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Certainly in the current mid-to-late-pandemic season, these open-air productions provide a lifeline to a reawakening civic commons.
In plays likeFlowandThe Seven, Power established a hip-hop theater tradition that grows in influence year after year.
But hes also yoked the galloping Elizabethan lyric to modern concerns.
As Power says, once a freestyle MC gets the rhythm, they can kind of flow around it.
Have I not half the council in my bra strap?
or a snooty aristocrat will note that I once saw a Woodville eating sushi / With a fork.
Its also a familiar place where the killing weight of the insecure state bears down on a Black child.
Still, this is not Trump walking around on stage, Power says.
Its more like, Who are we as a species?
And how do we deal with these different energies that have always existed?
Thats where we are in a global reckoning, an artistic reckoning, he says.
And thats something that Classical Theatre of Harlem has been really trying to drill down into.
What makes something stand the test of time?
Seize the Kingis in Marcus Garvey Park through July 29.
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