ROI & MARY IS BEYOND EXTRAORDINARY!
says WPFW Radio Host and Professor Rusty Hassan
Sondra and I attended the staged reading of Roi & Mary on Saturday at Joe’s Movement Emporium. It was written by Maria Jones about her mother’s involvement with the Black Arts Movement and her relationship with Leroi Jones in 1965 in Harlem before the move to Newark and becoming Amiri Baraka. In the program notes Maria writes that she didn’t meet her father until she was sixteen but letters he sent to her mother gave her insight into a sensitive romantic side to his personality. Maria’s daughter Laci Joseph played Mary and my WPFW colleague Jordan Strudwick was Roi. Kelly Elaine Navies narrated the play and there was a full cast of characters with music interludes performed by Brian Settles, James B King Jr. and J C Jefferson. The play was certainly a fitting dedication to Maria’s mother Mary (Kelly-Marie Berry) and an insightful portrayal of events in the Black Arts Movement. The reading was indeed, beyond extraordinary.