Actor Wendell Pierce (The Wire, Treme), is an advocate for art’s ability to revitalize struggling communities, a belief he put to the test in 2007 when he joined forces with New York’s Creative Time to stage a production of Waiting for Godot in areas of New Orleans that had been hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. Pierce recounted that story and his life in the arts in his memoir The Wind in the Reeds. In 2015 acclaimed director and producer Gregory Mosher staged a similarly unorthodox production of Antigone in overlooked communities in Kenya and South Africa, producing free performances in places like a Kibera girl’s school or a Johannesburg prison. Pierce, Mosher, and the star of Mosher’s Antigone, Phumzile Sitole, spoke at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Theater in Extremis: Waiting for Godot in New Orleans and Antigone in the World
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