We lost one of our queens last month, Dr. Julia Reed Hare made her transition Nov. 7, 1933-February 25, 2019, and was laid to rest in her beloved San Francisco. Our condolences to her husband, Dr. Nathan Hare and to their family and friends. She touched many lives. I remember the way she claimed her space as an African woman and held her own often as the only woman. She was fierce and as Dr. Angelou would state, “phenomenal!” She and her husband wrote a book about successful relationships, their lives together evidence. I really enjoyed it, especially the many practical examples. Dr. Hare’s writing was accessible. She said she wrote for her people. Their office in San Francisco was perhaps the first institute that had at its Black Mental Health. Sat., April 6, 3-6 p.m. at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, 410 14th Street, in Oakland, there will be a Celebration of Life. For information call (510) 575-7148.
Here is a wonderful interview with “Essence Magazine” Editor, Susan Taylor: To Love and Cherish with Dr. Julia Hare. At the time of the February 2009 interview, she was celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary with Dr. Nathan Hare.
“The Urban Retreat,” a play by A. Zell Williams, directed by Darryl V. Jones at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre through April 6.
At its core “The Urban Retreat,” a play by A. Zell Williams, directed by Darryl V. Jones at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre through April 6, is a father’s redemption story; however, it is also the story a son who strays from his creative roots. Actor, Lenard Jackson’s Trench Deep finds himself caught and entangled looking for answers as does his reluctant mentor and teacher, Chaucer Mosley (Adrian Roberts), who is also running from demons. When the two find themselves in the same room again, the set a reconstruction of their last moments together, the men are able to return to a time when truth was a guiding principle and authenticity and integrity its bottom line. Both men have been searching for forgiveness, both have been writing in the dark—this retreat is an opportunity for each to finally have an audience and get heard. However, what happens next is not what the publisher or manager have in mind.
Lenard Jackson’s Trench Deep is conflicted. His fiancée is not returning his calls and this retreat which he has orchestrated – a power move to get back at Mr. Mosley, Robeson’s high school English teacher who put him out the class, yet whose lessons he never stopped learning. At the retreat, Trench faces once again the proud black man still teaching black boys in Chicago, while he is denied audience with his own son.
To further complicate the story, there is an unsolved murder, Trench’s best friend, Setty Rexpin (actor Jamey Williams). “Ghosted,” he decides to follow Mosley to the retreat after a failed encounter on the Chicago Metro. Why now is a question left unanswered.
Mosley, in route to see a publisher, he thinks to finally after seven years get an offer to publish his book, “Sonlight,” learns of Trench Deep’s desire to hire him as his ghost writer or editor. With monetary and future publishing options as incentives, Mosley agrees to the terms and flies from Chicago to California where he meets Trench.
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The house built just up the hill from where Tupac lived and the city where he attended high school—the references are intentional as the character Trench Deep skates along a surface he cares not to penetrate as he and Mosley settle into an uneasy groove at first as ghosts haunt them both—unexplained music, earthquakes, bloody phantasms in the shape of Setty Texpin who disturbs everyone from Mosely to Pooh Butt to Angie.
An unsolved murder mystery, the guilty party is in the room in Mill Valley and Setty wants revenge. It is Emily Kristner’s free radical Angie, Maggie’s stuttering assistant who able to navigate both worlds, fan and critic, pushes the work to its stunning legal conclusion. Kristner’s character also surprises audiences with her freestyle skills. Jamey Williams, an internationally recognized spoken word artist, has some great scenes too. The poetics of hip hop are integral to A Zell Williams’s work often serving as a life preserve.
Trench has depth; however, as a gangster rapper, urban fiction author, his persona capitalizes on a pathology detrimental to his people. Pooh Butt and publisher Maggie Farmer (Miriam Ani) just want him to sell product – they are pushy. It doesn’t matter the toll such work takes on Trench’s life, a life he more than once thought of ending. It is through conversations with former teacher. Chaucer Mosley, that Trench remembers hip hop’s radically hopeful message, its politics, and its strategic position at the apex of change. These ideals are what Setty Rexpin gave his life to. We cannot undo the past; we can only do better now is a lesson both Mosley and Trench reflect.
“The Urban Retreat” is a fast moving play that leaves a few dangling threads untied like who dies in the end and a question, where are the black women? All we see are black girl butts in a video. Trench’s late mother is referenced, but he doesn’t like speaking about her to Mosley, when asked.
The fine cast and impeccable direction makes this iteration work. Urban Retreat is about getting paid and how much a life is worth. Adrian Roberts’s Chaucer Mosley’s focus on his novel and Miriam Ani’s Maggie Farmer’s use of Trench to pave her dream career peddling important work, not urban garbage, shows the two in similar light. However, as Mosley and Trench go deeper into the work, they find in each other what they thought lost. Visit lhtsf.org or call (415) 474-8800. The play is at the Burial Clay Theater, 762 Fulton Street, San Francisco, Thursday-Saturday, April 4-6, 8 p.m. evenings, two shows Sat., 3 p.m. matinee and 8 p.m.
Listen to an interview with Acting Artistic Director, Darryl Jones, on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show: http://tobtr.com/11238453