AfroSolo Arts Festival 31

AFROSOLO ARTS FESTIVAL 31 presents LET FREEDOM RING!: A CELEBRATION OF BLACK RESILIENCE THROUGH SOLO PERFORMANCES. The event occurs Friday and Saturday, October 25 & 26, 2024, 7pm and Sunday, October 27, 2024, 3 pm, at Potrero Stage, 1695 18th Street, in San Francisco, CA. This exhilarating program by the AfroSolo Theatre Company, a haven for Black arts, culture, intellect, and entertainment, welcomes back all former patrons and invites new audience members to come and experience our ingenuity.

The lineup includes:

Laura Elaine Ellis, dancer, performs “A Black Woman’s Truth” a spoken word essay written and recorded by written by San Francisco Bay View Hunters Point resident  and community activist Toni Hines. The essay explores the depth, breath and experience of being a Black woman in the United States. “A Black Woman’s Truth” is a joyful response to the constant pressure Black women face to be resilient to the stress and strains they face while living in America.

Ellis is the co-founder and Director of the African & African American Performing Arts Coalition and co-presenter of the Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now (BCF). Her work has been recognized by the State of California and the Alameda Arts Commission for preserving African American art and culture. Laura is an AfroSolo alum and performs and choreographs with Dimensions Dance Theater and Flyaway Productions. She also serves as the community outreach coordinator and co-curator for the SF Dance Film Festival and Raising Voices program.

Marcus J. Paige performs “San Francisco, Variations on Black Joy, White Supremacy and Hope!” written and directed by AfroSolo Artistic/Executive Director. Thomas Robert Simpson
Based on a true San Francisco experience, the story explores the joy, racial turmoil, and boundless hope experienced in one day. Untimely it is a story of  love, challenge and triumph of the human spirit. Paige is also a veteran AfroSolo artist with many stage, film and TV credits locally and nationally.

Augustene Phillips will read three stories from her upcoming biography, The Life and Times of Augustene Phillips. In the stories will be wisdom on parade as Phillips shares the history, joy and hilarity of falling in love with her late husband of sixty-one years, her first day of school  in a one room classroom more than seventy years ago in small Arkansas town and her profound declaration that I Am The Goat! (The Greatest of All Time!) Phillips has grace, clarity and charm that will spark both youth and elders the befits of a first time writer in her senior years.

William Underwood, III, flutist, will perform a diverse concert featuring classical as, well as original soul and jazz music. Underwood has garnered praise and acclaim for his outstanding performances. This is a great opportunity to see Underwood as he use this intimate performance as a springboard toward a solo career and guest appearances in San Francisco and abroad.  Underwood holds a Bachelor of Science in Music and Master of Music in Flute Performance degrees from Florida A&M University and Wayne State University, respectively. Underwood has has toured Japan extensively with Kyoto, Tokyo Incorporated and regularly work as a solo, collaborative, and recording flutist.

AfroSolo Theatre Company
AfroSolo Theatre Company’s mission is to nurture, promote and present African American and African Diasporan art and culture through solo performances and the visual and literary arts. Since 1994, we have presented the annual AfroSolo Arts Festival, a forum for African Americans and the larger African Diaspora as a way to give voice to the unique experience of being Black. Through art, we bring people of all ethnicities together to explore and share the human spirit that binds us all.

AfroSolo Arts Festival is made possible through the support of the California Arts Council,  Grants for the Arts, Dream Keeper Initiative, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, The Friends of AfroSolo,

AfroSolo’s collaborative partners include AATAIN, Cultural Odyssey, Intersection for the Arts, Play Ground Theatre, The African American Art and Culture, The Flow Fund, The Dr. George W. Davis Senior Center and the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival. More at afrosolo.org.