L. PETER CALLENDER SAG AEA AFTRA
Coming Soon
Streaming on Demand
June 26 - July 4, 2021
'MASTER HAROLD'... and the boys | Sam
Syracuse Stage
Written in 1982, "Master Harold" . . . and the Boys ranks among the very best of the great South African playwright Athol Fugard’s work. Set in 1950 in Port Elizabeth, this remarkable play exposes the corrosiveness of systemic racism with raw, unsentimental honesty. The play is autobiographical (“the most intensely personal thing I have ever written” - Fugard) and originates in a friendship between a white teenager and a Black man, who is a kind of surrogate father and an employee of the family’s struggling tea room. When stressful circumstances overwhelm the teen, he lashes out in misdirected and emotionally devastating fury that in an instant threatens to undermine years of affection. Heartfelt, revelatory and a lasting tribute from the playwright to “the most beautiful friend I ever had.”
Just Closed
May 1 - 23, 2021
Pipeline | Director
West Coast Black Theatre Troupe
A mother fights to save her son from the school-to-prison pipeline.
Nya, a dedicated inner-city public high school teacher, is desperate to give her only son Omari, opportunities her students will never have. When a controversial incident at his private school threatens to get him expelled, Nya must confront his rage and her own choices as a parent. Pipeline is an unforgettable story of a mother's fight to give her son a future - without turning her back on their community. The message of the play is particularly relevant as America battles institutional racism and societal inequalities.
"L. Peter Callender’s direction honors the playwright’s hyper-reality. His approach to dialogue and physicalization seem natural, never stagey. But he doesn’t shy away from the white-hot intensity of the play’s brightest and darkest moments. When it’s time to go big, he doesn’t play it small."
Marty Fugate | YourObserver.com
Satchmo at the Waldorf | Louis Armstrong et al
American Stage
A one-man, three-character play in which the same actor portrays Louis Armstrong, the greatest of all jazz trumpeters; Joe Glaser, his white manager; and Miles Davis, who admired Armstrong’s playing but disliked his onstage manner. It takes place in 1971 in a dressing room backstage at the Empire Room of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where Armstrong performed in public for the last time four months before his death. Reminiscing into a tape recorder about his life and work, Armstrong seeks to come to terms with his long standing relationship with Glaser, whom he once loved like a father but now believes to have betrayed him.
Feb 18 - 28, 2021
Extended to Mar 7
Feb 27 - Mar 3, 2021
Strange Courtesies | Director & Playwright
A virtual staged reading in collaboration with African American Shakespeare Company.
Citizens of South Africa are confronting a painful past of the apartheid era through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. STRANGE COURTESIES explores the potential restorative power of truth telling, the significance of sympathetic witnesses, and the tasks of both perpetrators and bystanders in the TRC process. Can dignity be restored to victims and their families while offering a basis for individual healing, and promoting the reconciliation of a divided society?