The Peculiar Patriot (OCT 17-28) is amazing audiences throughout its Boston debut. Liza Jessie Peterson’s poetry and command of the stage communicate a story beyond the walls of any theatre and imparts on us a story often hidden below the surface. As we continue discussing mass incarceration, both nationally and within our state, it was important to discuss how ArtsEmerson and Emerson College are working to break down barriers and foster community. The Emerson Prison Initiative,…
Cheek by Jowl and Pushkin Theatre’s Measure for Measure (OCT 24-28) has been sweeping the nation in its US Premiere Tour, amazing audiences and creating an American following as our political scene unfolds before us. With the midterm elections in just a few weeks and the recent Supreme Court nomination, director Declan Donnelan and designer Nick Ormend’s Measure for Measure, “is vivid & uncommonly moving…unsettling poignancy.” The New York Times named this specific production a…
Thank you joining us for Peculiar Patriot, written and performed by Liza Jessie Peterson. For more information about the play and the information discussed in it check out our blog. Interested in more? Join us October 22nd for a public dialogue with Liza and Suffolk County Sheriff Steven W. Tompkins at the Museum of African American History. More information here. Share your thoughts in the comments – we love hearing from you and so do…
This past weekend, ArtsEmerson was honored to be a part of the 10th Annual Boston Book Festival! Beyond interacting with our community and meeting so many of you, we also were a part of the “Arts Activism in America: Igniting Change” session in Dudley Square, moderated by our artistic director, David Dower, and featuring Liza Jessie Peterson (THE PECULIAR PATRIOT), as well as famed poet and leader of the Black Arts Movement, Askia Touré….
In interviews, Liza Jessie Peterson often talks about The Peculiar Patriot as a love story. Her heroine, she points out, was modeled on the people she would see waiting in long lines in the middle of the night on Manhattan’s Columbus Circle for the buses that were going to take them to see their incarcerated loved ones in upstate New York prisons. They would travel through the night, some as much as eight hours,…
