Friday Jan 31, 2025
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
POWERHOUSE Arena
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street across from the Archway)
Brooklyn , NY
11201
NEW DATE: JANUARY 31ST
Join the legendary Ishmael Reed and superstar dramatist Jeremy O. Harris (Slave Play) as they discuss Ishmael’s Archway Editions plays The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, Life Among the Aryans, and The Slave Who Loved Caviar, in addition to other highlights from his illustrious oeuvre, the state of the theater today, and much more.
Books will be available for purchase; admission is free. RSVP below.
The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda
This powerful play, originally produced at the Nuyorican Poets Café, comprehensively dismantles the phenomenon of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Hamilton. Reed uses the musical’s crimes against history to insist on a radical, cleareyed way of looking at our past and our selves. Both durable and timely, this goes beyond mere corrective – it is a meticulously researched rebuttal, an absorbing drama, and brilliant rallying cry for justice.
The perfect tie-in to both the success of and backlash to Hamilton, it is the major voice in contrast to the recent movie. It captures both the earnest engagement that fans of the musical desire, as well as the exhausted disbelief of those who can’t stand it. Teachers, students and fans of drama, literature, and history will find much to love. It is written by one of America’s most respected and original writers, who is eagerly promoting it, and who is long overdue for a renaissance.
Life Among the Aryans
Life Among the Aryans follows John Shaw and Michael Mulvaney, two modern MAGA white supremacists as they leech off their wives, take orders from grifting Leader Matthews, and plot a unique way around the encroaching societal progress they fear will leave them in the dust. Full of page-turning dialogue, unexpected twists and hilarious asides, this is the latest urgent must-read from the greatest living American writer.
Originally performed at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Life Among the Aryans has only grown in relevance, as the violence in Washington D.C. and state capitals around the country shines a light on the persistent unrest among a certain kind of American. A perfect counterpart to The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, in which Reed investigated the darkness at the heart of Obama-era liberal piety, Life Among the Aryans is a searing, hopeful and above all joyous investigation of what the current era means.
The Slave Who Loved Caviar
The relationship between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat is already one of the most iconic, intensely analyzed partnerships in the history of art. Ishmael Reed, perhaps America’s greatest living writer, brings the same unsparing, deeply researched perspective as he did for the Archway Editions bestseller The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, for a captivating, illuminating final word on the famous duo.
Already the subject of controversy during its original 2021-2022 run at the Theater for the New City in the East Village, Archway Editions is proud to bring you the unabridged text of The Slave Who Loved Caviar, Ishmael Reed’s latest feat of research and drama, the tragedy as disturbingly real for today’s artists as it was in the 1980’s.
