Photo Flash: First Look at Yvette Freeman, et al. in HTC's MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM

In the play, a quartet of blues musicians gather in a run-down 1920s Chicago studio waiting for legendary blues singer Ma Rainey to arrive to record new sides of her old favorites. Young, hotheaded trumpeter Levee aspires to a better life for himself and sees the emerging form of the blues as his ticket to fame and fortune. When he clashes with veteran musicians Toledo and Cutler and Ma Rainey spars with her white music producers, generational and racial tensions explode in the drama.

The Huntington's full production of the play will run March 9 – April 8 at the BU Theatre / Avenue of the Arts. Tickets and more information are available at huntingtontheatre.org/maraineys.
With the upcoming production of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the Huntington completes its mounting of August Wilson's Century Cycle, comprised of one play about the African-American experience in each decade of the 20th century. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was Wilson's first play, written (along with Fences) before he established his relationship with the Huntington. Beginning in 1986 with Joe Turner's Come and Gone, the Huntington and Boston audiences enjoyed a special relationship with Wilson who came to consider the Huntington an artistic home. Here, he mounted early productions of seven of his Cycles plays before their New York productions.

Hibernian Hall is located at 184 Dudley Street, Roxbury.

Find more information on the event at www.huntingtontheatre.org/raineyreading.

Photo Credit: T. Charles Erickson

Yvette Freeman

Yvette Freeman and Corey Allen

Glenn Turner and Jason Bowen

Glenn Turner, Will LeBow, G. Valmont Thomas, Jason Bowen, and Charles Weldon

Joniece Abott-Pratt and Jason Bowen

Glenn Turner, Will LeBow, G. Valmont Thomas, Jason Bowen, and Charles Weldon

Joniece Abott-Pratt and Jason Bowen

Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Yvette Freeman, and Corey Allen