Writer/Director
Photo by Whitney Browne
…a Tulsa-born, New York-raised, Afro-surrealist artist…
“Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it.”
- D. Scot Miller, Afrosurreal Manifesto
Recent Works
ESTATE SALE, BARRINGTON STAGE COMPANYTHE BERKSHIRE EAGLE
BARRINGTON STAGE COMPANY
THEATER REVIEW
REVIEW: Barrington Stage gives 'Estate Sale' a thoughtful and emotionally resonant world premiere
By Jeffrey Borak
PITTSFIELD — A walk through a house begins a shared journey through death, life, time and memory in Keelay Gipson's thoughtful new play, “Estate Sale,” which is having its world premiere in an exquisitely acted, delicately crafted production at Barrington Stage Company’s St. Germain Stage through July 25.
The audience's immersion into Gipson’s world begins well before they are seated, the house lights go out and its first words are spoken by our host, known only as Executor (an enormously engaging and emotionally nimble Jayson Lee). Theatergoers make their way to their seats after first being directed into a walkthrough of You-Shin Chen’s set, which begins in what is normally a backstage hallway that leads to the stage.
The passageway and the main stage are lined and filled with the neatly arranged remainders of a life — two lives actually, a Black couple who died several years apart from one another — first the mother; more recently the father. Many of the items have been tagged; more will be tagged by the Executor as audience members are encouraged to browse through the items — “the stuff of life,” the Executor calls them.
“As you can clearly see … We have a lot of stuff,” the Executor says not long after he begins his narrative, “things we probably forgot we even had. The stuff of life. Stuff like furniture, knick-knacks, bits-and-bobs, what have you …
“Someone used it for a few years, but now … it’s just inanimate objects. For some poor soul to take care of.”
The “someones” who used these items for considerably more than just a few tears were the Executor's hard-working strong willed father, named Truth (played by Blake Morris), and his resourceful mother, Beauty (Gillian Glasco), each born in rural poverty in, respectively, Northern Louisiana and Texas; both of whom migrated north in pursuit of dreams that were, if not denied then at least deferred.
The objects may be inanimate, but the lives lived in, around and with these “bits-and-bobs” are very much animated; palpable presences; “ghosts,” as Youth (Christopher E. Portley) calls them. He is a long-absent friend from childhood who reappears in Executor's life as a kind of guide. Past is present; present is past; time and memory are malleable as the Executor, much like a stand-up comic, uses the mic on a microphone stand to spin his non-linear narrative. At times, he becomes part of that narrative as he evokes key moments in his life, especially involving his parents — separately and together. And with memory comes insight and with insight often comes resolution of unfinished business.
“Estate Sale” finds accomplishment not only in Gipson's writing but in this production's way with mood and temperament. There are no soap opera melodramatics here. Under Steph Paul’s finely tuned direction, the issues that bring Gipson’s characters together and the issues that separate them play out within a tremendously real human dimension. The humor in the play — and there is lots of it — is as meaningful as the play's more reflective moments. With Paul’s staging and the performances of a uniformly skilled cast, the shifts in “Estate Sale’s” moods and temperaments play out with a silky assurance.
In the end, in a play that is as much about the life force as it is about death and grieving, “Estate Sale” and its Executor look back not in anger but, rather, in hope.
dot dot dot, a new musical THEATERWORKSUSA
Based on the Creatrilogy trio of award-winning picture books by New York Times bestselling author Peter H. Reynolds(The Dot, Ish and Sky Color).
Adapted for the stage by Keelay Gipson and Sam Salmond, the musical, like the series, celebrates the power of originality, self-expression, and opening our eyes to look beyond the expected. When Marisol, a young artist and curator of the Muse de Marisol, decides that her gallery requires more than her own art, her search for emerging talent leads her to Vashti, whose dots inspire Ramon to become an artist in his own right.
The musical follows Marisol's journey to help her new friends, and her entire community, break free from self-criticism and learn to let their imaginations soar.
Original Production Directed and Choreographed by Jesca Prudencio
pumpernickel sands school of performing arts, pace university
a dark comedic meditation on the nature of making art.
especially now.
where listening and learning has overtaken critical discourse.
and buzzwords dominate the little discourse that transpires.
pumpernickel hopes to ask, rather than answer, questions like…who should be able to make certain art and what role does an audience and their subjectivity play in the experience of art.
demons. the bushwick starr/oye group, the connelly theater
Original Artwork by Felix Jackson, Jr.
“When Danily, a red-furred, purple-lipped beast, appears onstage, his giant eyelids fluttering and huge maw flapping, he is irresistibly adorable, like something from Jim Henson’s dreams.
And did I mention he’s a demon?”
MAYA PHILLIPS, THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Simultaneously relatable and fantastical, demons. is a beautiful demonstration of theater’s ability to tell family stories that escape the confines of the living room — even if it appears as though we’ve never left at all.”
ZACHARY STEWART, THEATERMANIA