Kelundra Smith
Managing Editor at American Theatre
Theater Critic and Cultural Journalist at Freelance
Director of Pubs @bookstcg @americantheatre. Words in @nytimes, @gardenandgun, etc. Playwright behind The Reconstruction Trilogy. Our best days are ahead of us.
Articles
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1 week ago |
americantheatre.org | Gabriela Furtado Coutinho |Kelundra Smith
Calendar year 2020 will be remembered in history books for the death and disruption wrought by the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. But perhaps that year’s most lasting cultural impact stems from the terrible moment when the world watched a police officer in Minneapolis, unimpeded by fellow cops, kneel on the neck of an unarmed Black man named George Floyd for eight minutes and 46 seconds, killing him.
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3 weeks ago |
tdf.org | Kelundra Smith
While writing the history-inspired The Wash, veteran theatre journalist Kelundra Smith learned a lot about labor and herself---Work is a loaded four-letter word. In our 21st century capitalist economy, entire industries have emerged to help us navigate work beyond just tackling the tasks of labor. As a Black woman from the American South, I am the descendant of people who spent their lives on their feet. They didn't have time to think about work.
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1 month ago |
americantheatre.org | Kelundra Smith
On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., I had the pleasure of seeing four new plays. My long weekend started on a Thursday with Karen Zacarías’s adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence at Arena Stage, directed by artistic director Hana S. Sharif. This lavish manners play regaled the audience with elaborate costumes and juicy tête-à-têtes for more than three hours.
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2 months ago |
gardenandgun.com | Kelundra Smith |Anna Davis
For centuries, music was the only avenue in America through which Black people could connect to their culture and a sense of joy. Spirituals, field hollers, and folk songs helped pass the workday before and after the Emancipation Proclamation. Yet as sharing music became more industry than art, Black Americans were often written out of the very genres they helped birth: country, blues, folk. The desire to reclaim those cultural traditions is part of what drives Rhiannon Giddens.
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Jan 9, 2025 |
americantheatre.org | Kelundra Smith
Last October, I had the chance to attend the annual Freedom Awards, hosted by the National Civil Rights Museum. The 2024 honorees were civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill, civil rights leader Xernona Clayton, and filmmaker Spike Lee. In all of the remarks and speeches that evening, it became even clearer to me that for every movement, there must be a countermovement. This is how we truly balance the scales of justice in the United States of America.
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THE WASH director, Awoye Timpo, and I appeared on the Stage Whisper podcast to talk about sisterhood, solidarity, and finding laughter in unexpected places. Thank you Andrew Cortes and team! https://t.co/CyYdlA805t
My play THE WASH, a comedy inspired by the Atlanta Washerwomen's Strike of 1881, opens June 5, produced at Woodie King's New Federal Theatre at WP Theatre. Support live #theater. Support women in the arts! #TheWash #OffBroadway #NYC https://t.co/mHf02bfCCt
We really have lost the plot in America. It's all characters and dialogue and no storyline.