The Ways of White Folks

Direction......Ontaria Kim Wilson & Dane Eissler

Production Design......Dirk Durossette

Costume Design......Rita Squitiere

Puppet Design.......Dane Eissler

Stage Management......Jamel Baker

Featuring: Taylor Harlow, Evan Sleppy, Ontaria Kim Wilson, Dawn McCall, Cianna Castro, Paul McElwee, Annette Kaplafka, Ethan Hammett, Nick Erholm, Danielle "Danni" Shaw, Lynn E. Shirley, Kyson Martin, Eric Carter, Joseph Xavier-Mack, Tyrone Nathaniel, Tim Morris, Cheyenne Parks, Faye Wooten, Ayo Moore, Christina Foye, and Rachel Grodek

Produced by EgoPo Classic Theater, 2023

Co-Presented with Theatre in the X

This world premiere theatrical staging of Langston Hughes’ 1934 American classic presents powerful portraits of race relations in America. Told with unparalleled candor, each short story offers a private view into the absurd and tragic interactions between White and Black people across systemic divides. In EgoPo’s immersive promenade staging, you are invited to attend a New Age retreat at the historic Glen Foerd Estate on the Delaware River. There you will be welcomed into each character’s room on a tour of the extravagant mansion to witness their intimate and private lives.

"Each of the vignettes staged around the mansion is potent and captivating in its own way.

Directing team Ontaria Kim Wilson and EgoPo Artistic Producer Dane Eissler create

a sense of intimacy so intense that watching the scenes play out can feel uncomfortably voyeuristic.

But listening to stories that make us uncomfortable is exactly the point here. Wilson and Eissler

want us to reckon with the realities we would rather ignore, to sit with our discomfort and consider

the state of race relations in the United States in the 1930s and today. Not just in a theoretical way,

but through deeply personal and authentically individual stories.

It is powerful medicine and phenomenal theater." - Talkin' Broadway

Photos: Joe Grasso

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