A Cool Drink a Water

Related Content

• Twin Cities' best plays of 2011
  December 28, 2011
• Doubt at Park Square Theatre
  May 2, 2012
• Doubt
  April 25, 2012
• Playwrights' Center 40th Anniversary Celebration: No Work, All Play
  May 9, 2012
• Buzzer
  February 15, 2012

More About

• Sonja Parks
• Regina Marie Williams
• Maya Angelou
• Marion McClinton
• Isabell Monk O'Connor

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Mixed Blood Theatre has rounded up a stellar cast for the first show of their 35th Season. A Cool Drink A Water, by Thomas W. Jones II, contemporizes Lorainne Hansberry's classic play A Raisin in the Sun with a title borrowed from a Maya Angelou poem ("Just give me a cool drink of water 'fore I die"). Led by award-winning director and frequent Mixed Blood collaborator Marion McClinton, the cast features Regina Marie Williams, who wowed us all last year in Ruined; the lovely Sonja Parks in her Mixed Blood debut; Guthrie veteran Isabell Monk O'Connor; and Ansa Akyea (voted Best Actor by City Pages in 2007). Also starring in the show is the charismatic Thomas W. Jones II, who wrote the script. The press release says that in Jones's play, the characters from A Raisin in the Sun are transported into a contemporary comedy where the now-upper middle class Young family remains the lone African American family in a gentrified neighborhood. Touching on issues of class, 21st-century feminism, and family relationships, the production is sure to be provocative and entertaining. The play debuted in Atlanta last year and now premiers regionally at Mixed Blood.
Wednesdays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Starts: Sept. 17. Continues through Oct. 10, 2010