Brooklyn playwright Amy Evans will hold a work-in-progress reading of The Champion, a new play inspired by the life of legendary music artist Nina Simone.
Directed by Reginald Douglas and featuring Joy Jones (pictured) in the role of Nina Simone, The Champion offers a rare look into the heart and mind of an artist known as much for her indictment of American racism as her artistic brilliance.
Photo Wikimedia
Based on extensive research including personal interviews with Simone's former bandmates, friends and family members, the play is an intimate portrayal of a cultural icon, the outstanding musicians who worked with her, and the turbulent era during which they rose to fame.
Amy Evans attended Goldsmiths College in London in 2001 where she received an MA in Theater Arts with a concentration in Writing for Performance. In 2005, Evans moved from London to New York to join the HB Playwrights Foundation Writers' Group. Soon after, her play The Next Question was produced at HB Studios in their 2005 festival of new short plays.
She has had residencies at BRIClab in Brooklyn, Hedgebrook Women Writers' Retreat, and the Institute of Cultural Inquiry Kulturlabor in Berlin. Her play Many Men's Wife was produced as part of a festival of short plays at the Tricycle Theatre addressing the genocide in Darfur and was later published in the volume How Long is Never? (Josef Weinberger Publications, 2007).
Evans's reading of Champion takes place Friday, March 6, 7:30pm, at BRIC House Artist Studio, 647 Fulton Street. Tickets are $10 in advance and $14 at the door.
Click here to see playwright Amy Evans's interview on BK Live from February 25, 2015.
