By Frank Higgins
Directed by Lou Bellamy
A regional premiere

February 18 - March 14, 2010

  Under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration, a white researcher named
  Susannah travels the South looking for original songs from the slave era. She finds herself
  in workhouses and prisons where black women toil to clear swamps and dig ditches. On a
  rural Texas prison farm she meets Pearl, an incarcerated woman with a silky voice and
  steely spirit. Pearl will not disclose how she came to be in prison, but when Susannah makes
  a deal to help her find her lost daughter, she sings into a phonograph. Susannah sends the
  songs to the Library of Congress where they take immediate notice - turns out Pearl is quite
  a rare gem indeed, "an authentic doorway to the past." Together the two women set out on
  a journey to find their way out from the shadows of their own pasts and into the bright lights
  of New York City where the crème of society waits with bated breath to hear the last of the
  authentic black songstresses from the South.