Crystal Rae Productions

Crystal Rae is a friend of mine from my days as a student at Abilene Christian University.  She has started Crystal Rae Productions and has produced a number of artistic offerings for the Abilene community.


Her upcoming project is A Raisin in the Sun.  Produced in part by the ACU Office of Multicultural Enrichment, the ACU Black Students Association and Cooper High School, it will be performed at Cooper High School at 7:00pm on Friday, March 30th and Saturday, March 31st.


Also, part of the proceeds will go to the Carver Youth Council in Abilene.  You seriously want to support Crystal Rae Productions.

A Raisin in the Sun is a play beautifully written by Lorraine Hansberry.  It's central characters are the Youngers, a black family living in a post-World-War-II Chicago neighborhood.  At the beginning of the play, the family's patriarch has died, leaving the family a sizeable life insurance cheque.  The Youngers (Mama, son Walter Lee and his wife Ruth, and daughter Beneatha and her Nigerian boyfriend Joseph Asagai) all have different ideas about how to use the money - and what their family should expect of the future. When Mama uses almost half of the money to make a down payment on a house in a white neighborhood, the whites who already live there send a representative from their neighborhood "Improvement Association" to bribe the Youngers to stay away.  Despite other setbacks and unexpeted opportunities, the family remains together at the end of the play: determined that whatever the future brings, they will be stronger together.


I highly recommend attending this production - perhaps I'll see you there!

In addition, Crystal has published an e-book of poetry called Road Map Home.  It's only $1.00 and really wonderful.  Here's one of my favorite poems from the collection:


Honest

No one taught me how to stay
Is that okay to say
Doesn't matter
Ima say it anyway
No one taught me how to stay put
longevity
sitting through the storm to see what the rain brings
no one taught me how to bear up
or suffer long
suffering in my world was always wrong
Now I'm contemplating forever
with one man
and my heart is having a conniption
what do I know about being constant
or steady
I've been breast fed souped up
black girl independence and
I guess God had had enough and arranged an intervention
or an interruption, or a revelation of this thinking's corruption
So I'm in a clinic for that
going through detox for that
sweating and screaming away my nights
as the spirit of entitlement fights for its hold on my life
I'm going to meetings where I say,
"Hi my name is Crystal and I'm a recovering self-sufficient"
taking it one day at a time
loving you
being true
the kind of woman you'd want to come home to
resisting the urge to show you my check book
and saying things like "Nigga look"
learning from the folk who see the possibility
of life long real love monogamy
I've gotten off the band wagon or out the paddy wagon
I'm taking on the biggest challenge ever laid before me
doing life with complete vulnerability
refusing to compromise on my integrity
and asking God to handle the ones who mishandle me.
It has been taught that the weak become wives
I swallowed the doctorine like magicians swallow knives
and the truth is that love done right is attempted only by the strong
who sit to see what the rain will bring
who've learned to suffer long.

Check out Road Map Home by Crystal Rae!  It's awesome!


Websites:

Crystal Rae Productions: http://www.crystalraeproductions.com/index.php

Map to Cooper High School: http://maps.yahoo.com/#tt=&q=3639+Sayles+Blvd%2C+Abilene%2C+TX++79605-7050&conf=1&start=1&lat=32.407807&lon=-99.74893&zoom=16&mvt=m&trf=0

Buy Crystal's e-book here: http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/road-map-home/18939841?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1