Verdin's stage productions previewed at Grevemberg

“A Celebratory Tribute to the African American Woman” was performed at the Grevemberg House Museum’s front porch Thursday, and livestreamed on Soulful Productions’ Facebook page.
The play featured a scene from “The Forgotten Healer” by Ed “Tiger” Verdin, and was composed otherwise of songs, a speech, poetry, and a dance routine, all in celebration of the African American female’s historic perspective in the U.S.
Verdin was the director and lighting and sound technician for the 45-minute show, and said that Thursday’s performance was the second time the cast had fully reprised the show, and the third time they had performed it.
The cast was comprised of: Bria Burrell, Fallon Mitchell, Tiffany Dupas, LaDaisha Bowles-Webber, Shani P. Nelson, Kyla Prevost and Renita Nelson.
Burell opened the show with a rendition of “Ain’t I A Woman?” an extemporaneous speech delivered at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, on May 29, 1851 by American abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth.
Mitchell was next, as Dr. Emma Wakefield-Paillet, Louisiana’s first African American female doctor, through excerpts from Verdin’s “The Forgotten Healer.”
Verdin said of his play, “Dr. Phoebe Hayes, of the Iberia African American Historical Society, and Susan Dorsey loved my work on my 9/11 play, and they commissioned me to write the play on Dr. Wakefield’s life.
“Dr. Wakefield’s history had been erased and forgotten and wasn’t uncovered until Dr. Hayes remembered her mother and grandmother speaking of a black, female doctor from New Iberia. But, any time she researched it she could never find (confirmation of) it.
“She called the State and they said, ‘No, she didn’t practice medicine,” and Dr. Hayes was like, ‘I think she did practice medicine,’ having found a two-inch by two-inch ad that she (Wakefield) had taken out in the Times-Democrat in New Orleans, when she moved her practice. So, she (Hayes) took it to the State, and the rest is history.”
Following Mitchell was Dupas, who sang “Strange Fruit,” popularized by Billie Holliday, and reportedly written by Jewish communist teacher and civil rights activist from the Bronx, Abel Meeropol, who wrote it first as a poem, then later as a song.
Next, in sequential historical order came Bowles-Webber with a rendition of Maya Angelou’s poem, “Equality,” and after that was Nelson performing “Feeling Good,” by Nina Simone.
Original choreography was presented by Prevost, a senior at Franklin High School, and the show closed with Renita Nelson’s rendition of “I Know Where I’ve Been,” from the Broadway musical, “Hair Spray.”
The cast remarked in unanimous agreement after their performance that their individual parts are as relevant to their personal experiences today as the art is reflective of the times in which it was produced.
The show was sponsored by the Louisiana Department of Health-Bureau of Minority Health Access, Louisiana State Representative Vincent St.Blanc and 105.9KBZE.
It can be viewed by visiting Soulful Productions’ Facebook page.