Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Wed., Feb. 27, 2019

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

Marie Knight (Marissa Rudd) auditions for the legendary
Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Michelle E. Jordan).
Photo credit: Kevin Berne

TheatreWorks has selected two dynamic Bay Area actors to play the titular duo—Michelle E. Jordan, our guest this morning, as musical icon and 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Marissa Rudd as her partner and future gospel legend Marie Knight. Jordan, a TheatreWorks veteran, received a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for her performance in TheatreWorks’ Dreamgirls.


She has also been seen at TheatreWorks in It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues, Crowns, Go Down Garvey, Hi-Hat Hattie!, Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery, and Ain’t Misbehavin’. She also performed in Blues in the Night with Maurice Hines and Freda Payne at the Post Street Theatre and Bricktop at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, and serves as the choir director of East Bay Church of Religious Science.

Gospel and Rhythm and Blues legends Marie Knight and Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

2. We rebroadcast our Tribute to Ntozake Shange, recorded Nov. 23, 2018. 

 http://tobtr.com/s/11191927