Join us for the annual Toms River Area NAA CP's Black History Month Celebration. The afternoon's events include a del icious soul food tasting\, courtesy of NAACP members\, and a rousing perfo rmance by the Toms River High School North N'Step Team. There will also be giveaways and other surprises to enjoy.
\nThe main event will be a performance of Dreamweaver: The Works of Langston Hughes\, by act or David Mills. Mills&rsquo\; performance takes the audience on an odyssey spanning five decades of Langston&rsquo\;s writings\, where Mr. Mills por trays Hughes&rsquo\; iconic characters from his poems and short stories. M r. Mills&rsquo\; performance highlights Hughes&rsquo\; unending love for H arlem --with its foibles and fantasies and beauty and brutality. Mr. Mills plays black and white\, young and old\, and male and female characters Hu ghes created. This performance is sponsored by the Friends of the Ocean Co unty Library - Toms River.
\nThe afternoon's events begin at noon an d end about 3:30pm. Mr. Mills' performance will begin about 2pm. Please re gister.
\nActor and writer David Mills has been performing the works of Langston Hughes for two decades. \;He lived in Langston Hughes&rsq uo\; landmark Harlem home for three years (and was a recipient of the Lang ston Hughes Society Award). \;Mills holds an MFA from Warren Wilson Co llege and an MA from New York University. He&rsquo\;s published four poetr y collections: The Sudden Country\, The Dream Detective\ , After Mistic (Massachusetts slavery poems) and Boneyarn&mdash\;the sole book of poems about slavery in New York and winner of th e North American Book Award. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares\, Col orado Review\, Crab Orchard Review\, Jubilat\, The Common\, Brooklyn Rail\ , Rattapallax\, Poetry Daily\, Evergreen Review\, and Fence&mdash\;and he has been a Pushcart Prize finalist. He has also received fellowships\, gra nts\, and residencies from the New York Foundation for the Arts\, Breadloa f\, The American Antiquarian Society\, the Lannan Foundation\, the New Yor k State Council on the Arts\, Henry James and Holden Fellowships\, the Sch omburg Center\, the Bronx Council on the Arts and the Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize. He \;wrote the audio script for Macarthur-Genius-Award Winner Deborah Willis&rsquo\; curated exhibition "Reflections in Black:100 Years of Black Photography\," which showed at the Whitney and Getty Museums. He is the poet-in-residence for the Bronx Historical Society. The Juilliard S chool of Drama commissioned and produced a play by Mr. Mills about Dr. Kin g. And as an actor\, Mr. Mills also performs a one-person show of the work s of Dr. King. He has also recorded his poetry on ESPN and RCA Records and has had his works displayed at the Venice Biennale. He has appeared on Ne w York NPR affiliate WNYC.
\nhttps://theoceancountylibrary.libnet.info/ event/12508429 URL;VALUE=URI:https://theoceancountylibrary.libnet.info/event/12508429 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR