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Cannot access this performance because it occurred in the past: 9/28/19, 8:00 PM.
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Joshua Gelb and Nehemiah Luckett
jazz singer
World Premiere
Saturday, September 28, 2019 at 8:00PM

Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse Theater
466 Grand Street
New York, NY 10002

Recommended for ages 12+.

Please be advised that this production contains use of the N-word and charged imagery that may be triggering to audiences.

jazz singer is a theatrical exhumation of the first feature-length “sound film” The Jazz Singer, reinterpreted by Joshua William Gelb and Nehemiah Luckett. Set on the Lower East Side, the 1927 film tells the story of a “jazz crooner” forced to choose between his immigrant Jewish heritage and his aspirations to become a Broadway star. Though the film is historically significant for its integration of synchronized sound, it is also remembered for its controversial use of blackface. Gelb and Luckett’s musical rendering offers a contemporary take on a distinctly U.S. American story, one that interrogates appropriation, assimilation, atonement, and whether escape from the specter of blackface is possible.