Freefall theater st petersburg4/11/2023 ![]() They have to look right together, act right together – and, of course, sound right together, as Brant’s show is jammed with rafter-raising music. ![]() Marie and Rosetta are the only characters in Marie and Rosetta as such, their chemistry is paramount. Kirven’s new bestie is Hillary Scales-Lewis, who plays Marie Knight, Tharpe’s real-life young protégé (the play takes place in 1946, when the events actually happened). Kervin and Scales-Lewis: “I think we hit it off right away.” Photo by Bill DeYoung. Plus, I get to work, and I have a new friend now.” “As a performer, I couldn’t be more thankful. I knew I was in good hands,” she explains. “I knew coming into this that they were not going to leave me hanging. Although she’d never worked at freeFall before, she was longtime friends with Artistic Director Eric Davis and Community Development Director Matthew McGee. Kirven, a “glass half full” kind of person, says she didn’t worry about any of it, not for a second. And from the first words out of her mouth, on that first night, she absolutely owned Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She was in front of an audience before she knew what had happened. She also studied, on tape, the Tharpe songs she’d be singing in the show – including “Didn’t it Rain.”Īll this last-minute precision study was necessary because Kirven had been hired to replace another performer, who’d had to back out of the freeFall production less than a week before it opened. This was one of her line-learning techniques. In her car, as the precipitation pounded down, Kirven listened to a recording she’d made of Marie and Rosetta, with a friend taking the part of Marie Knight, the other character in George Brant’s historically-rooted play. Noah was glad when the rain stopped droppingĬrying brother Noah can’t you take on more It rained 40 days, 40 nights without stopping “I think it rained all across Louisiana.”īecause the world of theater is full of omens, superstitions and serendipitous suggestions passed down through the ages, this may very well have been a very good sign, as Kirven was on her way to play gospel music pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, whose most famous song is called “Didn’t it Rain”: “The weather was horrible,” Kirven reports. When she rolled across the Louisiana border, the skies opened up. Petersburg, where she’d been cast in freeFall Theatre’s new play Marie and Rosetta. It took actress Illeana Kirven 20 hours and change to make the drive, straight through, from her home in Texas to St.
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