Charlotte's Booth Playhouse will fill with poetry, ballet, music and visual art on November 1 when the fifth annual A Night of Artistic Renewal: Hope, Healing and Triumph returns to the Uptown venue. Doors open at 2:30 p.m. ahead of a 3:30 p.m. curtain, with live American Sign Language interpretation built into the performance.
The multidisciplinary showcase is produced and hosted by Dionne Hunter, a performance poet, author and arts advocate who created the event in 2021 to build a platform where artistic excellence and family accessibility could coexist, according to A Night of Artistic Renewal. As The Charlotte Post reports, the program weaves together music, dance, performance poetry, visual art, song and storytelling as it explores how people move through life with hope and healing.
The lineup leans heavily on poets with serious competitive pedigrees. Junious “Jay” Ward, Charlotte's inaugural Poet Laureate named to the post in April 2022, went on to become a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and this year's recipient of the Mary Frances Hobson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters, per the Academy of American Poets. Ward previously won the National Poetry Slam in 2018 and the Individual World Poetry Slam in 2019.
Emmy Winners and World Champions Share the Bill
Joining Ward onstage is Boris “Bluz” Rogers, a three-time Emmy Award winner who has performed nationally for more than two decades and who joined Blumenthal Arts in late 2020 as Director of Creative Engagement after coaching local group SlamCharlotte to three National Poetry Slam titles, according to Charlotte is Creative. Also featured is Ed Mabrey, whom WNIJ reports has more than 500 slam competition wins and six Regional Championships. The poetry roster rounds out with DS Will, Jaycee Cowan, Keith Allison, Linda Orji, Lisa Ann Markuson and Hunter herself, per the Charlotte Post.
Music will come from Adayla Turner, Enacense, Mason “Quill” Parker, saxophonist Bryan Patterson Jr. and violinist Marcus R. Pyle, according to the same report. Ballroom dancers Robert Fitzgerald and Takeila Fox will perform alongside ballet artists Raven Barkley and Maurice Mouzon Jr., while visual artists Julianna O'Malley and Tajmah Allison round out the program's non-musical disciplines.
Public funding helps make the production possible. The event received an Arts & Science Council Community Connector Grant, according to organizers behind A Night of Artistic Renewal.
Workshops Extend the Mission Beyond the Stage
The event also includes an initiative for young people and adults centered on creative expression, the organizers say. It maintains an ongoing community partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Carolinas.
Booth Playhouse, at 130 North Tryon Street, is inside the Blumenthal Arts Center.
