March 23 - April 6, 2019
Buriel Clay Theater, 762 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
The
Urban Retreat
by A. Zell Williams
presented by
Lorraine Hansberry Theatre
The dead don’t stay so in A. Zell William’s The Urban Retreat. If you threw Hamilton, Empire, and Hamlet into a crockpot, you might catch a whiff of what this contemporary tragicomedy is cooking. A mid-twenties hip-hop mogul in his prime (Trench Deep) reaches out to his slumping but brilliant high school English teacher (Chaucer Mosley) to ghostwrite his memoir. Between them, their haunted pasts, their beefs, and their language barriers reveal Black masculinity at its tautest. Who can really rep South Side Chicago -- or any hood? Who has a better grip on what it means to be Black: the do-gooders or the go-getters?
A KMEL Interview
Larry Dorsey interviews Lorraine Hansberry Theatre SF's Acting Artistic Director Darryl V. Jones
- The Urban Retreat.
"Fiercely funny, gripping and raw..."
"A. Zell Williams Reclaims the Black Man’s Humanity".
A review in Theatrius
by Tyler Jeffreys & Robert M. Gardner
Surrounding them, a cast of agents, producers, and groupies push their own needs, desires, and premonitions through Trench Deep’s platinum fingers. The Urban Retreat asks - When all’s said and done, can the spirit of hip-hop - or Blackness - truly ever be chopped, shipped, and sold?
We are a not-for-profit theatre. DONATIONS and support are always appreciated.