By Vicki L. Friedman
The acclaimed play “Thoughts of a Colored Man” is back at Norfolk State University for an encore.
The Norfolk State University Theatre Company production earned the highest honor in American collegiate theater this year for its production, garnering 20 awards from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Outstanding Production of a Play was among them in addition to Distinguished Achievement in Direction and Design going to Professor Anthony Stockard.
“Every single actor won an award,” said Stockard, who founded the NSU Theatre Company and has had five consecutive shows performed at the biennial International Black Theatre Festival, which celebrates Black heritage in the arts.
“I knew it was a good show, but I did not expect what we got.”
The original cast is largely intact for the Nov. 12-17 run at Brown Hall Studio Theater on the NSU campus. Stockard is anticipating sellouts.
Last March, when the Company presented the play, some patrons had to watch from a screen in the lobby due to ticket demand. The show has grossed $50,299.00 – more than any other play in university history.
“It’s an all-of-America thing and you don’t know how often that’s going to happen,” Stockard said. “I want to make sure everybody gets to see what all the fuss is about.”
NSU Theatre was the inaugural college to stage the play, which became the first Broadway show written and directed by a Black man with a Black man in a lead role. Playwright Keenan Scott II was part of that sellout crowd at NSU in March.
The storyline follows seven African American men in Brooklyn from sunrise to sundown. They go by the names Happiness, Wisdom, Depression, Love, Lust, Passion and Anger
The language is raw as are the issues each navigates – deferred dreams, pending fatherhood, gender identity and more.
NSU junior Gabriel Mensah, who plays Depression, wants the audience to go home accepting of “the truth. I want them to see the cold, hard truth, the reality of what it’s like to be a Black man today.”
“This play puts an honest Black story on a stage to share with the world the true Black experience,” he said. “It gives people who are like us and aren’t like us insight into some of the issues we go through as Black men and women, too.
Junior Justin Richardson, who plays Lust, regards the play as both healing and emotional.
“You see it in your life and then you see it on stage,” he said. “It gets something off your shoulders.”
“Thoughts of a Colored Man” incorporates poetry and music. The cast has developed such a kinship from repeated performances that its members often chatter in dialogue to each other throughout the day.
Adam Moskowitz, the senior who plays Wisdom, views the cast as storytellers looking to touch the hearts of its audience.
“They don’t understand Black men as a whole,” he said. “I’m more than just a complexion.”
“Thoughts of a Colored Man” will be performed at Norfolk State University’s Brown Hall Studio Theater Nov. 12-17. For more information on tickets, visit NSU Theatre.
