Laughin' to Keep from Cryin': Oh! Those Blues of Langston Hughes

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Quanda Johnson

Fermat's Last Theater Company continues what has been a fruitful collaboration with artist and UW-Madison doctoral candidate Quanda Johnson, who has curated a third program highlighting a legendary writer. This time Langston Hughes will be celebrated with an interdisciplinary performance featuring readings by Johnson and Melvin Hinton (host of WORT's Radio Literature); dance by UW Dance Department senior Akiwele Burayidi; and music by Maggie Cousin, Sam Olson, Henry Ptacek and Dante Turkow. It's free, but be sure to bring proof of COVID-19 vaccination.

media release: Very few poets had the pulse of their community like Langston Hughes. A young lion of the Harlem Renaissance, he was descendant to a long line of "race" men and women. Born in poverty on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes' life was destined to be steeped in Black excellence, activism, and the Blues. The grandmother who raised him was the widow of Sheridan Leary, one of a handful of Black men who died in John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry. As a baby, Hughes had been wrapped in Leary's bullet-riddled shawl, and his soul must have been stamped with the poetic irony of that defining gesture. 

LAUGHIN' TO KEEP FROM CRYIN': Oh! Those Blues of Langston Hughes, conceived and curated by Quanda Johnson, is a multilayered tribute to Langston Hughes in his own words. Woven together with his poetry and passion for the blues, it features dance, a four-piece band, and artists of the spoken word. LAUGHIN' TO KEEP FROM CRYIN' celebrates Hughes, not only as the poet laureate of Harlem, but as a literary genius who wrote in every literary form from poems to plays to editorials. His voice was saturated with humor and joy, but also with pathos and a keen awareness of what it means to be Black in the Atlantic world.

Melvin Hinton will also be reading. Dancer is Akiwele Burayidi; band consists of Sam Olson on bass, Maggie Cousin on alto sax, Henry Ptacek on drums and Dante Turkow on guitar..

Quanda Johnson is a Fulbright Scholar and doctoral candidate in interdisciplinary theater studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She seeks ways to utilize performance to disrupt, and consequently alter, entrenched, cyclical assumptions about Blackness and the African Diaspora. Quanda presented her original works, In Search of Negroland: a different study of the negro race and The Ballad of Anthony Crawford: a love letter to america at the Gallatin Arts Festival, New York University, in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Both are part of her upcoming dissertation artistic performance and gallery exhibition, Trauerspiel: Subject into Nonbeing (spring 2022). This November, she will be featured in the world premiere of T.J. Elliott and Joe Queenan's new play, Genealogy, at Madison's Broom Street Theater.

Aug 19 update:

Masks: Madison / Dane County public health currently requires face coverings at all times indoors.

Vaccination: Crucible is currently requiring proof of vaccination for certain events, at the request of performers / promoters or at our discretion.  A good number of events are choosing to do this.

Check our calendar or our Facebook events page for event descriptions to see if proof of vaccination is required for a given event.

Acceptable proofs:

• A CDC vaccine card; the name on your card must match your ID.
• A photo of the card on your phone
• Pull up your MyChart or other online medical record system that shows your shot(s).
• Pull up your record in the Wisconsin Immunization Registry