Art-Performance Review

I was enchanted and entertained Addison's Watertower Theatre's *Black Pearl Sings* as it was part musical and pure performance. Set in 1960's Texas, the lives of two women, Susana, a white Midwest want-to-be Harvard professor and Pearl, poor southern black woman incarcerate; the one passion they share is music and when Susana locates Pearl in prison she tries to coax out of her a "slave song" for her ethnomusicology research collection (equal Harvard promotion) that Pearl will never divulge. Though she sings this song in a sacred tribal language of Africa at the end minus Susana; she does so with the largess of an opera performer. Props and lighting were minimal to allow the acting and mostly acapella singing to be taken in fully. Pearl's line at the end of the performance that left the audience in one long, collective gasp, "I am not giving Miss Susana my song; it's for my granddaughter so she can go to Harvard."