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Kasi Lemmons Pays Return Visit to SLU for Special Book Club Discussion

01/24/2019

The Saint Louis University Library Associates join with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis to present author, actor, director, and librettist Kasi Lemmons for a Book Club Discussion of New York Times columnist Charles Blow's memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones.

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Noted author, actor and director Kasi Lemmons visits SLU Friday,  Feb. 1.

The event will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1, in the Center for Global Citizenship Auditorium and will be moderated by Jonathan Smith, Ph.D., Vice President of Diversity and Community Engagement. (Note: You do not need to have read the book in advance to attend).

St. Louis-born Lemmons moved to Newton, Massachusetts, at age nine. She attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, transferred to UCLA to major in history, and finally left UCLA for the film program at the New School for Social Research.

Although her first exposure to the theater was as an actress (she appeared in a local soap opera as the first black child to enter an all-white school), Lemmons’ ambition was to be a director. "I wanted to do something more meaningful than going to auditions,” Lemmons noted.

Lemmons has had a successful acting career that includes roles as Jodie Foster’s roommate in Silence of the Lambs, and as the unfortunate graduate student in Candyman, as well as ones in numerous television series and made-for-TV movies. In addition to the critically-acclaimed Eve’s Bayou, which she both wrote and directed, she wrote and directed Black Nativity, based on a play by Langston Hughes. Both films feature roles for her husband Vondie Curtis-Hall. Eve’s Bayou eschews the urban ghetto environment of so many films based on the African-American experience to focus on a well-to-do black family in the bayou country of 1960s Louisiana. Critic Roger Ebert named the beautifully shot, lyrical film, the best of 1997.

This spring, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis will present the world premiere of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on the memoir of New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow. In addition to Lemmons’ libretto, the opera will feature music by award-winning jazz musician Terrence Blanchard, composer of Champion, the critically-acclaimed opera based on the life of boxer Emile Griffith. Don’t miss the opportunity at the Feb. 1 event to hear Lemmons discuss the process of turning a complex and acclaimed memoir into a moving opera text.

Kasi Lemmons is also currently in production for the highly-anticipated film, Harriet, about the life of Harriet Tubman starring Jannel Monét and Vondie Curtis-Hall.

The event is free and open to the public as well as the SLU community, however reservations are requested. RSVP to donna.neely@slu.edu.