Andrew Moodie to Celebrate World Premiere of ‘Harlem Renaissance’ with Cast of TFS Acting Students

Dora Award-nominated playwright Andrew Moodie is entrusting the world premiere of his latest play, Harlem Renaissance, to his talented young acting students at Toronto Film School.

The 75-minute stage production, which will debut at Toronto’s Papermill Theatre featuring a cast of fifth-term Acting for Film, TV & the Theatre students later this month, was inspired by Wallace Thurman’s 1929 novel Infants of the Spring.

“I had heard about something called the Harlem Renaissance, I knew it had something to do with the twenties and art and black America, but it was only after reading the novel that I truly realized what that golden period of artistic and ideological revolution was all about,” Moodie said, noting that he was immediately struck by the book’s characters.

While many of the novels about black Americans he’d read before focused on “the poor, the broken spirited, the downtrodden,” by contrast, Moodie said Thurman stacked the cast of Infants of the Spring with a group well-educated and middle class twentysomethings who energetically sought to conquer the world.

“The characters were all based on real people – the actors, singers, dancers, poets and philosophers who inhabited his own life,” Moodie said.

“He struggled to portray vividly a group of real people who set out to boldly redefine what being a Negro means, and in the process, challenged the boundaries of personal freedom for all of American popular culture.”

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Harlem Renaissance marks Moodie’s eighth play, following Riot (which won the 1996 Chalmers Canadian Play Award,) Oui, Wilbur County Blues, A Common Man’s Guide to Loving Women, The Lady Smith, The Real McCoy, and Toronto the Good (which was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play).

“As a writer I have always been fascinated by voices that have yet to be heard,” he said, “I have always attempted to chronicle unusual lives from within the black community that in some way speak something universal to all peoples from all communities.”

Harlem Renaissance, which is stage managed by Klein Wilhelm, will take to the stage at the Papermill Theatre for a three-performance run on December 19, 20 and 21 as follows:

• Thursday, December 19 at 9:30 p.m.
• Friday, December 20 at 7:00 p.m.
• Saturday, December 21 at 1:00 p.m.

The Papermill Theatre is located at Todmorden Mills, 67 Pottery Rd. Tickets are free and available at the door.

Creative Team Behind Harlem Renaissance: