FEAST ON THIS!
For the second year, Front Porch Arts Collective offers its Holiday Feast of staged readings of scripts from the holiday episodes of Black sitcoms of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. The brainchild of co-producing artistic directors Dawn M. Simmons and Maurice Emmanuel Parent and directed by Jackie Davis, this event is fast becoming a beloved seasonal favorite for Boston-area fans.
Maurice Emmanual Parent as George Jefferson in “984 W. 124th Street, Apt. 5C” (The Jeffersons, 1977) as well as Stephen Spencer and Jada Saintlouis as Steve Urkel and Laura Winslow, respectively, in “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Urkel” (Family Matters, 1992) provided standout performances. The entire cast brought impressive humor and skill to their portrayals of familiar characters as the fast-paced evening moved from one script to another in a staged reading that included plenty of sight gags.
Each new segment opened with the theme song of the sitcom that was about to be portrayed, and as each song was performed, the actors playing the main characters of the series appeared, delighting the audience with their renditions of the distinctive body language and facial expressions of each character. Parent, Spencer, and Saintlouis appeared in each of the four episodes, along with Christa Brown, Shani Farrell, Jonathan Kitt, Malik Mitchell, and a host of others who took on such roles as Louise “Weezy” Jefferson and Leroy in The Jeffersons; Carl, Harriette, and Eddie Winslow in Family Matters; Whitley Gilbert, Dwayne Wayne, and Freddie Brooks in A Different World; and Deacon Ernest Frye, Thelma Frye, and Reverend Reuben Gregory in Amen.
The scripts offered their own appeal: the Family Matters storyline carried echoes of the Frank Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life and the episode from A Different World was a retelling of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol set in an HBCU community. The plot of The Jeffersons raised alarm bells about George Jefferson’s behavior only to resolve in a holiday-appropriate act of generosity.
Generosity was certainly the theme of each show, as Laura Winslow developed sympathy for the annoying Steve Urkel, wealthy but lonely Whitley Gilbert learned to share with her less fortunate HBCU roommates, and egotistical Deacon Ernest Frye recognized that the point of a Christmas pageant goes beyond publicity.
The second night of the production tomorrow night will include a pre-performance fundraising reception featuring local celebrity GBH reporter and anchor Callie Crossley discussing her famed collection of Black Santa paraphernalia, an appropriate addition to this celebration of Black Christmas nostalgia.
Holiday Feast
staged readings of Christmastime scripts
A Different World, Amen, Family Matters and The Jeffersons
Front Porch Arts Collective
Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge
December 13 & 14 at 8, 2024
for tickets ($25), visit Front Porch Arts
