I’ll be playing the role of Kalman Leny in the Chorus of Workers in River Rouge by Andy Boyd, in collaboration with Naked Theatre Company for the 18th Annual Page to Stage New Play Festival at the Kennedy Center. The free, public, staged reading of this play with music will be directed by Kevin Place, and will occur on Monday, September 2, at 2:30pm in the Terrace Theater. Learn more about the Page to Stage Festival here. Learn more about Naked Theatre Company here.
One was a communist. The other was a capitalist. One was an artist. The other, an engineer. And yet, for the year between spring 1932 and spring 1933, Diego Rivera and Henry Ford were friends. Rivera came to Detroit on a commission from Ford’s son Edsel to paint a mural on the theme of Detroit industry. Rivera and his wife, the painter Frida Kahlo, arrived in a city on the brink of revolution or collapse: bank failures, violent labor clashes, rallies by Communists and Bible-quoting proto-fascists that drew audiences in the thousands. River Rouge tells the story of the year that followed in a dizzying collage-inspired style of vaudeville, docudrama, folk music, protest theatre, and magical realism.
