‘Tempestuous Elements’ Educates While Paying Tribute (Review)

metroweekly.com:

Tempestuous Elements at Arena Stage, Anna Cooper, principal at M Street, fought to teach Black students a classical curriculum at a time when revered educators like Booker T.

Washington advocated instead for learning a trade. While Washington preached uplift through industry, Cooper, like her contemporary W.E.B.

DuBois, espoused the ideal of uplifting the race through education and civic engagement.Portrayed with passion by Gina Daniels, Cooper stands firmly on those principles against all sorts of opposition throughout Corthron’s enlightening, if stilted, narrative.

She also leads with wisdom and compassion, guiding both her students and faculty to see her vision of progress.Psalmayene 24’s world-premiere production relays a handsomely-produced vision of turn-of-the-20th-century Black intelligentsia at odds over the path to the promised land.Performed in the round on the Fichandler Stage, and set primarily in the salons and parlors of prominent African-Americans of the period, the show warmly evokes Cooper’s real-life circle in Washington, D.C., bourgeois Black folks alight with ideas and culture.Visually, the era is best represented in LeVonne Lindsay’s sumptuous costumes and the convincing hair and wig design by LaShawn Melton.