The Amen Corner

In a 1950s storefront church in Harlem, Pastor Margaret Alexander rails at her congregation and her teenaged son for their vices. With a gospel choir singing of redemption in one room and her son bonding with his ailing father over their love of jazz in the next, Margaret must face the music herself when a figure from her own troubled past returns. James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner tackles the role of the church in the black community in this landmark work, written immediately after his breakthrough novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. Whitney White, winner of the Susan Stroman Director Award, makes her Shakespeare Theatre Company directorial debut in this powerful production rich with music, humanity, and Baldwin’s lyrical prose.