ARTS ALIVE St. Pete Catalyst's Bill DeYoung - Erica Sutherlin, Studio@620

Today’s guest on Bill DeYoung's ARTS ALIVE podcast is Erica Sutherlin, executive artistic director of The Studio@620, St. Petersburg’s multi-purpose arts and entertainment venue. She’s also the director of Cadillac Crew, a play by Tori Sampson that shines a spotlight on women activists during the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1950s and early-to-mid ‘60s. It’s a co-production with Tampa’s Powerstories Theatre. Cadillac Crew (opening Thursday, Nov. 6) is about four Black women in Richmond, Virginia who go on the road, to small towns across America, spreading the gospel of the movement. Cadillac crews were real, although the characters and plot of Sampson’s play are not. To maximize the intimacy of the story, the play will be presented in the round.  That subtle blurring of stone hard facts and artistic license is the kind of thing Sutherlin-as-director is attracted to. It’s a way of bringing in the bigger picture – in this case, the little-known lady-heroes of civil rights – to educate people. As well as entertain them. Cadillac Crew is preceded by The Unseen Thread: Women’s Art As Movement, an exhibition of works by woman artists curated by Debbie Garrett and Freddie Hughes. It opened with a reception Thursday evening, and will stay up at The Studio@620 through Nov. 19. There are performances of Cadillac Crew Nov. 6-16 (find tickets and info here).