PORT TOWNSEND — Port Townsend’s Key City Public Theatre will kick off its 60th anniversary season with the Northwest premiere of the nationally-touring, one-woman play “Spirit Awakening.”
The play —written, directed and performed by Akuyoe Graham — will be presented at the KCPT Playhouse at 419 Washington St., tonight and Saturday as well as Feb. 16 and 17.
Performances will be at 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Saturday matinees will be at 2 p.m.
A question-and-answer session with Graham will follow each performance.
Tickets are $25.
The play tells how Graham evolved as a human being and performer, an immigrant and a woman. She creates 12 distinct personalities that segue into one another as her life takes her from Africa to London to Spanish Harlem and eventually Hollywood.
“Each step provokes new levels of personal assessment, raising complex questions of split loyalties and the difficulties of rediscovering one’s roots, unimpeded by dogma,” organizers said.
“One film/theatre critic described her as ‘a mystic in the theatre, a sage on the screen.’”
Born in Ghana in West Africa, Graham is a graduate of the High School of the Performing Arts in New York City. She went on the study with Uta Hagen, Herbert Berghof and Sanford Meisner.
She was one of the first actors of African descent to integrate Broadway’s Circle Repertory Company, where she worked with Lanford Wilson, Harry Belafonte and William Hurt.
Graham has performed in Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labors Lost,” Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” and Ariel Dofman’s “Widows” for Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum.
In feature films, she has appeared opposite Marisa Tomei in “Danika,” New Regency’s “Goodbye Lover,” Randa Haines’ “The Doctor,” the multi-film-festival-recognized “Ben & Ara”and Universal’s 1999 hit “American Pie.”
In television, she has appeared on such shows as “General Hospital,” “City of Angels,” “Picket Fences,” “Chicago Hope,” “Taken Away” and the 2017 ABC Mini-Series “When We Rise” as well as numerous TV commercials.
While presenting this Northwest premiere in Port Townsend, co-produced by Cindy and Joseph Daccurso’s Heartistic Productions in partnership with the Key City Public Theatre (Denise Winters, executive artistic director), Graham is also currently in development transforming the play into a feature film.
For information and tickets, contact the KCPT box office on Washington Stree, call 360-385-5278 or see www.keycitypublictheatre.org.
