Press

ALBANY, NY – On Sunday, July 12 the New York State Museum will present “Theater of Resistance,” an original production featuring vignettes from five plays connected to accomplished African-Americans.

The free program will be presented in the Museum’s Clark Auditorium. Local actors will perform at 3 p.m. in vignettes from Eugene O'Neill's "The Emperor Jones," Howard Sackler's "The Great White Hope, Ntozake Shange's "For Colored Girls . .," Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" and Ossie Davis' rendition of a book by Langston Hughes, "Purlie Victorious."

The production is a tribute to abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet and was inspired by a sermon Garnet delivered in 1843 while serving as a minister at Liberty Presbyterian Church in Troy. “Let your Motto be resistance,” Garnet told the congregation. “Resistance! Resistance! No opposed people have ever secured liberty without resistance.”

“Theater of Resistance” is produced and directed by Donald “The Soul Man” Hyman of Albany, a singer, writer, actor, elder, and teacher. He can be seen in the History Channel movie,

"The Revolution" and the upcoming PBS special, "The American General." Hyman has

performed off-Broadway at Albany Civic Theater, The Palace Theater in Albany and Proctor’s in Schenectady. His current one-man show "SAFE," which he wrote about Buck Leonard, the Negro Leagues’ Homestead Grays player, has been performed around the Capital Region. He recently performed as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in "Voices of Civil Rights," a program for the Legends and Legacies Lecture Series, a monthly series he founded at Albany Public Library. As a singer, he recently did a tribute to Bob Marley at Kwanzaa and for Black History Month.

The New York State Museum, established in 1836, is a program of the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education. Located at the Empire State Plaza on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is free and the Museum is fully accessible. Further information about Museum programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

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