Celebrate Black History Month with The Generic's HOODOO LOVE, Now thru 2/24

Celebrate Black History Month with The Generic's steamy and sultry "Hoodoo Love", as it conjures its magic in its regional debut, tonight, February 1-24, 2013 in Norfolk, Va.

From Lorraine Hansberry Award and Olivier Award-winning playwright Katori Hall (Broadway's THE MOUNTAINTOP) comes a drama electrifying with a blend of romance, magic, and jealousy. In 1930s Tennessee, a young African-American woman named Toulou escapes the cotton fields of the rural South to achieve her dreams of being a blues singer in Memphis. When she falls in love with a rambling blues man named The Ace of Spades, she enlists the help of her neighbor, an old Hoodoo priestess to win his heart forever. But such magic can be difficult to control, and Toulou finds herself in a battle for her lover bigger than she ever imagined.

Book: Katori Hall
General Producer: Jeannette Rainey
Executive Director: Philip Odango
Artistic Team: Matthew Friedman, Jennifer Murphy
Director: Le'Royce Bratsveen

Cast:

TOULOU: Imani-Chantel Ward
ACE OF SPADES: Wes Dew
CANDY LADY: Melody Harris
JIB: George T. Davis, III

Tickets at www.generictheater.org.

Katori Hall is a playwright/performer from Memphis, TN. Hall's plays include: The Mountaintop (2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play), which recently ran on Broadway at the Bernard Jacobs Theatre starring Angela Bassett and Samuel L. Jackson, Hurt Village (2011 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Signature Theatre), Children of Killers (National Theatre, UK and Castillo Theatre, NYC), Hoodoo Love (Cherry Lane Theatre), Remembrance (Women's Project), Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, WHADDABLOODCLOT!!! (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Our Lady of Kibeho and Pussy Valley. Her awards include the Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, the Arena Stage American Voices New Play Residency, the Kate NeAl Kinley Fellowship, two Lecomte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, a NYFA Fellowship, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award. Hall's journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, UK's The Guardian, Essence and The Commercial Appeal, including contributing reporting for Newsweek. The Mountaintop and Katori Hall: Plays One are published by Methuen Drama. Hall is an alumna of the Lark Playwrights' Workshop, where she developed The Mountaintop, and a graduate of Columbia University, the A.R.T. at Harvard University, and the Juilliard School. She is a proud member of the Ron Brown Scholar Program, the Coca-Cola Scholar Program, the Dramatists Guild, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers. She is currently a member of the Residency Five at Signature Theatre Company in New York City.

The Generic Theater, a not-for-profit resident theater company, is Virginia's pro-am theater and producer of Broadway and off-Broadway plays. For over 30 years, The Generic has been the creative incubator of some of the finest performers and artists in Virginia, and we continually seek to develop programs that foster the development of the future leaders of American theater.

Pictured: Clockwise from top: Melody Harris as Candy Lady, Wes Dew as Ace of Spades, and Imani-Chantel Ward as Toulou. Photo credit: Jennifer Murphy, courtesy of The Generic.