The much-anticipated debut of Studio Theatre’s revival of George C. Wolfe’s classic play “The Colored Museum,” including some returning stars from the theater’s blockbuster production of “Fat Ham” earlier this season, will begin rehearsals soon.
Matthew Elijah Webb and Kelli Blackwell, who impressed D.C. audiences as Larry and Rabby in the Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy, will join Ayanna Bria Bakari, Iris Beaumier and William Oliver Watkins in the ensemble cast. Psalmayene 24, one of the city’s most popular directors, will lead the production, which will transform the Victor Shargai Theatre into a satirical museum of outdated but persistent conceptions of Black history and experience.
Students from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts will produce art pieces, or “exhibits,” for the museum, which audiences will be invited to take in before the show begins.
“Psalm and I have been discussing the production of The Colored Museum he’s wanted to direct for a few years,” said Studio Theatre Artistic Director David Muse. “George C. Wolfe’s seminal work of late twentieth-century Black theater is scathing and subversive — and breathtaking in its audacity nearly 40 years after its first production. Psalm is a member of the Studio Cabinet, our affiliated artist program. He’s joined by fellow Cabinet member, director and designer Natsu Onoda Power, who’s designing the set and setting the play, and they’re cooking up an environmental design for the play. This is the fourth project that Psalm’s directed with us, and I’m excited to see what he and his team come up with.”
For more information, go to the Studio website at https://www.studiotheatre.org/.