Lecture Bureau Entertainment Agency
Tanya Bickley EnterprisesRobinson Frank Adu
ROBINSON FRANK ADU in
“THE GRIOT”
On a very sparse stage, Adu, a statuesque six-foot tall man
stands center stage, dressed in a flowing black and gold robe
which cover his black silk shirt and trousers. On his head, he
wears an African Kufae, neatly placed atop his salt and pepper
hair. A griot is traditionally a West African storyteller,
the keeper of the people’s history, a personification of the oral
tradition. As a griot, Adu’s task is to tell that history to the
current generation.
And he does so, poetically, graphically, majestically, comically
in a play whose parts are entitled “Home,” “Middle Passage,” “The
Wilderness,” “Urban Chaos,” and “Homecoming,” called by Adu
African-America’s return to its original culture.
From the opening, “Hymn to the Sun” written anonymously
during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaton and considered in some
circles to be the first recorded example of African poetry to the
final “Lumumba’s Last Message,” written by Patrice Emery Lumumba,
Adu through the poetry of blacks reveals the history of blacks.
The poets and writers are D.T. Niane, Valente Malangatana,
Matei Markwei, Emmanuel Boundzekie-Dongala, Abdillaahi Muuse,
translations from the Yorube by C. M. Bowra, Faarah Nuur, Frances
Ernest Kobina Parkes, James D. Rubadiri, Robert Hayden, Oscar
Brown, Jr., Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Richard Wright, Sterling Brown,
Marcus Garvey, Robinson Frank Adu, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston
Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Nikki Giovanni, Abioseh Nicol,
Frank Aig-Imoukhuede, and B. W. Vilakazi.
As an actor Robinson Frank Adu has been critically acclaimed
by
his peers, by critics and other theatre professionals. Through
his talent and utter commitment to “bring to the fore” – with
loving and honest illumination – the complex lives of African American
peoples, Adu has helped shape modern black theatre
alongside the most gifted playwrights, directors and actors who
have made ground breaking contributions to black “theatre language.”
Robinson Frank Adu’s theatre credits include Every
Night
When
the
Sun
Goes
Down,
No
Place
To
Be
Somebody,
My
Sister,
My
Sister,
Slaveship,
Joe
Turner’s
Come
and Gone, Two Trains
Running, Two Black Men–No Singing, No Dancing. His film and
television credits include Malcolm X, Law and Order, and New York Undercover. With The Griot, Robinson Frank Adu seeks, with humility, to
honor his ancestors, to share eloquent black words, thoughts and
lyricism, and to help “light the path” for all sons and daughters, of the future.
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