Events Calendar

Letters from Zora: In Her Own Words

Admission is free. Reservations required. RSVP at the links below beginning Thursday, February 9, at 9 a.m.

USC Students, Staff and Faculty: To RSVP, click here http://www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/visionsandvoices/RSVP/reserve.php?RSVPEvtCode=200

General Public: To RSVP, click here http://www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/visionsandvoices/RSVP/reserveGeneral_Multi.php?RSVPEvtCode=200

Actress Vanessa Bell-Calloway will take on the role of Zora Neale Hurston in a provocative multimedia production written by Gabrielle Pina and directed by Anita Dashiell-Sparks. With live music composed by Ron McCurdy and archival images collected by Rebecca Houston, the performance will illuminate Hurston’s prose, her life, her distinctive array of friends and foes and her unique view of a jazz-age world.

Through the analysis and dramatization of approximately fifteen letters and selected excerpts from Zora Neale Hurston’s impressive body of work, Letters from Zora will explore Hurston’s controversial views on integration, segregation and social justice and will showcase a life that was filled with artistic and literary triumphs as well as abject poverty and self-doubt. Additionally, the letters and corresponding narrative will examine Hurston’s delicate financial and artistic dance with her patron Charlotte Osgood Mason and her relationships with other notable luminaries such as Richard Wright, Countee Culllen, Alain Locke and Langston Hughes. The piece will also reflect on Hurston’s fall from grace and her untimely death in 1960. Archival footage will showcase the events, places and icons referenced in many of Hurston’s letters, and McCurdy’s original score will serve as a live soundtrack, with music performed by students from the USC Thornton School.

Organized by Ron McCurdy (Jazz Studies).

For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu

Location: George Finley Bovard Administration Building (ADM) - Bovard Auditorium

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski