Keisha Blount is bringing the Harlem Renaissance to Cherry Hill to kick off Black History Month.
The Feb. 2 showing, at Cherry Hill High School East, 1750 Kresson Road, of “Uptown” will begin at 7 p.m., boasts free admission, and features the Sankofa Marketplace.
The Cherry Hill African American Civic Association and the African American Culture Club of Cherry Hill High Schools East and West are presenting the annual show.
But this year, the audience can expect a twist.
Blount, a 2005 East graduate, took over as director and producer of the black history show, which has been a part of Cherry Hill for almost 30 years, in 2010.
“The dynamic of the show has changed,” Blount said. “In the past, it has been more of a presentation,” with individual acts centered around a theme.
This year, for the first time, the show will be a musical, written by Blount over three months, with a full cast of 20.
“It took awhile,” she said, but the play will be “really fun.”
“The play is about a young man who migrates from the Carolinas into New York in pursuit of becoming a musician,” she said.
It’s set in the 1920’s Harlem Renaissance.
The main character will come in contact with others who, in turn, inspire him to follow his dreams.
Plus, he finds love.
The hour and a half long play is “artistic and colorful,” Blount said, while also “shedding light on historically the world’s first time publically seeing that there’s a black middle class that existed.”
An educator by training, her hope is to filter education into her thespian roots, as “Edutainment,” she said.
The songs will come from that time period and will allow for the audience to reminisce, even if they weren’t yet born, she said.
“You can still appreciate the consistencies,” she said, with how the play overlaps between the past and present.
Dancing is a prime example.
“The energy and creativity when you think about bebop,” she said, can be compared to hip-hop now.
“It’s within the grain of tradition and people,” she said.
Halfway through the play, there will be a half an hour intermission for attendees to visit the marketplace in the cafeteria across the hall from the auditorium, which will feature a plethora of local black businesses.
In the past, bakery owners, hair salons, jewelry makers and African art and garb businesses have been in attendance, Blount said.
Her hope is for a packed house.
“It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be funny,” she said. “There’s going to be times when you’ll laugh. There will be times when you may be moved.”
“Overall,” she added. “It’s just going to be a good night. You’re going to wish that we had more nights.”
Cast members have been rehearsing on weekends since the beginning of December, as Blount lives in the Washington, D.C., area these days.
Support from members of the community, including her parents, the cast, and teachers from East, West and Carusi, has kept her going.
Her desire was to create a script that the cast members could “grab hold onto and take ownership of.”
“We make it work,” she said. “We’re more like a family.”
The availability of the auditorium at East is the main reason why there is only one showing, Blount explained, with major spring productions beginning almost immediately after the show.
“In the future, that’s something we’re going to need to work out,” she said.
In the meantime, the shows from recent years have gone on without a hitch.
“It’s so weird how the theme every year just happens,” she said.
From serious to lively, shows receive good feedback.
And, hopefully, this year will follow down that route as it retreats into the past.
“When I think back on black history, the time period of the Harlem Renaissance is exactly that,” Blount said. “It’s performance art at its finest.”
