Pictured: Director Harry Bryce. Photo courtesy of WBTT.

As part of the sixth annual Project1VOICE/1PLAY/1DAY, Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe will join an international effort to revive and reintroduce underappreciated African-American theater with a special staged reading of Tony Award-winning playwright George C. Wolfe’s, The Colored Museum, this coming Monday. With more than 40 theater companies, museums and cultural institutions participating in the project, similar staged readings will unfold across the world for a one-day celebration of Wolfe’s classic work.

“This is an effort to make sure that the literature of an entire culture is always on the front burner,” says Colored Museum director Harry Bryce. “Even though we continue to create, there is so much that for years was not presented. Now we have an opportunity to do something whereby the energy is united at one time.”

Written in 1986 as a series of vignettes or “exhibits,” The Colored Museum presents 11 scenes exploring Wolfe’s observations of the roles of identity and self within an African-American community both overtly and subtly embattled by a dominant and, at times, opposing culture. Opening with a broadside, the first sketch sees cheeky flight attendant “Miss Pat” welcoming the audience aboard a slave ship and asking them to fasten their shackles and not rebel—letting the audience know there will be no "kid gloves" in this show. Not all are so openly inflammatory but none hold back, whether exploring the intersectionality of sexuality and race or a choice as seemingly innocuous as a wig for a date.

“It’s about looking at one’s self, one’s journey through assimilation and the good, the bad and the indifferent,” says Bryce, “and it’s a wonderful selection.” Understanding the inherent trauma of compulsory assimilation and the conflict it breeds within the self plays a central role in the work, according to Bryce, but so does it in understanding the African-American experience. “It’s educational for everyone,” he adds, “and it gives us a chance to look at the African-American experience and what we have had to deal with that we may not have spoken about.”

The Colored Museum opens 8pm on Mon., Jun. 20, at the Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe theater. Tickets are $15.

Pictured: Director Harry Bryce. Photo courtesy of WBTT.