television, you’re mostly trying to get them out of the scene.
Stage writing allows you to get into the interior lives of your characters much more efficiently and completely than film or television will allow. Episodic television allows you to get into the full development of a character over several weeks.
In film, the image is the conveyor that tells the story, the audience is following a story they can see. On stage, they’re following a story they can see and hear. Stage permits a writer to spend more time with dialogue to explain what’s going on.”
On his Father and Mother’s influences
My father was a pillar.
My trying to navigate my relations with him is a lifelong thing: I lost him right after I graduated from Howard.
It came at a point where I had these plans as to how we would relate to each other as men. I had this vision of him as my great advisor. My brother Leonard and I talked about how, as he neared retirement, we were going to get a house for him and my mother to pay back to our parents what they had done for us.
I never knew my father to be remotely interested in doing anything artistic, but I remember when he would tap out these intricate rhythms with his fingers. He drummed on surfaces around him, absent-mindedly, but those were intricate, very discernible rhythms. Things you literally could dance to.”
He loved reading, absorbing as much as he could.
Mom spent two years at Teachers college in North Carolina before leaving for New York. She never went back to school.
But what she brought to me and my brother Leonard was this imagination. She told great stories, painting vivid pictures for us. She read the comics to me when I was three or four. Her favorite was “Dagwood”. , paint vivid pictures for us. She would read the comics in the newspapers everyday, when I was three or four. Dagwood was a favorite
She read newspaper articles to us, and if she saw a photo that interested us, she would read the caption out loud.
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, out of every four black families, only one was headed by a single other. Now, it’s reversed.
I remember the gatherings with my mom, one of thirteen children. There was constant coming and going. I was surrounded by uncles – all working men, aunts, smoking cigars, laughing, joking, cooking, playing baseball, wrestling, dining … all together. We were just smothered with motherly and grandma’s love. We ran from one set of arms to the next.
Then you go back to the other room with your father and his brothers. My dad and those uncles gave me a sense of what I was supposed to be as a man, how to dress, carry myself, behave around women.
On Amiri Baraka
I met Amiri when I was 19. I didn’t know he was from Newark, til we were doing the production of the Dutchman at Howard.
I would not see him until another three or four years when I graduated in 67. We made contact through Ed Bullins, I took a writing workshop with him and we remained friends until his death.
Following Amiri’s development as a political figure and followin the political rise of black politicians in Newark and across the country filtered through my relationship with him. And seeing it all up close, a lot of it did rub off in terms of how I wanted to approach the “Autumn” play.
Whatever city it is going to be in, there will always be someone remarking about some political figure they know: in D.C., someone will see Mayor Barry. In New York, David Dinkins. In Cleveland, Carl Stokes.
Roots of Inspiration: The Obamas and Black Love
The play was influenced by all of those individuals, and all the things that have happened with black politicians and me coming to understand how politics works in big cities.
When historians look back on this current period, they will see the seismic change in the United States with the election of Obama. How he changed what is possible in this country. During my time, anyone who was Anglo, protestant, white and male could grow up to be President. The exception was Kennedy.
Obama is a complete manifestation of the expression, “you can be president of the United States.”
Barack and Michelle also have given affirmation to the validity of black love. They have shown that love and family, central traditions, partnerships, do exist and they are valuable to us, and viable in the black community as opposed to that elevation of pathology that Donald Trump is engaging in.
The Obamas give lie to American myths about people of color.
They give affirmation of something else that we all have deep, deep down inside, and so many of us have born witness to.
The appearance of Michelle Obama means a great deal to black women cross the spectrum of the black community across the community.
She is dark skinned with African features. He chose her, he married her, and built a family with her.
And that has meant a lot.
My wife, Valerie, said that’s what got Baraka over. Michelle has come on to be the definitive First Lady of the 21st century. She is the most profound First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. She has set a bar that every first lady is expected to meet.
In “Autumn” love is talked about tangentially. It’s going to have to show up in the play that follows this one.
On Brooklyn
Brooklyn is my favorite borough in all of New York City. When my wife and I decided to we were going to be a couple, this is where we lived.
In the early 1970’s, I used to take the A train to Nostrand Avenue stop and walk south across Atlantic Avenue to see my sister. It was the time of some political greats, and Brooklyn was the center of Black politics with Shirley Chisholm, Major Owens, Al Vann beginning his political career.
I used to go to The Slave Theatre on Fulton Street to see cultural events.
Two of my plays, “Gone through Changes” and “The Past is the Past” were mounted at The Billie Holiday Theatre back in the 70’s.
Brooklyn’s in my consciousness forever …
Autumn
It is a period of transition, part of the process of renewing. It’s also a period for reflection, and getting ready for what is to come next.
On November 8, we will know if God continues to bless America. A week ago, polls projected a double-digit Hillary Clinton lead over Donald Trump. By Halloween, polls project that they are in a statistical dead heat. By October 31st, about 23 million Americans, 25% of the electorate, have voted. According to a Reuters story, Democrats are suing Trump for alleged voter intimidation in 4 battleground states, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Ohio. Hope that the Democrats recapture the White House and the US Senate minimally.
NEW YORK, NY
HARLEM: The Lemor Group, a Harlem-based, Black-owned real estate developer headed by Kenneth Morrison, plans to erect a 10-story, mixed- income building on Lenox Avenue between 130th and 131st Streets, with a $50 million price tag.
Kenneth Morrison
Why does the NYS Liquor Authority(SLA) accept applications for liquor store licenses at venues in close proximity to local places of worship? Last April, an application was filed for a liquor store license to open at 2067 Seventh Avenue at 123rd-124th Streets. The venue is less than 100 feet away from the historic Greater Refuge Temple Church, a Harlem fixture since the 1930s. The Greater Refuge Church and proactive community residents vigorously protested the granting of a liquor license at that address because it violates NYSLA laws, which stipulate a 200 feet liquor store/church separation. The SLA rejected the liquor store application. Last month, the SLA accepted an application for a liquor store in an adjacent space at 2067 Seventh Avenue. That space is also about 60 feet away from the Greater Metropolitan Baptist Church on 123rd Street. Another campaign is being waged to protest liquor application #2. Letters of protest about liquor store license #2 should be forwarded to berry.sender@sla.ny.gov.
BROOKLYN: The 47th Anniversary of BLACK SOLIDARITY DAY is on November 7th, the date of the “2016 Presidential Election, The Choice” rally. Flyer reads, “In 2016, we’re in a state of emergency – no more business as usual”. The rally/commemoration will be held at the New Canaan Baptist Church, located at 228 Putnam Avenue between Nostrand and Bedford Avenues. Rally begins at 7 pm. Dr. Carlos Russell, founder of BSD, will be honored.
ARTS & POLITICS
African-American Paul Beatty, 54, wins the Man Booker Prize for his tragic/comic novel THE SELLOUT, a satire about race in America. The Man Booker Award is one of Great Britain’s most prestigious literary prizes for excellence in fiction written in English. Winner gets a cash award totaling about $60,000. Beatty admits that authors like George Orwell and Saul Bellow were literary influences and that he is a big fan of Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut and HIP-HOP’s spoken word. The Man Booker Prize seems to be a Black male thing. Jamaican Marlon James won the 2015 Booker Prize for his novel, “A Brief History of Seven Killings”.
The CEMOTAP (Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to African People) 29th Anniversary Program is billed as a “Celebration of African Survival”, which will be held on November 19th at the Robert Ross Johnson Family Life Center, located at 172-117
Marcus Garvey
Linden Boulevard, Jamaica, Queens. Scholar Baba Runoko Rashidi is the keynoter. Other speakers include Michael Duncan, UNIA; Betty Dopson, co-chair of CEMOTAP and Raymond Dugue, UNIA. CEMOTAP waged successful battles with WABC-TV to keep Gil Noble’s “Like It Is” on the air. The UNIA(Universal Negro Improvement Association) was founded in 1914 by Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey. Admission is free. Call 347.907.0629. Wonder what Mr. Garvey would say about the 2016 American Presidency campaign and the impossibility of President Obama pardoning him.
Bob Law, former nationally syndicated radio talk show host of “Night Talk”, continues his civil rights advocacy with a national initiative, TURN OFF KILLER RADIO, which was launched on 10/15. Law argues that Black American males have the second-highest homicide rate in the developed world, which is attributable in part to the current radio airwaves which are filled with venomous DJ comments and song lyrics, and which urge Black youth to become scammers, rapists, killers and thieves. Law recites 2016 shooting stats in America through Labor Day: Chicago, 517; NY, 222; Philadelphia, 190; DC, 106; L.A., 182 He calls for a national boycott of radio stations which feed these toxins to the Black community. For more info, visit Turn Off Killer Radio.
The Color Purple: The Musical, based on the acclaimed Alice Walker novel of the same name, closes on January 8th. A musical theater masterpiece, the play is set in the rural Black South around the turn of the 20th century. It boasts a powerful narrative
06/07/2015 – Cynthia Erivo – South Bank Sky Arts Awards 2015 Photo Credit: Landmark / PR Photos
about God and love, a wonderful score and a talented cast which deftly navigates untapped terrain of the human heart and soul. Cynthia Erivo, who plays Celie, won the 2016 Tony for the Best Actress in a Musical. Danielle Brooks plays Sofia and Jennifer Holliday plays Shug Avery and they deliver fine performances as do the tour de force cast.
Camille Ann Brewer
Fine artist Camille Ann Brewer has been named curator of contemporary textile art at the George Washington University Museum and the Textile Museum in Washington, DC. Brewer’s most recent position was in Chicago where she served as executive director of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, a membership organization of libraries, universities and archives which collect, document and showcase materials about the African-American and African Diaspora.
The Castillo Theatre and the nonprofit All-Stars Project(ASP) announced that the New Federal Theatre(NFT), founded by veteran theatre/film impresario Woodie King, relocates to the All-Stars Performing Arts and Development Center at 543 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, which is the epicenter of NY theater culture, Broadway and Off-Broadway. Two NFT works, the highly acclaimed “Zora Neale Hurston” by Laurence Holder and “Ain’t Never Been Easy”, a new play with music by Dan Friedman, are staged at the NFT’s new home on West 42nd Street through November 20th.
The Mackey Twins Gallery presents the ARTS CONSCIENCE II exhibition, a group show at the Interchurch Center Gallery, 475 Riverside Drive at 120th Street, Harlem, which opens on 10/31 and runs through 11/30. Fine artists whose works are showcased include Xenobia Bailey, Betty Blayton, Stacey Brown, Leroy Campbell, Demetrius Denmark, James Denmark, Essud Fungcap, Manno Laracuente, Charley Palmer and TWIN. The exhibit’s opening night is 11/11 at 5:30 pm. [Visit mackeytwinsart.com]
Tyler Perry’s “Boo! A Madea Halloween” dominates the US movie box office for the second successive weekend. Film grossed $52 million in 10 days. Madea outperformed movies with stars like Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Ben Affleck.
Darren Walker
NEWSMAKERS
David Jones, Community Service Society(CSS) President/CEO, was one of three people named by NYC Mayor de Blasio and confirmed by the NYS Senate to sit on the NYS Metropolitan Transportation Authority(MTA) Board.
Kofi Appenteng, Chairman of the Board of the Ford Foundation and the President of the Africa-America InstituteS) President/CEO, was one of three people named by NYC Mayor de Blasio and confirmed by the NYS Senate to sit on the NYS Metropolitan Transportation Authority(MTA) Board.
Darren Walker, Ford Foundation President, joined the Board of Pepsico last month. Some question the ethics of this public/private sector marriage. How can a Ford Foundation prexy cavort with Pepsico, the provider of sugary drinks and cholesterol-saturated snacks which leads to obesity, a widespread health issue within low- income communities. Walker, a former lawyer and Wall Streeter responds, “I will bring my perspective as the leader of a social justice organization”. The Ford Foundation provides about $500 million in grants annually. Pepsico directors earn between $275,000 to $475,000 annually.
Ghana-born Kofi Appenteng is the Chairman of the Board of the Ford Foundation and the President of the Africa-America Institute. Founded in 1953, the AAI is a nonprofit created to promote enlightened engagement between Africa and the United States via education, training and dialogue. A Columbia University Law School alum, Appenteng worked as a corporate lawyer and an investment banker.
A Harlem-based entrepreneur, Victoria Horsford is reachable at Victoria.horsford@gmail.com.
Parental discretion is advised, but imagine this a few months from now: the pained looks of fake composure and shock as the first black president, along with his illustrious first lady, stomach an inaugural ceremony for a guy who erected his white nationalist political empire on the false claim that said black president was born…
