LONESOME BLUES

BY AKIN BABATUNDÉ AND ALAN GOVENAR
A REGIONAL PREMIERE

Directed by Akin Babatundé

Preview Performances 9/1 and 9/2
Opening Night Saturday, September 3, 2022
In Performance September 1 - 18, 2022, Thursdays through Sundays
Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm, Sunday matinees at 2:00 pm

Lonesome Blues is the life and songs of the legendary bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson: born blind, but ultimately able to express his deepest emotions through music. Discovered on a street corner in the Deep Ellum section of Dallas, Texas in 1925, Jefferson made more than 80 records over the next four years, becoming one the most prolific and influential performers of his generation and propelling the growth of rhythm and blues, soul, doo-wop, rap, and hip-hop.

Building on the success of their earlier musical Blind Lemon Blues, presented by the York in 2007 and 2009, Alan Govenar and Akin Babatundé have used new research to probe deeper into the life and psyche of Blind Lemon Jefferson. In Lonesome Blues, J. Dontray Davis plays more than ten different roles, channeling the spirits of men and women alike, in a journey that is at once evocative, troubling, and transformative. Songs and monologues bring to life the voice of Blind Lemon Jefferson, his community, and his musical contemporaries, including Blind Willie Johnson, Lillian Glinn, Hattie Hudson, Bobbie Cadillac, and Lead Belly-all coming together in Jefferson's mind on the day of his death, December 19, 1929, in Chicago.

“A seminal treasure of African-American music gets vibrantly - sometimes thrillingly aired in Lonesome Blues, a one-person evocation of the 1920s singer Blind Lemon Jefferson.”
~Ron Cohen, Musical Theatre Review