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Marcus Gradley’s …And Jesus moonwalks the Mississippi is a story of love and longing set at the bitter end of the Civil War in the American South. As escaped slave Demeter desperately looks for her lost Daughter Po’em, Jean Verse, a Confererate Army soldier who has had a change of heart, braves the river and gunfire to find his true love, leaving his family waiting fruitlessly on their decomposing plantation. The journeys don’t quite lead where they expect, however, forcing all of the characters to reconsider notions of family, belonging and reconciliation. Haunted by the myth of Demeter, Gardley’s play weaves together striking imagery, lyrical poetry and sly southern wit, leaving its audience breathless as Jesus really does moonwalk the Mississippi.
TALK BACK!
A lively post-show discussion featuring guest panalists, Talk Backs are free and open to the public.
Thursday, April 10th, 2008: Professor James Campbell, Associate Professor of American Civilization, Africana Studies, and History at Brown University, whose own research focuses on African American history and on the wider history of the Black Atlantic. Professor Campbell also served as chair to the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice from 2003-2006.
Friday, April 18th, 2008: Professor Daphne Brooks, Associate Professor of English and African-American Studies at Princeton University, where she teaches courses on African-American literature and culture, performance studies, critical gender studies, and popular music culture.
About the Author
Marcus Gardley is a poet-playwright who teaches Playwriting at Columbia University. His most recent play Love is a Dream House in Lorin was nominated for the National Critics Steinberg New Play Award. He has had six plays produced, two of which are: dance of the holy ghost at Yale Repertory Theatre and (L)imitations of Life, at the Empty Space. He was the recipient of the Gerbode Emerging Playwright Award, a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Grant, the Eugene O’ Neil Memorial Scholarship and the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale Drama School and is a member of New Dramatists and the Lark Play Development Center.
 "I would like to date, marry and eventually "raise" my plays in a theater that is multi-cultural, genuinely concerned with the diverse members of its community and passionate about producing new plays that humble the status quo. I want to stretch my voice across its playing field, sleep in the echoes of actors who preach the poetic word and learn from the audience’s mood swings. I want to grow old with a theater. Fail, and succeed in its arms and still be rocked to sleep. I dream of the company that is dedicated to a handful of writers; all who sing with huge voices longing to be heard." MG
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He sang of life, serenely sweet.
With, now and then, a deeper note.
From some high peak, nigh yet remote
He voided the world's absorbing beat.
He sang of love when earth was young
And Love, itself, was in his lays
But ah, the world, it turned to praise
A jingle in a broken tongue
--The Poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar
"A play is a poem standing up."
--Federico Garcia Lorca
"I've know rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked up the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky, rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
--"The negro Speaks of Rivers," Langston Hughes
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