UPDATE: Opening Night arrival photos & interviews with Cicely Tyson & James Earl Jones below!

Weller Martin (Jones) and Fonsia Dorsey (Tyson) meet on the porch of their nursing home and strike up a friendship, with Weller teaching Fonsia how to play gin rummy. As they play, they share stories about the lives they led in the outside world. But when Fonsia wins every hand, Weller becomes increasingly frustrated, until their gin games and conversations become a battleground, with each player exposing the other’s failures, disappointments and insecurities.

This highly anticipated collaboration marks the first time the pair has worked together on Broadway since starring in A Hand Is On The Gate in 1966. They also starred in the long-running Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks, opposite each other in the film “The River Niger,” and in the TV movie “Heat Wave.”

Photos by Joan Marcus

Jones is a two-time Tony Award-winner for his role in Fences and Great White Hope, three-time Emmy Award winner, Grammy Award-winner and a recipient of an Honorary Academy Award.  Tyson is a three-time Emmy Award-winner, Academy Award-nominee and won her first Tony Award in 2014 for her role in The Trip to Bountiful.

Winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, The Gin Game returns to the Golden Theatre where the original production opened in 1977, starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. This is the third time the play has been performed on Broadway. The two previous Broadway productions were nominated for a number of Tony Awards, including Best Play, Best Revival of a Play, and Best Actress in a Play.  The Gin Game has also been filmed twice for television: in 1981 with original stars Cronyn and Tandy, and in 2003 with Dick van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.

UPDATE: There was definitely no shortage of star power last night at the opening of The Gin Game on Broadway. Check out the photos below of Alfre Woodard, Lynn Whitfiled, Crystal Dickenson, Jason Dirden, John David Washington & more! Also, watch the stars of The Gin Game, Cicely Tyson & James Earl Jones, talk with Broadway Black about their production, developing their characters, & a few life lessons.

The Gin Game has been won! @gingamebroadway#OpeningNight@jamesearljones@IAmCicelyTyson#WeAreBroadwayBlackpic.twitter.com/bkAdujL8uX

— Broadway Black (@BroadwayBlack) October 15, 2015

Photos By Darnell Lamont Walker

Directed by Leonard Foglia, the revival will run through January 10, 2016.  For more information and to purchase tickets, click HERE.

The post Opening Night: Cicely Tyson & James Earl Jones In The Gin Game appeared first on Broadway Black.

Part performance piece – as meditation on the artistic process – and part actual work session, Parks demonstrates why writer James Baldwin (her creative writing teacher) stated “she may become one of the most valuable artists of our time.” It’s probably safe to say that she has become one of the most important voices of our time.

Parks became the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer for her 2001 Topdog/Underdog; her first Pulitzer nod came in 2000 for In The Blood. Her latest work Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) – which ran at The Public (October-December 2014) and at Harvard University’s The American Repertory Theater (January-March) – received the 2015 Kennedy Prize for Drama and was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Parks talked with Arise 360 about her critically-acclaimed trilogy play which follows Hero, a slave, from West Texas to the Confederate battlefield.

A special “Watch Me Work” installment, during which she performed songs she wrote and composed for Father Comes Home, took place in January at The A.C.T. It was livestreamed by the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at HowlRound.TV.

The free “Watch Me Work” performances at The Public Theater – also to be livestreamed by HowlRound – begin at 5pm and last 75 minutes. Questions can be sent via Twitter at #watchmeworkslp or via email to watchmeworkslp(at)gmail.com. Remaining dates are:

• September 28
• October 5, 12, 26
• November 2, 16, 30
• December 7, 14

You can watch the first performance in its entirety below:

The post Suzan-Lori Parks’ Watch Me Work Series Returns appeared first on Broadway Black.