SPECIAL NOTICE:
Warwick Theater suffered extensive fire damage on February 7, 2024.
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
IS NOT CANCELED.
We are finding a new space to perform.
Visit metkc.org for updates! To help us during this time, please consider making a tax-deductible gift at
warwickkc.org/fire-recovery-fund.
August Wilson’s rarely seen masterwork Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, the second in Wilson’s one-of-a-kind 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle about the African American experience, is coming soon!
August Wilson stands alone in the world as the only playwright to complete a 10-play cycle spanning 100 years of history. Written at different times in Wilson’s life, the cycle moves through the 20th century, each play set in a different decade. All set in the same neighborhood, some characters and story lines thread through multiple plays. The scope of this work is on epic scale, much like Lord of the Rings.
Director Karen Paisley said of this production, “Set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, every time you see an August Wilson play you’re seeing a one of a kind event capturing the voices of African American people generations ago with compelling artistry, poetry and power. All of the plays take place in the community with a group of people undergoing crisis of a sort and working through it together. Each character is on their own journey. Much the way all of us are at any given time, which is part of why Wilson’s plays are so universal in their experience. His language and characters are entrancing. We have such gifted local actors here to play these incredible roles. Every August Wilson play we do is a theatrical feast.”
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is MET’s sixth in the 10-play cycle and features outstanding local performers, many of whom have been a part of other productions in the Cycle Project. Actors Sherry Roulette Moseley and George Forbes anchor the play set in a 1911 Pittsburgh boarding house during the midst of the Great Migration. The play centers on the search for lost family, and lost identity personified in the character of Harold Loomis (played by Keenan Ramos), who lost his wife while unfairly jailed on a chain gang for seven years. With his life derailed by Jim Crow injustice, Loomis and his daughter search for his lost wife, Martha. Full of yearning and spirituality, the play includes other characters searching for their own love and identity.
Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre’s production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is an ephemeral art form. Tickets start as low as $19 and can be purchased at metkc.org or by calling the box office at 816-569-3226. Don’t miss it, it’s actually true! Plus these actors are so good you won’t want to miss this rarely seen theatrical masterwork.
