Playwright Katori Hall To Make Feature Film Directorial Debut With ‘Hurt Village’ AdaptationPosted by Wilson Morales
October 25, 2014
Source: Shadow and Act
Playwright Katori Hall, who won numerous theater awards including best new play award at the Laurence Olivier Awards in March 2010 for the MLK play ‘The Mountaintop,’ will make her feature film directorial debut with an adaptation of her most recent play, ‘Hurt Village,’ reports Shadow and Act.
The Hurt Village made its world-premiere at Off-Broadway’s Signature Theatre Company, in 2011, and starred Tony Award winner Tonya Pinkins, Amari Cheatom, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Joaquina Kulakango, Ron Cephas Jones, and Saycon Sengbloh.
It’s the end of a long summer in Hurt Village, a housing project in Memphis, Tennessee. A government Hope Grant means relocation for many of the project’s residents, including Cookie, a 13-year-old aspiring rapper, along with her mother Crank and great-grandmother Big Mama. As the family prepares to move, Cookie’s father Buggy unexpectedly returns from a tour of duty in Iraq. Ravaged by the war, Buggy struggles to find a position in his disintegrating community, along with a place in his daughter’s wounded heart.
A bold, gritty and devastating work, Hurt Village earned Katori Hall the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, given annually to an outstanding female playwright.
Glendon Palmer (“Jumping the Broom”) and Khaliah Neal (“Famous Farrah” TV series) are producing the film adaptation, with Tracy ‘Twinkie’ Byrd (“Fruitvale Station,” “Black Nativity,” “Being Mary Jane,” “Notorious”) handling casting.
