FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: KST Presents Fall 2022, The Soul of East Liberty
EAST LIBERTY, PA — The soul of a community lives in the spaces where people create, share experiences, and care for one another. Kelly Strayhorn Theater celebrates The Soul of East Liberty with a Fall 2022 season that centers the KST community and asserts our collective right to control our stories, our bodies, and our futures.
This season, KST will debut work from locally and nationally recognized artists. On September 17, a new partnership with BOOM Concepts populates the Lobby of Kelly Strayhorn Theater with visual art by J. Thomas Agnew, D.S. Kinsel, and J.L. Mallis. Later that evening Fully Expressed, a concert of local lyricists curated by and featuring emcee Adam “FRH” Golden, welcomes audiences into KST to kick off the season! Friday and Saturday, September 23 and 24 , we welcome 7NMS | Marjani Forté-Saunders and Everett Saunders home to present Prophet: The Order of the Lyricist, a new dance-theater work tracing the journey of the emcee. The Alloy School is also back in September with an eight-week session of professionally-led classes including Hip Hop, West African, Jazz Ballet, Creative Play and DanceFit.
October begins with a mango-infused play about agency and motherhood from Freshworks artist Alyssa Velazquez. Join us at KST on Saturday, October 29 for our Family-focused Halloween Mayhem, then get ready for a packed November featuring world premieres from recurring variety performance show Fail-Safe and The Theater Offensive. The November 11-12 edition of Fail-Safe includes two evenings of new and in-progress works by interdisciplinary musicians, performance artists, and dancers including Los Angeles-based artists Young Joon Kwak, Kim Ye, and Xina Xurner (Marvin Astorga and Young Joon Kwak) as well as Pittsburgh artists Caroline Yoo, Goofy Toof, London Williams, MICHIYAYA Dance featuring Anya Clark, Swampwalk, Sacred Sauce (Samira Mendoza & Gladstone Butler), Formosa, and Davine Byon.
The month of November continues with Boston-based The Theater Offensive’s Gow of a Rosde on November 18 – 19. Gow of a Rosde celebrates the perseverance of QTPOC femmes in the midst of a pandemic and cultural uprisings. Through choreopoems, an ensemble of four queer Black and brown women bring to light and confront complicated realities within their lives. November’s creative momentum peaks at Suite Life, KST’s annual celebration of our namesakes Billy Strayhorn and Gene Kelly. Finally, in December we welcome Freshworks artist Michelle Johnson to close out the season with a musical tribute to Diana Ross.
It is more vital now than ever that Kelly Strayhorn Theater stoke creative experimentation, community dialogue, and collective action rooted in the liberation of Black and queer people. This fall, join us in proclaiming The Soul of East Liberty.