TGP PRODUCTIONS

Storytime

For over 10 years The|Griot|Project (TGP) has produced several mainstage productions including Day of Absence, The Colored Museum, and Before It Hits Home. TGP also provides teaching artists to schools and community centers throughout the Louisville Metro Area. In 2021, The Griot Project was granted an award by the KY Arts Council to produce a documentary entitled, YOU GOOD?

We believe in the power of art to tear down walls and build bridges and we invite you to come to our productions to be both entertained and enlightened . Our promise -and our mission- is to not simply put on a show, but to provoke and facilitate a conversation that sparks change!

Take a look at our shows below!

Before It Hits Home

Themes

Family

Sexual Identity

AIDS Awareness

Music

OPENS November 22nd 2019

“This is not a play about victimization…It is instead an authentic, at times almost hysterical wake-up call to the black community, sounded from within." —NY Times.

This Fall, The|Griot|Project will be mounting our rendition of Cheryl L. West’s, powerful family drama, Before It Hits Home.

Before It Hits Home follows the last few months in the life of Wendal Bailey, an African-American bisexual male in his early 30's with AIDS who is caught between two worlds; one which revolves around his lovers, the other based in the home of his extended family - his mother, father, "aunt", brother and 12-year-old son.

Media and reviewers are invited to attend a special preview showing as guests of The Griot Project , November 15th. General audience may attend the preview show with an admission price of $10. The show opens November 22nd to all audiences with a ticket price of $20.

For further details contact

Nu Artists Showcase: Fall '19

Themes

(TBD)

" Talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it."
—Maya Angelou

Twice a year The Griot Project puts out a call to local schools and communities to find the newest, brightest young talent in acting, playwriting and storytelling. The Nu Artists Showcase is open to all playwrights who wish to submit a play. Eight plays will be selected and performed from among all the submissions. Plays selected will also qualify for cash prizes.

Click here to be updated when we announce this years theme!

HEAR ME NOW

Last showcase’s theme was “HEAR ME NOW” and drew 150 submissions from vibrant young, gifted artists all across the city. This season, we expect even more talent to reveal itself.

Respecting Talent

The Nu Talent Showcase isn’t just about finding and promoting new talent it’s about showing respect for that talent- no matter where it comes from.

Too often, young artists are discouraged from pursuing their craft because in the community they live, it isn’t held in the same high regard as other “more practical” or lucrative pursuits.

We showcase new talent as a sign of respect and to show aspiring writers and performers that their work has value, is necessary, and must be heard.

The Colored Museum

Themes

Identity

Race

Madness

" The shackles of the past have been defied by Mr. Wolfe's fearless humor, and it's a most liberating revolt." —NY Times

The Griot Project proudly presents The Colored Museum by George Wolfe and directed by William Mack III. The Colored Museum has electrified, discomforted, and delighted audiences of all colors, redefining our ideas of what it means to be black in contemporary America. Its eleven "exhibits" undermine black stereotypes old and new and return to the facts of what being Black means.

Identity

The themes of Identity run deep in this play. We find that each exhibit challenges some part of who we perceive ourselves to be. Not just the identity of Blackness. But sexual identity, manhood, femininity, faith, morality, heroism and victimhood. The madness that runs through the play comes out when the characters identity runs afoul of their realities- when circumstances force the removal of their mask.

Race

We chose this play to follow Day of Absence specifically to complete the train of thought. Day of Absence helped us explore “what do we do when Blackness is absent?” The Colored Museum forces us to confront how we manage the Blackness that is ever present with us. Both explore the idea of race as a mask. Day of Absence in a much more literal way that subverts the expectations of a play about an all white town by featuring Black actors, and The Colored Museum in a much more layered and nuance way that deconstructs the masks that make up the outward facing expression of Blackness we wear every day.

Day of Absence

themes

Race

Racism

Reckoning

closed February 2019

“What would be the impact if all black people disappeared?”

In February 2019, we put on Day of Absence, the landmark 1965 play that launched the founding of the Negro Ensemble Company. It was first presented on Nov. 15, 1965, at St. Marks Playhouse on a double bill with Ward's one-act satire, Happy Ending (which is also worth checking out).

In Day of Absence, the white residents of a small, fictional town in the South wake to find all the Black people have disappeared. As shoes go unshined and babies unfed, the municipality devolves into chaos.

This groundbreaking work uses caustic humor to shed light on the critical roles African-Americans play in society in a message that, sadly, is a relevant and necessary today as it was when it was first performed.

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““Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.....”

” Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society. ”

— James Baldwin