WBAI-FM Upcoming Program
Cat Radio Cafe

Tue, Mar 26, 2024 9:00 PM

ACTRESS ESTELLE PARSONS ON DIRECTING "AMERICAN ROT"

ACTRESS ESTELLE PARSONS ON DIRECTING “AMERICAN ROT,” A PLAY ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE DRED SCOTT DECISION

On tonight’s show we’ll be joined by playwright Kate Taney Billingsley and the great actress Estelle Parsons, here the director of American Rot, Billingsley’s play about an imagined meeting of two historically-linked descendants of the once-enslaved Dred Scott and Roger B. Taney, the Supreme Court Chief Justice who in 1857 handed down the worst legal decision in American history, denying enslaved people their basic human righs. The play confronts the lingering aftermath of the Dred Scott decision: wokeness, cultural appropriation, white liberalism, white supremacy and what it will take to repair hundreds of years of injustice.

The play, which was developed at the Actors Studio under the guidance of Estelle Parsons, is inspired by Billingsley’s own family background as a great-great- great-great niece of Judge Taney.

Hosted by Janet Coleman and David Dozer

 

 


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