Frederick Douglass Now featuring Roger Guenveur Smith and Marc Anthony Thompson

Show Description

FREDERICK DOUGLASS NOW
Created and performed by Roger Guenveur Smith
Live sound design by Marc Anthony Thompson

 
"Roger Guenveur Smith gets it all and gets it brilliantly." - Margo Jefferson, New York Times 

 
Nelson Mandela emerged from 27 years of incarceration to assume the presidency of South Africa the day that Roger Guenveur Smith concluded the premiere run of Frederick Douglass Now at La MaMa in 1990. Having now played Douglass - and a host of other characters - to international acclaim, Smith returns downtown at an equally auspicious political moment. Douglass (1818-1895), the self-liberated abolitionist and pioneering feminist, speaks to a 21st Century America whose own uncivil wars continue to rage.

Frederick Douglass Now is scored live by Marc Anthony Thompson, whose Chocolate Genius Ensemble has been a Joe's Pub favorite. Smith and Thompson's last collaboration at the Public Theater, A Huey P. Newton Story, was distinguished with the Obie Award, and adapted by Smith into a Peabody Award-winning telefilm, scored by Thompson and directed by Spike Lee.