Kenneth Jones, Playbill (New York), September 8, 2009
MPAACT and Pegasus Players, two acclaimed Chicago theatre companies, will collaborate to present the fall world premiere of Shepsu Aakhu Ten Square, a play about reparations to African-Americans whose roots are in slavery.
Performances of the future-set play will be at Pegasus Players’ home at 1145 W. Wilson Avenue in the O’Rourke Center at Truman College, Sept. 25-Nov. 22. Opening is Oct. 8.
Mignon McPherson Nance directs ” a tale of what America could be, and much of what America has already become, in the not-too-distant future.”
According to the companies, “On the heels of the government’s apology to African-Americans for slavery, the Reparations Movement was born. The movement was successful, checks were written to the descendants of slaves, and the seeds for a new America were sown. Ten Square is one of the cities that emerged in ‘New America’ and the life of the African-American community has been forever altered. Roosevelt, a resident of Ten Square and a soldier duty-bound to protect the new world order, must negotiate between his obligations to his lover, his family and his government.”
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“Both MPAACT and Pegasus Players have always held a common interest in producing theatre that is as socially relevant and provocative as it is entertaining, inviting the audience into an active conversation about the issues that shape us today,” stated Pegasus Players executive/artistic director Christopher Schram. “Ten Square focuses on the African-American community as a vehicle for exploring issues that matter to everyone, regardless of race, nationality or culture. The concerns in the play are human concerns, and we’re thrilled to partner with MPAACT to present this powerful work of theatre.”
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Tickets may be purchased by calling Pegasus Players box office at (773) 878-9761 or online at www.pegasusplayers.org.
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Ma’at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theatre (MPAACT) was founded in 1991 by a group of like-minded individuals who shared an artistic vision and who “wanted to develop, nurture, and sustain Afrikan Centered Theatre, which is grounded in the many cultures and traditions of the African continent and its Diaspora.” With a vision focused on creating new work and collaborative art, MPAACT “produces and educates with the goal of increasing understanding and appreciation of Afrikan Centered Theatre and its interrelated disciplines, including not only main stage and standing productions but also a playwright’s laboratory, original music, a publishing company (Sakhu Publications), an arts education program, and many workshops and master classes.” For more information, visit www.mpaact.org.
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Original article
(Posted on September 9, 2009)
Comments
Reparations? It’s just another ploy by the professional-victim entitlement-consciousness blacks to get something for nothing. Besides, no matter how much they were given, it would never be enough; these people are never satisfied no matter what they’re given. They’d be demanding more and more, regardless of what they received. Stop with the reparations garbage already. Enough is enough. “White” America owes blacks NOTHING - time for them to suit up and show up for life, take responsibility for who, what and where they are, and start supporting THEMSELVES.
I’d be happy with Shakespeare and Sophocles but non-whites keep showing up in casts and there’s always an attempt to make a classic into a modern political message on race or feminism.
Ok lets see my great great etc grandfather served with the Union in a cavalry regiment and fought in several smaller battles and skirmishes and even at Vicksburg. I know from family records he provided his first two horses and side arms and had to purchase his uniform. He also wrote to his wife (great etc grandma) and had her send some money to help supply the unit later in the war. The letter saved in my family instructed her to sell several of the stock if she needed it for the cash.
Thats just one ancestor down the chain. Now shouldn’t these same blacks who scream for reparations be paying up for getting freed?
Ya know you just can’t win when it comes to race. As a people taken in a group of all white colonists in the new world we Western European extracts were the only “Race” in history to even attempt to educate and help a scattered native population. A population that was too small and scattered to even count as a nation under international law. Yet several of us tried and although yes there were harsh dealings from either side we did try more than any other dominant or migrating people in history to live with and help a small tribal minority. The remains of our attempts in large tracts of land and not all of it waste land nor in the West is easy to see today.
We were also the only people who ever fought our own countrymen to free a people of a different race. Even if the civil war was fought for other reasons the main factor for most Union volunteers was slavery pure and simple.
Yet here we are. Blacks still screaming for reparations 140 years later. Leftists crying for wealth to be transfered to native tribes simply because they crossed the ocean sometime before us and did nothing with this land nor raised themselves above the stone age.
Unbelievable that some whites will turn on their own culture and sacrifice their race for such gibberish and double standards.
The blacks sense the white man’s weakness in its endless clamor for more free money. How to end it is by the answer, “if you do not work, you do not eat.” The policies of ending mindless welfare/foreign aid and selective breeding will have to be installed for the common good. This persistent shake down of free money (reparation) from consumers and the taxpayers especially the middle class need to be stopped. When corporations paid reparations, that money is not really paid by them. The black race will always need help in keeping up with the other races. But it should not be done in its present form, by allowing more blacks to come into this country and by throwing more money at their problems. They should be treated with dignity but not catered to.
Closing the racial learning/educational gap has become the holy grail for some whites seeking glory at the taxpayers’ expense. Decades and billions have been spent without any significant positive results. The end result instead is the lowering of our national educational system with this country is now just above Mexico in international testing! The recognition of racial differences is long overdue. Not all Asians or Whites come from privileged background but yet their capacities are persistently higher than the blacks as shown by their ancestral and present achievements. Why is it that blacks cannot present proof of ever helping another race? First it was the whites now the Chinese of giving them large amounts of foreign aid.
The present great influx from third world countries is a huge flood sanctioned by the Kennedys and similar others, not deep thinkers but doing by what makes them feel good. Decisions have been and are presently being made by people in power ignorant of the genetic evolution of the races but yet in denial of the observable facts. Matter of fact, anyone who points out these observable facts are to be beaten down. At least past generations were more honest in their observations even though at times cruel in doing so. Will the genes of this country and in Europe become submerged as in past advanced civilizations?
I’m all for reparations. One payment and agreement thatthe debt is paid, nothing to follow. Of course the blacks would be back for more after a spending spree.
But wouldn’t a one time payment be great? Incidentally old Barry has said that reparations aren’t enough, hence the public health care. This was cited in investors Business Daily.
Reparations, why not? the country is bankrupt as we speak, trillions in debth ( just the chinese own 1 trillion U.S dollar), so let them print another couple of trillion dollars of worthless money and give it to them. it’s just going to accelerate the down fall faster….
Reparations plus permanent seperation would work for me.
“While I used to enjoy movies and plays…” Sbuffalonative
I’m with Connor on this one, as a free man’s blood is more valuable than gold. Reparations were PAID IN FULL with the Civil War. A deal ought to be levied: Reparations today for every living descendant of slaves, but the government gets to hold the individual’s cash for and spend it on their passage back to ‘Mother Africa’.
Any covert Black AmRen commenters care to counter this?
For black agitators, the desired answer to any problem always boils down to this.
Give me something.
They have already been given whole cities (Detroit, Memphis, Birmingham, Baltimore, Philadelphia, etc.) and all they have done therewith is turn them into blighted wastelands.
The black ‘shining city on a hill’ Ten Square can only ever exist in fantasy, as in this play.
Don’t waste your money on this play- it sounds boring. However, Babes with blades- a female swordfighting group- put one a great version of McBeth. Chicago has many plays and many theaters for any taste. Don’t waste your time on this.
So in typical black-materialistic behavior, a fantasy play about how getting more free money will change black culture and life into a wonderful thing. Not love, artistic beauty, mans service to man, or any of those nasty whitey “high ideals”. Just cash. Just typical. Just pathetic.
Ok, so I say give them reparations. But only on the condition that they be sent back to Africa and never return to the USA or be jailed for life.
Airfare/real estate/moving fee costs are easily affordable for oh so many of these “———- Americans”. Their “homeland” beckons, yet—here they stay. No one’s preventing them from clearing out, as far as I can tell.
Why doesn’t CNN discuss this daily?
(rhetorical question)
Will the descendants of black slave owners of the ante-bellum south be eligible for reparations payments?
Tom Iron…
A person above was absolutely right when he wrote that blacks won’t stop demanding. Even Jesse Lee Peterson, a black conservative, said the same thing and noted, “If it was wrong to bring blacks here, then shouldn’t the next step be to send them back to Africa?”
There is always this thinking that the glorious future for blacks is only one check away. Every neighborhood and city blacks have taken over was probably exactly as nice as this fantasy Ten Square before blacks arrived and promptly destroyed it. I hope there are plans for a sequal set 25 years after Ten Square when Ten Square has been vandalized into yet another Cabrini Green.
If someone claims to be a descendent of slaves, isn’t he saying that slavery is the reason why his ancestors met, or the reason why he/she was ever born?
“Will the descendants of black slave owners of the ante-bellum south be eligible for reparations payments?”
So, I guess welfare checks, food stamps, free housing, free medical care, free community handouts, affirmative action, and who knows what else are not enough reparations. Now, if we could do away with every bit of those things, and give one BIG check to each family to divide up, then could we call it quits; even Steven?? The country could actually save a boatload of money, by making every last one of them sign away any future claims on the taxpayers. Then WE could say free at last, free at last, etc…
Most of Africa is not the safari wonderlands tourists go to see. It is for most Africans, a continent of mass starvation, extreme poverty in far worse conditions than in American urban ghettos, living conditions in which comparatively speaking, an American welfare recepient, or an American janitor, lives like a king, horrible diseases like elephantaisis and river blindness, and even modern-day slavery that sill continues to this day.
Blacks, or “African-Americans”, instead of demanding reparations, should be glad their ancestors were brought to America by slave traders!
Most of Africa is not the safari wonderland tourists go to see.
Africa, for most of its inhabitants, is a continent of famines, extreme poverty that is nothing compared to black ghettoes like Harlem, where American welfare recepients and American workers like janitors, cab drivers, baggage porters and other lower class workers live like kings in comparison to what it is like for millions of Africans, where people live in huts with no running water, like no electricity or heat, diseases like malaria, elephantaisis, and river blindness, and even modern day slavery!
At least, when our country had slavery, there were many abolitionists in both the North and the South to protest against this evil.
As far as I know, other than outside human rights organizations like Amnesty International, there are no abolitionists in the African countries where slavery still goes on. I don’t think there any native abolitionist organizations in Mauritania!
Instead of demanding reparations for American slavery, blacks, or African-Americans, should protest about the slavery still happening in Africa today and be glad their ancestors were brought to America by slave traders!
I apologise if I annoyed anyone reading these comments by posting two comments on the same subject. However, when I posted the first comment on the same subject, I though that it did not go through. Again, my apologies for this error.
