“Black Terror” Film Trailer Premieres at Sundance Film Festival
Adaptation of 1971 play is a bicoastal production directed by Richard Lawson, in collaboration with Newark Symphony Hall and the LA-based WACO Theater Center
PARK CITY, U.T. — January 25, 2022 – The trailer for the latest adaption of Richard Wesley’s classic play “Black Terror,” a bicoastal production directed by Richard Lawson, in collaboration with Newark Symphony Hall and WACO Theater Center, premiered at Sundance Film Festival this month.
“Directing Black Terror has been a wonderful collaboration between WACO Theater Center and Newark Symphony Hall,” Lawson said. “As they say it takes a village, so it is important that two Black theater companies work together to bring important literature to our mutual communities. The fact that we transformed this play into a film allows us to speak to the greater African-American community. Although the play is 50 years old, it is as pertinent today as it was in 1971,” Lawson continued.
The project is being produced by Lawson and Tina Knowles-Lawson’s Los Angeles-based WACO Theater Center, in partnership with Newark Symphony Hall, Yendor Theatre Company (YTC), and Richard Lawson Studios, and is slated to premiere in Fall 2022. Newark Symphony Hall is the largest Black-led arts and entertainment venue in New Jersey, and YTC is the first resident company of The Lab at Newark Symphony Hall, a career accelerator and business incubator focused on the performing arts.
Originally released in 1971 at the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Public Theater, “Black Terror” — one of the seminal works that emerged from the Black Arts Movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s — is being reimagined by Wesley and Lawson for a new generation in the age of #BlackLivesMatter. Lawson has known Wesley since appearing in his play “The Talented Tenth.”
The trailer premiered last week at Sundance Film Festival during an online panel produced by The Blackhouse Foundation & Meta, ‘A Conversation on Black Creativity with We The Culture, featuring Ms. Tina Knowles-Lawson,’ which can be viewed on The Blackhouse Foundation’s Facebook page here: shorturl.at/swLOX. The “Black Terror” trailer begins at 33:33.
For more information on the panel, visit: https://festival.sundance.org/village/#panel-view/61e5c62b655a72e0327f30c7.
About Newark Symphony Hall
Born in 1925, Newark Symphony Hall (NSH) has been the home of almost a century of arts and culture in what is now one of New Jersey’s oldest and largest arts and entertainment venues. NSH remains as committed as ever to providing an artistically rich experience for art lovers of all ages, while creating career pathways for people of color from around the world – and bettering both its community and the Greater Newark region. For more information, visit: NewarkSymphonyHall.org.
About Yendor Theatre Company
Yendor Theatre Company, co-founded in 2016 by Rodney Gilbert and Andrew Binger, develops, produces and celebrates works by historically resilient Black and Brown writers, women writers and writers from the LGBTQ+ community. Their work explores challenging themes such as police brutality, mental illness and racism, while also celebrating beautiful ones like forbidden love, community building and faith. For more information, visit: yendortheatrecompany.com.
About WACO Theater Center
Located in the burgeoning North Hollywood Arts District of Los Angeles, WACO Theater Center is one of the few Los Angeles cultural institutions dedicated to contemporary performing and visual art of the African Diaspora. Driven by the mantra, “Where Art Can Occur,” WACO is dedicated to the empowerment of artists within a diversified pool of its L.A. communities and beyond. WACO centers around giving emerging and established artists of African descent a platform and a voice to use their creativity, in order to connect and inspire individuals and communities throughout the African Diaspora. For more information, visit: wacotheatercenter.com.
