LSW & LSW Prison Project in association with Intermission at St. Saviour's 
& Gayle Hunnicutt, Chair of LSW's Executive Committee 
cordially invite you to attend the World Premiere of 

A New Musical

" LSW works at the highest level …. What is most impressive is the commitment of the entire company 

and its rare passion for language ”    

                                                               Michael Billington, The Guardian  

I am no priest of crooks or creeds,
For human wants and human needs
 And human tears and human cares
Affect me more than in-human prayers!" 

LIFTING THE MASK is set in a British theatre - backstage - immediately after 

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR's last UK recital in 1897. 

Mr. Dunbar (25) has been brought to England "by popular demand".
He is part of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. 
This celebrated writer, who will later die at 33, recalled: 
 'It was both the height and the end'.

By 1897 Booker T. Washington proclaimed Dunbar
'The Poet Laureate of the Negro Race'

But was it worth the price?

 

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

 

  

LIFTING THE MASK celebrates the lyrics of 
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR,
(son of two slaves and the first African-American to gain international eminence as a verse maker.)  The abolitionist Frederick Douglass insisted:  "He's made the strongest claim for the Negro in English literature that the Negro has yet made."  

Look to the heights that are worth your attaining
Keep your feet firm in the path of that goal.
Toward noble deeds every effort be straining.
Worthy ambition is food for our soul.

 

 

Incorporating collaborative contributions collected
from a vast variety of professional, penal and community workshops, LIFTING THE MASK's original book is directly inspired by Dunbar's own life/works as well as those of Tennessee Williams and Shakespeare.  Honouring themes ranging from love and loneliness to slavery and the outcome of its historic mindset, LIFTING THE MASK throngs to an original score by LSW’s Musical Director 
TIM WILLIAMS, celebrated composer of such respected LSW productions as Animated Macbeth, Alba, Black Atlas, Will I Survive?, Shakespeare 'n Sinatra and Blacking Iago. 

 

 

 Throughout LIFTING THE MASK's one hour and five minutes' traffic of the stage audiences will have occasion to hear twenty widely varied original songs.  Moreover, they will thrill to the combined sass of two noted actor-singers including LSW Core Member FABIAN SPENCER of Blacking Iago, Shakespeare 'n Sinatra and Black Atlas fame, most recently seen in Karma at the Tricycle Theatre as well as Been So Long at Theatre Royal Stratford East and CORNELIUS MACARTHY whose last appearance in the West End (One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest opposite Christian Slater and Alex Kingston) was but the tip of an enormous range of work spanning Levee in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (Liverpool Everyman) to Jim in A Taste of Honey (Theatre Royal York) with a healthy dose of digital media (A Taste of Frost, MIT, Millions) in-between as well as a ten year career in music that has seen him featured on BBC's Top of the Pops and record with such artists as Blur, Lucie Silvas, Westlife and Madonna.

 

Each performance will be followed by a talk-back featuring new work
(music and verse) featuring such artists as LSW Core Member Darren Raymond,
and noted poet Dean Atta  

 

 

 

BOOK NOW TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT

THERE ARE ONLY TWO LONDON PERFORMANCES
AND A LIMITED CAPACITY OF 85 SEATS FOR EACH

WEDNESDAY 4TH OCTOBER, 7.30 PM
THURSDAY, 5TH OCTOBER, 7.30  PM

 

Intermission Theatre
St. Saviour’s Church
Walton Place, Knightsbridge, SW3 1SA

Closest Tube:  Knightsbridge (Piccadilly Line)
Directions:  http://www.intermission.org.uk/location.htm

£10 / £8 CONCESSIONS

 

Reservations Essential: 
Call 0207 793 9755 
E-mail: ltm@europe.com

 

E-Mail reservations receive an immediate receipt
No tickets are issued in advance.  Payment is on the door.

We thank you for your support for the dream that is LSW