Growing up in Hell’s Kitchen, R&B sensation and Haute 100 New York member Alicia Keys would often visit Broadway with her mother. The singer is now working on Broadway as co-producer of a new production of Lydia R. Diamond’s play Stick Fly with director Kenny Leon – and describes the opportunity as “a dream come true.”
Keys commented, “Stick Fly is an incredible, moving and hilarious play that I’m so honored and excited to help bring to Broadway this winter.” On her official website, she posted that she couldn’t wait to bring the production to her fans. “Sometimes you come across that rare piece of art that gets to you – that takes you to a different place, and opens your eyes and your heart to a new horizon,” she explained. “For me, Stick Fly is that piece of art.”
The contemporary play is set in the home of an affluent African-American family who gathers for a summer weekend together. As the new girlfriends of the adult sons join the family’s festivities, hilarity ensues through a tangle of class, race, and identity politics.
The Grammy Award-winning artist credits her mother, Teresa Augello, for bringing theatre into her life as a positive interest, perhaps as part of her mother’s efforts to keep Keys away from street life and out of prison throughout her adolescence, as she had recently revealed she was in danger of. “My mother’s greatest passion is the theatre and she introduced it to me very early in my life. I grew up right next to Broadway – I could see the glittering lights from our apartment. To produce a play like this is a dream come true for me.”
She adds, “To have the chance to share this play with an audience, night after night, in a beautiful theatre, on the streets that I walked every day as a kid with only ‘a pocket full of dreams’, can only be described as modern-day magic.”
Stick Fly will debut with preview shows on November 18 at the Lyceum Theatre. To purchase tickets or for more information, click here.
Our Haute 100 list details the accomplishments of the most influential people in each of our markets. To see the entire Haute 100 New York list, click here.
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