Clay’s Place: Inside My Blue Mind steps outside of the narrative that some of our most beloved and classic Black plays have made repetitive. Though set in 1956, Tennessee, it's not another Jim Crow show. It intermingles the richness of the experiences of our past with our continued fight to matter. It's about family, friends, and enemies. It's colored and blues. It's sadness, happiness and the line that fuses them together. It's hope reimagined, as you learn to play the hand you were dealt, whilst moving through spaces with vices and longing for freedom. It’s trauma and past hurts. It's the How I Got Over through music and movement. It’s dreams deferred but that won't ever die. It's living the blues on a cloud, out loud. It's Beale and Mississippi, blue minds and lost smiles. It is the timeless and self-evident truths of the Black existence in America.

Read the excerpt: Act 1, Scenes 1-8

Premiered, October 23, 2021 at The Chesapeake Art Center,  Studio 194
Press Release:  https://www.pr.com/press-release/845227
Publicity:  https://dctheaterarts.org/2021/10/13/marylands-angelwing-project-takes-audiences-to-beale-street/
2021 ScreenCraft Stage Play Writing Competition:  https://screencraft.org/blog/2021-screencraft-stage-play-contest-quarterfinalists/
Review: https://mdtheatreguide.com/2021/10/theatre-review-clays-place-inside-my-blue-mind-by-theangelwing-project/

Tears of the Soul. 1968. The most turbulent year in America. Racial unrest and violent protests in the streets. Social division and a nation on the verge of collapse. Internal family and external community tensions fueled by differing political perspectives. Tears of the Soul is set for two months and four days during the sanitation workers strike in Memphis, TN. There is a war raging in Vietnam. Black soldiers dying on the battlefield are still being buried in segregated cemeteries back home. The Black Power movement questions whether nonviolent protest makes any sense. The leader of the Civil Rights Movement, a messianic preacher of nonviolence, dies a violent death on the balcony of a Memphis hotel. Fred Barnes, a striking Memphis sanitation worker and protester tries to claim his manhood in a society that has long denied it. He’s head of a strong Black family that is being challenged from internal generational family tensions and external social injustice and chaos. Vivian Barnes, Fred’s wife, tries to hold onto sense and sensibility in the family while three young adult children struggle for clarity about their own identities. Meet the Barnes family, a family that is seemingly coming apart at the seams.

Read excerpt, Act 1, Scenes 1-8

Copyright 2017, Copyright 2021, Published by Heuer Publishing
Debuted 2018 at Chesapeake Arts Center, Brooklyn Park, MD
Voted "festival favorite" at DC Black Theater & Arts Festival 2019
Press Release: The Angelwing Project Presents “Tears Of The Soul,” An Original Stage Play | Pasadena (pasadenavoice.com)
Review:  A dynamic 'Tears of the Soul' dramatizes 1968's BLM awakening - DC Theater Arts
News Article: black-experience/black-history Archives - The Archive Site for The Baltimore Times (baltimoretimes-online.com)
Interview: ‘A Quick 5’ with Angela Wilson, playwright and director, ‘Tears of the Soul’ | Maryland Theatre Guide (mdtheatreguide.com)

Boardin' Time. The inherent cruelty of the slave trade in America has impacted countless lives throughout generations.  Some lives were affected by gain and many lives were affected by loss and pain. Cassie and her family were one of many who experienced this harsh reality. The family matriarch is a God-fearing woman with the best of intentions in her heart.  However, her personal inner conflict and her painful past prevent her from being open to change and new ideas. One fateful day a startling heartbreak occurs that threatens to dismantle the entire family.  A distraught Cassie feels hopeless and her headstrong son Benjamin is more determined than ever to change their situation and the trajectory of their lives. Though Cassie has experienced great loss in her life, her unwavering love for her family causes her to realize that there is more to life than she dared to imagine. Although she realized this will require her to tread into unknown territory, her audacity, and courage allowed Cassie and her family to venture on a quest that changes their lives from hopelessness and despair to the pursuit of new possibilities.

Read excerpt: Act 1, Scenes 1-10

Premiered February, 2017 at the Chesapeake Arts Center

https://www.pasadenavoice.com/stories/boardin-time-challenges-audience-to-forge-path-to-end-divisions,12673?

Rising Up. Once a year in the 2nd month, we focus our thoughts and attention to what African Americans have overcome and how we’ve made it over, but I’m here today to interrupt that once a year story-telling pattern - the annual accounts and adaptations of our experience. You see the African American experience in America is not only our history, it’s America’s history and it could never be just about us. So, the truth is that there are not enough pages that can be written, there are not enough hours in a day and there are not enough movies, books, museums, or presentations that can adequately express this racial existence in this country. Now please don’t get me wrong, different cultures are unique and have their owns zest and flavor and a place in the history books as well and the African American culture is by no means an exception. It is beautiful a culture that is every bit worth celebrating. Some of the smartest, talented, educated, scholarly, innovative, brilliant, artistic, courageous, honorable, principled, laudable, admirable, noble, passionate, inventive, industrious, resourceful people are a part of the African American race.

Recognition of the contribution of African Americans in this country is fitting and appropriate but, we don’t want it to just become a cliché or commonplace. People may feel like, oh yes, those things happened but it’s old history. No, it’s not old history, it is still unfolding because our past explains, illuminates, informs, and clarifies the struggles that still exist today. Our history is still being written.

Read Rising Up, African American Firsts and Notables

Beale Street Rhymes is a poem that sets the stage for the play Clay's Place: Inside My Blue Mind.  It was written by Angela Wilson and added as a pre-scene to open the play.  It was performed right before the curtains opened for the first act.

Premiered November 2022 at the Chesapeake Arts Center
Brooklyn Park, MD

Read the poem and enjoy the video performance!

Videos used in promotion and marketing  regarding the work of Angela Wilson.