Performance on December 18
B4 Youth Theatre is excited to announce that we will be giving our closing Bicentennial performance of 200 Years of Returns on Sunday, December 18, 2022 at 6pm at Providence Island in Liberia. Doors open at 5pm. This performance will be historic as we approach the end the year of 2022 which marks the 200 years of diaspora-making in this land of Liberty. We invite you to celebrate this historic occasion with as we welcome international guest actors from the Museum Theatre.
This is a collaboration with Department of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia (US), dancers sponsored by the Inheritance Baltimore project, and graduate researcher assistants under the direction of the Program in Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University. Since we began this collaboration in 2019, we have consulted with notable Liberian scholars, artists, and policymakers such as Dr. Carl Burrowes, Dr. Clarice Ford Kulah, and Hon. Rosana G.D.H. Schaack on the development of a production that includes many perspectives for a thoughtful reflection on the challenges and triumphs which brought us together in the past and with hope for how we might persevere together in the future.
Our senior company of theater artists, composed of actors from our national leadership team, many of whom began with our program as students in 2013, will join our international guests in this performance. Between June-August of this year, five of our Liberia national leaders and senior company members traveled to the US to perform an early version of the script and conduct theater workshops in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.
Opportunity for a performance on December 19
Students at our Gbarnga area program site are excited to see this performance for themselves, and as many cannot travel to Monrovia for the main performance on December 18, we would love the opportunity to bring them to the Bong County Technical College campus for a performance workshop. We envision a 30 to 40-minute combined performance with our Liberian actors and those from Colonial Williamsburg along with dancers from Baltimore, Maryland, US, and a panel discussion with all of our artists and distinguished educational professionals in Liberia. Aligned with our mission of empowering young people to become educated citizens through the arts, we believe this would be a valuable opportunity to cultivate knowledge with Bong County Technical College students, faculty, and staff, local youth artists, and our international guests. We could be available for this event the afternoon of Monday, December 19, 2022.
About B4 Youth Theatre
About the Johns Hopkins University program
JHU’s RIC Supports Trip to Liberia for Baltimore Schoolchildren
