Trezana Beverley Will Direct a Staged Performace Of Oren Safdie's COLOR BLIND At Center For Architecture

Oren Safdie, a nationally celebrated playwright of contemporary architecture culture, will have his play, Color Blind, presented as a staged performance at the Center for Architecture in New York. The play was featured at the 2019 Symposium on Race & Architecture at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, and recently won the Kevin Tierney Prize for best new English language play in Quebec.

Color Blind is a fictionalized account of the jury deliberations surrounding the selection of an architect for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., designed by David Adjaye, completed in 2016. The play lifts the veil that renders the process of architectural production bewildering, and invites the audience into the usually sealed-off space where critical decisions about architecture are made.

"...further evidence of Safdie's acute awareness of the tensions and contradictions that underlie architectural culture and production, and the ability of these to yield highly theatrical-and sometimes excruciatingly uncomfortable-moments." - The Architects Newspaper

A native of Montreal where he grew up in his father, Moshe Safdie's famed Habitat '67, Oren Safdie attended Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture and Planning before changing careers in his last year of architecture school to write plays. He has produced a series of tomes on architecture culture, including his debut work Private Jokes, Public Places, the critical off-Broadway hit praised in venues such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Other architectural themed plays include The Bilbao Effect, which premiered at New York's Center for Architecture in May 2010, and False Solution, which premiered in 2013. He has been a contributor to a long list of journals, including Metropolis, Dwell, The New Republic and The National Post. Safdie is also the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the John Golden Fund and the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles. He has taught at the University of Miami, Douglas College and the California School of the Arts.

Winner of the distinguished Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway show For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf, Trezana Beverley has since created a unique signature in the American Theater as a director, singer, acting teacher and writer. Highlights include: Mother Courage; A Raisin In The Sun; Fly'n West; Peer Gynt; Constant Star; Crowns; The Nacirema Society; Macbeth; Medea, and King Lear. In film: Beloved (starring, Oprah Winfrey); Resurrection; Margaret and the Saturday Night Ladies, and T.V. series - Carolina Skeletons. Directing credits include Spell#7; Native Son; For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide ...; In The Blood; From The Mississippi Delta, Pecong; The Trojan Woman, Salome, Yellowman, The Bluest Eye; Blue Door; Mask in The Mirror - an Opera. Her singing and writing skills have been displayed in her one woman shows "The Spirit Moves"; and, "Mable Madness". Trezana, is an honorary member of the New York State Assembly.

COLOR BLIND AT CENTER FOR ARCHITECTURE, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10 AT 6:30 PM

Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Pl, New York, NY 10012

Tickets: Free ($10 suggested donation)

Reservations: https://calendar.aiany.org/day/2020-2-10/