Pent-up: a Revenge Dance

In the first full production of her original work, Bessie Award-winner and beloved downtown actress Okwui Okpokwasili spins a modern multi-character folktale. In it, she portrays a woman in exile who sees and seeks revenge as a way of reconciling her present impoverished condition with the belief that she’s a direct descendant of the sun.

Interweaving legacy and the loss of old tongues, rituals and original songs, and a good old attempt to get a grip, the story sheds new light on traditional spells and third world brothels, and transforms every scratch & win ticket into a lucky one.

Pent Up: A Revenge Dance, was presented as a work-in-progress in 2006 by 651 ARTS as part of their annual Salon 651 series. Okwui’s numerous credits include recent appearances P.S. 122, in You Belong to Me (Int’l WOW) and as Kundry in John Jahnke’s A Parsifal by Susan Sontag; as well as Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Plays, Ralph Lemon’s geography trilogy Come Home, Charley Patton (2005 Bessie Award for Performance), The Foundry Theatre’s The Roaring Girle, Richard Foreman’s Maria Del Bosco, and Richard Maxwell’s Cowboys and Indians. Films include Tour Guide in Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter and Malika Vanderkamps in Lasse Hallstrom’s The Hoax.

Part of the Best of the Boroughs Festival