A fantasy of James Baldwin and Beauford Delaney

Harlem Stage 

presents a staged reading of

TO THE LIGHT 

(A FANTASY INSPIRED BY TWO AMERICAN GENIUSES: 

BALDWIN AND DELANEY)

a new play by Bil Wright

directed by Reginald Douglas

Wednesday-Thursday, October 7-8 at 7:30pm

Tickets: Free with RSVP

To the Light (A Fantasy Inspired by two American Geniuses: Baldwin and Delaney) is a play by Bil Wright that celebrates the loving, dramatic, complex relationship between writer James Baldwin (1924-1987) and painter Beauford Delaney (1901-1979). It chronicles their friendship from their first meeting through each of their deaths. Both of these men were highly significant in the history of American arts and culture. They both lived and created during times of enormous political change in the United States, especially in regards to the country’s race relations. Both were also enamored with Paris, as were other black artists, feeling it was a mecca in which art prevailed and African Americans considered beautiful both physically and artistically. This was a huge bond between the men, with both men dying in Paris, Delaney the victim of severe mental illness.

Tickets and reservations to Harlem Stage go on sale starting August 24 and can be purchased online or at 212-281-9240 ext. 19/20.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

James Baldwin on the alchemy of live performance

James Baldwin by Beauford Delaney (1945)

In the theater, a current flowed back and forth between the audience and the actors: flesh and blood corroborating flesh and blood — as we say, testifying.

--James Baldwin on Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, from The Devil Finds Work (1976)