Our founder and CEO is also a writer and has many works under her pen name, C. Sajelle Peck. She is co-founder of the Baltimore Black Theater Alliance. Below are some of the synopses of her pieces. Contact us today to discuss how these and other productions can be brought to life for your organization! Visit us at www.baltimorebta.org!
They Live in You ©1998
This story revolves around three storytellers. It opens with the master storyteller, a griot, preparing for a performance when he’s interrupted by his nephew and friend entering the scene. The griot highlights the lives of African kings and queens inspiring the young men into their purpose of gifting.
For years, the griot has been telling African folktales and teaching audiences throughout the world about African kings and queens as a way to encourage African-American children and youth, particularly, to see the potential that lies within them. He believes strongly in using the past as a guide to present empowerment and a bridge to future possibilities.
As he rehearses, his apprentice nephew, Jamal, introduces his friend, a rapper, to his uncle’s wisdom and storytelling skill. The rapper, who is a storyteller in his own right, starts off being resistant to the message of the griot. He is a rapper of right-now urban legends and the epitome of youthful arrogance. He has little patience for ancient stories. For him, the past is just that – gone: the future seems fleeting, unattainable. He clings tenaciously to today and lives as if there is no tomorrow. His respect for adults is doled out warily. He does, however, respect someone with “skills”. He is not impressed with talking about dead kings and queens from Africa. “Me and my homies, my boyz and my dogs, got knowledge of us, so don’t need none of y’all’s,” he scoffs.
Jamal, the apprentice storyteller, is the bridge between the two generations. He appreciates the folktales, the history and rich possibilities that come from knowing his heritage. He also likes the hip hop and rap music style of his friend. He appreciates the wisdom of the elders and the enthusiasm of his young friend. He joins his uncle as they try to show the young rapper that the kings and queens of ancient Africa are very much alive in him today. The young rapper warms to the idea of personal greatness throughout the course of the piece.
The story is told through dialogue, rap, song, and dance.
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Them There Years…
A Celebration of the Civil Rights Struggle ©2010
A struggle, a labor of love, pursuant efforts made toward triumph. The Civil Rights Movement spans approximately 10 years in its origination and boasts sit-ins, sit-outs, stand-for’s and stand-ups.
This enveloping thoroughfare of time travels through the stories of a humble woman who, at the end of a long day, had enough so decided to take her stand by sitting. It treks inside the peaceful motives of a unified group of young students who pursued rightful service in exchange for their corporate patronage. It rides down the road of a Journey of Reconciliation where an interracial assemblage of seven African Americans and six Whites join their hearts to exercise their constitutional rights on a bus trip to and through the South seeking freedom, hoping to provoke inclusion of public facilities in preceding desegregation resolutions and the enforcement thereof. It treads the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, nicknamed “Bombingham” for unsolved bombings in Black neighborhoods over a six-year period and the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, being home to vicious mob attacks and hundreds of arrests, including that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to solitary confinement inspiring him to wrote the infamous Letter from Birmingham Jail. It takes a trip to our nation’s capital where Mahalia Jackson encouraged the crowd forward in their quest resounding the old hymn, “How I Got Over” as Dr. King personified freedom in his “I Have a Dream” speech. It charts a summer when unity in the community begat literacy, medical and legal assistance in efforts to promote political awareness of the need to cast the Freedom Vote taking the registration of Mississippi’s voting aged Blacks from 6.7% in 1964 to 66.5% in 1969 despite expulsions and lynchings designed to divide and conquer. It marches us from Selma to Montgomery where a peaceful and harmonious demonstration of Black and White clergy and followers was halted at a bridge crossing as violence erupted on protesters projecting images of police clubs on the upswing and bodies glued to city buildings by water hoses all the while inciting a national call for equality and compassion.
We take time to remember and celebrate the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Youth Sit-ins, The Freedom Rides, Birmingham, The March on Washington, Freedom Summer and Scenes from Selma for they represent the substance, tenacity and power of the human will. It has been said that you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been. The courage that this musical tale chronicles takes us to that place of identity in the health of the soul. It strengthens our spirit advancing our purpose to live a virtuous life of faith, hope and love knowing that the greatest of these is love. This is the Civil Rights Movement and we are grateful for “Them There Years”.
The story is told through dialogue, music, song, and dance.
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Fabric of “She”
~A Journey of Female Entertainers
of the Harlem Renaissance~
©2011 JoAnne Jamison & Carlyncia Peck
It’s a retreat into a day when Black entertainment is exciting and exuberant experiencing the days of the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom when tap dance and ragtime are an avid part of our culture contributing many outstanding artists, like Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, The Nicholas Brothers and Paul Robeson. In the wings are their female counterparts taking the stage to join the ranks of ‘A’ listers and forging their own paths, paths where they would wrestle against playing segregated audiences, debate whether to live quiet home lives or take on the uncertainty of stardom and forfeit normalcy for a opportunity to succeed. They lived pursuing their destiny to become the best “she” they knew how.
This piece chronicles the lives of just a few of the illustrious female entertainers born out of the Harlem Renaissance who happen to be African American. Their gifts and talents span from their charm and beauty to acting, singing, dancing and speaking. They have, however, best become known for their standing – standing in the face of adversity, prejudice and racism without flinching, pressing on to their fate of celebrity amidst the trials and tribulations they faced both personally and professionally. Though their stories made them sisters of another sort by repeating many of the same struggles, challenges and difficulties, they all kept following that voice inside encouraging them to fall forward. Despite the era they lived in being marked with prejudice, racism and sexism, their tremendous accomplishments paved the way for entertainers of all ethnic backgrounds today. They are the reason we have a responsibility to pay it forward.
Fabric of “She” gives voice to the legendary icons Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Dorothy Dandridge, Moms Mabley and Lena Horne in a way that brings them close where we can experience their personhood. It helps us get beyond the superficiality of solely acknowledging their achievements and moves us to a realization of their sacrifice. These women were real people…someone’s daughter, mother, sister, wife, friend, confidant. It paints a picture of what inspiration truly looks like in action and deed. Whether quiet and prayerful, poised and prolific, spunky and outspoken, defiant and steadfast or regal and enduring – these women epitomize and give life through their examples of bona fide progress and advancement. Their beauty is timeless and their role in history endless. We celebrate their journeys as we reflect on their contributions to who we are as a society today.
For more information, contact the Baltimore Black Theater Alliance at info@baltimorebta.org or call us at 443-829-3655.