keilani fleming

Review: Bob Kendrick

1521560770_h_negro_baseball_league_show header By Keilani Fleming, Guest Blogger

It was a blustery evening as Bob Kendrick, President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum located in Kansas City, Missouri, made his way up to the podium to speak on his passion; the true history of baseball in the context of the Negro Leagues.

BobK1(Mug)1 Kendrick visited Lone Tree Arts Center, in part, as a complement to the current running theater production, August Wilson’s Fences. Several of the baseball players about which Kendrick speaks are referenced in the play, set in the 1950s, by the main character, Troy Maxson, played to perfection by Esau Pritchett.

I had a moment of panic when Kendrick, early in his multimedia presentation, listed off baseball stats for some of the great known names in the game like Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron. Whereas I’ve only watched baseball since I witnessed the ballerina-like grace of Troy Tulowitzki during his rookie year with the Colorado Rockies, my 14 year old daughter accompanied me for the evening and was indifferent, at best, to baseball. In that moment, I thought of my father-in-law, probably sitting at home watching the Rockies game, and how he would have been a more enthusiastic choice.

I chose my daughter because she loves historical content and a good story. As it worked out, I wasn’t wrong in my choice of guest.

Initially, I started taking notes on the various players on the Negro Leagues, names I’ve never heard of before with my limited baseball knowledge. Eventually, I put down my pen and just listened to the engaging speaker in front of me with his wealth of anecdotal knowledge of the likes of “Rube” Foster, “Satchel” Paige, Josh Gibson, “Cool Papa” Bell, Martin Dihigo, and “Buck” O’Neil.

Previously, when I thought of athletes of the past, I didn’t believe they would be able to cut it in the modern day. Athletes are faster, stronger, hits are further, pitches are faster, and training has become an exact science so athletes have precision honed skills. But story after story from Kendrick showed me just how wrong I was. “Cool Papa” Bell running all the bases in 12 seconds. Gibson clearing the bleachers at Yankee Stadium with a homerun. Satchel’s 105 mph pitches.

As Kendrick “(took) control of the pen of history and (told) the story as it should have been told,” I was proud my daughter’s now expanded knowledge of baseball had a foundation in these stories; the stories of the Negro Leagues as they made their way in a segregated sport to produce some of the best athletes known to date.

Most surprising to me were Kendrick’s assertions about the man who broke through the color barrier of baseball in 1947: Jackie Robinson. Kendrick and others believe Robinson’s ability to not only be an exceptional athlete but also his ability to not get ruffled by the backlash of discrimination he experienced, helped spur a bigger conversation about civil rights. Kendrick described Robinson as “not the best man, but the right man” for the job.

When the question and answer portion of the event commenced, my eyes traveled across the room and I noticed something rather remarkable. The audience spanned from kids to seniors, across races and genders. I had spent an hour listening to Kendrick tell the story of how the Negro Leagues were born out of segregation to bring integration and I was witnessing its true mass appeal, over 70 years after Robinson joined Major League Baseball, at Lone Tree Arts Center.

For more information on the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum located in the historic district of 18th and Vine in Kansas City, Missouri, please visit http://www.nlbm.com.

For tickets to Lone Tree Arts Center production of August Wilson’s Fence showing until April 21, 2018, please visit http://www.lonetreeartscenter.org/fences.

Review: Love Letters

Photo by Danny Lam

By Keilani Fleming, Guest Blogger

Lone Tree Arts Center presents Love Letters, an intimate two person play in an equally intimate setting. A.R. Gurney’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated play, normally staged with nothing more than two actors and a pile of letters seated next to each other, has been expanded to a fully staged set, including props and space for the characters to dance, sometimes literally, around each other.

Love Letters follows the relationship highs, lows, and in-betweens of Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, from precocious 2^nd grade ramblings of children to the heart-breaking, one sided letter to a love lost. Whereas this play clocks in around an hour and a half, it spans an entire 50 year lifetime.

Mark Rubald plays the proper and upstanding Andy Ladd easily and with a likable charm, even when he’s sometimes doing unlikable things. It’s hard to capture the frantic and sometimes confused energy of a child when you are, in fact, a full grown adult, but Rubald is able to convince the audience he is that ball of energy. Rubald’s transitions are smooth throughout Andy’s life, as each life stage clicks, almost audibly, into place with his energy visibly calming as age and maturity set in.

Candy Brown’s performance of Melissa Gardner is a bit more complicated. The character never really grows up even as time passes around her. Many of her letters, mannerisms, and actions could as easily be plucked from a pre-teen as they could be attributed to the adult Brown is sometimes portraying. That lack of growth is built into Brown’s character through Gurney’s writing, as the trauma of her upbringing stagnates maturity but because of Melissa’s inherited wealth, she isn’t burdened with the necessity of growing up at the same pace as the average person.

Rubald’s performance seems more rehearsed, with him looking less at the letters and more towards the audience whereas Brown’s performance references the “love letters” far more often, feeling more like the original adaption of Gurney’s play. Though Brown’s delivery is a bit less polished than Rubald, it is in her moments of silence when she really shines. The subtlety in her facial expressions as she receives the letters is where your attention should be, which makes this staging particularly difficult. The characters are often on opposite sides of the stage so the audience can’t watch both Andy as he reads his letter and Melissa as she reacts to it.

Seated a few rows back and as close to the center as possible will give the best viewing of the performance as the staging has the actors almost exclusively facing forward even though a third of the seats in the auditorium are perpendicular to the set. Due to the size of the auditorium, however, there is no “bad” seat, and even if there was, the writing of A.R. Gurney is truly the star of the show.

Love Letters, directed by Bruce K. Sevy and starring Candy Brown and Mark Rubald, plays the Lone Tree Arts Center from Thursday, November 9, 2017 through Sunday, November 19, 2017.

Preview: Love Letters

LT-Love Letters-Approved

By Keilani Fleming, Guest Blogger

“This is just me, me the way I write, the way my writing is, the way I want to be to you, giving myself to you across a distance, not keeping or retaining any part of it for myself, giving this piece of myself to you totally, and you can tear me up and throw me out, or keep me, and read me today, tomorrow, any time you want until you die.”
― Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, Love Letters by A.R. Gurney

In the age of texts and Twitter, Love Letters brings back the dying art of letter writing at Lone Tree Arts Center this November. A.R. Gurney’s play, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, premiered in 1988 with a surprise debut performance at the New York Public Library and since has traveled the world, from Broadway and Carnegie Hall, and even to television.

Gurney originally wrote and initially performed Love Letters with only two actors of similar age, seated side by side for the entirety of the play, who read a series of letters at the audience but for each other. LTAC’s production of the show however, will include a set, costumes, and props, making it a fully staged production.

Live a lifetime in the course of two hours while following the journey of Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, both born to wealth and position in the 1930’s, over the span of their fifty year relationship. Although Andrew and Melissa are physically apart, they grow to be emotionally one, as they intimately interact with little more than the written word. Childhood rapport develops into a deep friendship, love, and eventually heartbreak as missed opportunities, regret, and longing intersperse life.

Love Letters, directed by Bruce K Sevy and starring Candy Brown and Mark Rubald, will play at the Lone Tree Arts Center beginning Thursday, November 9, 2017 through Sunday, November 19, 2017.

Tickets and more information are available here: http://www.lonetreeartscenter.org/loveletters