Acclaimed Stratford production of Alice Childress’s Wedding Band now streaming
Stratford, ON… The Stratford Festival is proud to share the 2023 production of Alice Childress’s Wedding Band by making it available for streaming worldwide beginning February 7. Directed by Sam White, the production was hailed on stage, with The New York Times calling it a “revelation”, a sentiment echoed in the Toronto Star, which described it as “fresh and revelatory.”
Wedding Band features Cyrus Lane as Herman, Antonette Rudder as Julia Augustine, Maev Beaty as Annabelle, Joella Crichton as Lula Green, Ijeoma Emesowum as Mattie, Liza Huget as Fanny Johnson and Lucy Peacock as Herman’s Mother, with Aliya Anthony as Teeta, Eleanor Beath as Princess, Kevin Kruchkywich as The Bell Man, Jonathan Mason as Shrimp Man and Micah Woods as Nelson Green.
The play is an emotional and revealing portrayal of interracial love, set in South Carolina in the shadow of the First World War and the 1918 flu epidemic. It tells the story of Julia, a Black seamstress, and her white partner, Herman, a baker. “Childress captures their relationship with real tenderness,” read the Toronto Star review, also praising Rudder as “magnificent as Julia” and saying Lane “imbues Herman with a gentle ardent soul.”
The creative team includes Set Designer Richard H. Morris Jr.; Costume Designer Sarah Uwadiae; Lighting Designer Kathy A. Perkins; Composer Beau Dixon; Sound Designer Debashis Sinha; Movement Director Pulga Muchochoma; Supervising Fight Director Geoff Scovell; Intimacy Director Alix Sideris; and Dramaturg Arminda Thomas.
The production was directed for film by Nicholas Shields, with film editors Cameron Hucker and Jordan Krug.
The play has been produced only a few times since Childress wrote it in 1966, as interracial marriage remained contentious in the U.S. for so long. This production brought the title to a wide Canadian audience for the first time, in 2023, leading The Globe and Mail to describe it as “a thoughtful revival of a forgotten American script.”
Similar reasoning led New York Times critic Jesse Green to include the production in his “Tony Awards 2024: Who Will Win (and Who Should)” article, saying: “Best play revival is a slim category, with just three nominees, all excellent. But ‘Purlie’ was more than a revival: It was a reclamation. That’s also why, for the second year in a row, I’m putting Alice Childress’s 1962 play on my list — this time for a production at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. It can take multiple revivals to ensure survival.”
Stage Door raved about the production, saying: “The characters Childress creates are complex and director Sam White draws superb performances from them individually and as an ensemble. … I am lost in admiration for this play. It is a play that we should all have known about and studied long before now. We are so lucky that the Stratford Festival has resurrected it from obscurity and given it a production that in no way could be bettered.”
Wedding Band is available on Stratfest@Home, the Stratford Festival’s subscription streaming service, beginning February 7. Subscribe to Stratfest@Home for just $7.99 a month and gain access to the best in Canadian digital theatrical productions, including the Stratford Festival’s acclaimed Shakespeare films, selected productions from our past seasons, exclusive behind-the-scenes videos and podcasts, and original, award-winning digital content from around the world.
Support for filming is generously provided by Robert & Jackie Sperandio and an anonymous donor.
