Asheville Community Theatre hosts ‘New Umbrella’ tonight, Sept. 20

Saturday, September 20 * 7:30 pm

Tonight, be a part of something really special. Story For Life is a new initiative in storytelling created by New Umbrella that brings the amazing stories of our elders to the stage. With the help of Asheville’s professional writers and our area’s most talented actors, these stories spring to life, and become part of all of our collective memory, part of what we know about each other, part of what makes us cherish living in community.

In a recent interview with the Asheville Citizen-Times, producer Elisabeth Gray, an Asheville native who splits her time between Asheville and New York, calls the stories “incredible.” One is about a 90-year-old Black Mountain native whose great-grandmother was a slave, and her great-grandfather was a slave owner. “She shares these incredible stories about Jim Crow Asheville,” Gray said. “And she moved to D.C. during the Civil Rights movement; at the moment of change, and talks about being asked out for the first time by a white man.”

Another involves a Tennessee man fighting on the Pacific front in WWII. And in another, a local African-American woman recounts her first positive experience of integration in the 1960s.

These are our stories, Asheville. We can’t wait to hear them – and we so hope that you’ll join us tonight for a very special evening in our very special town.

Click here for more information and to buy tickets.

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About Hayley Benton
Current freelance journalist and artist. Former culture/entertainment reporter at the Asheville Citizen-Times and former news reporter at Mountain Xpress. Also a coffee drinker, bad photographer, teller of stupid jokes and maker-upper of words. I can be reached at hayleyebenton [at] gmail.com. Follow me @HayleyTweeet

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