DOOR of NO RETURN at Rites and Reasons
Award-winning Playwright, Poet, Acclaimed Actor, Nehassaiu de Gannes Invents Epic Solo Show
Rites and Reason Theatre Presents: DOOR of NO RETURN
Praise songs, monologues, divinations @ Rites and Reason Theatre Churchill House/Brown University
155 Angell Street, Providence February 2-5 and February 9-12 @ 7pm Sundays, 3pm
(Special Folkthought discussion after Sunday performances)
$8 suggested donation for reservations call 401.863.3558
Nehassaiu de Gannes, award-winning poet, playwright, former Trinity Repertory Theatre resident actor, and Brown University Graduate presents her first solo workGÇöan original one-woman show in which the lives of actual Rhode Islanders, living and dead, enslaved and free, are transformed into original monologues, and performed with live musical accompaniment. Door of No Return is a work that embodies historical events from a brilliant multiplicity of perspectives. Door of No Return makes it’s first full run of performances at Rites and Reason Theatre, February 2-5 and February 9-12 at 7pm, Sundays at 3pm with special a Folkthought discussion featuring local scholars, after each Sunday matinee performance. Suggestion donation is $8 dollars.
Door of No Return is more than a tale of slavery, more than a play that pays homage to the struggle of African-Americans in the New World, just in time for Black History Month. Door of No Return searches for the connectedness and the power in remembering who we are, where we come from, and who we have become. “So much of the piece is about desegregating American histories—desegregating the notion that this legacy belongs only to Americans of African descent,” de Gannes said. Door of No Return not only explores the history of Africans enslaved in New England, the tale jumps the time-line, to tell a story of Cape Verdeans arriving in search of asylum, to a young Columbian man caught between his own authenticity and his daily experience as a student at a New England Prep School, stories of the Narragansett and Wampanoag people, and a young Arab-American who can no longer pass for white. “My desire to engage a collection of ethnically diverse characters grows directly out of my cultural concerns,” de Gannes said. de Gannes’ cultural concerns and interests led her to journey to Africa, last year, where her story. . . our story, begins:
“For some time I had been considering a photograph taken at Cape Coast on the West Coast of Africa with my friend Donna Burton, walking back through the door of no return,” de Gannes said. The door of no return, a phrase used to describe the infamous portals by which most ancestors of people of African decent entered the Americas in chains, marks an epic severing of race of people, and a riff in the fabric of collective memory– a tear that de Gannes aims to repair through her work in this piece. “The moment of capturing Donna’s Burton’s reversal of the door’s prophecy set into motion in me a celebration,” de Gannes said. For the theatre world, this celebration has led to a vibrant new work of theatre set in Rhode Island. Through poetic, and honest storytelling, song, and streaming images, de Gannes presents a collection of modern, and multiethnic descendents of native persons, immigrants and slaves all woven together into an epic tale that ultimately asks us all the same question, “have you made it home yet?”
Door of No Return
Written and performed by Nehassaiu de Gannes
Directed by Kelli Wicke Davis
Music by Cathy Clasper-Torch & Nisha Purushotham
Rites and Reason Theatre
155 Angell Street (Churchill House, Brown University)
February 2-5 & 9-12Thursdays-Saturdays @7 pm Sundays @ 3pm
(SPECIAL Post-show “Folkthought” discussion after Sunday performances)
Suggested Donation: $8 For more information/reservations contact: Rites and
Reason Theatre 401.863.3553
Door of No Return has been developed with funding from Rhode Island Council of the Humanities, Rhode Island Foundation, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA), the City of Providence, NEA, Rites and Reason Theatre, Brown University & individual donations.
