Ed Rampell – Hollywood Progressive
Red Harlem uncovers and dramatizes a cinematic slice of film history… According to Kimba Henderson’s play, the Communist Party USA recruited African Americans in Harlem to travel to the Soviet Union circa 1932 in order to act in a movie produced by the CPUSA and financed by Moscow about racism in America to be entitled Black and White. Langston Hughes, poet and leading light of the Harlem Renaissance, was commissioned to rewrite the cliché-ridden screenplay. Read more…
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
History at its most truthful and intense is rarely the narrative relayed in the textbooks. In Red Harlem, playwright Kimba Henderson digs deeper to focus on a period in American history when prominent African-American artists and intellectuals — and others not so prominent — were drawn to the teachings of the Communist Party as an alternative to the racism and economic inequality that oppressed them at home. Read more…