Image courtesy of mojafestival.com

On Thursday, October 29th, the Sounds of the Cigar Factory held its first performance at the Amphitheatre on 66 Columbus Street.

 The cast of the Sounds of the Cigar Factory included Mary Arnette Edwards, Marvetta Daniels, Cece Fields, Gloria Barr Ford, Idris L. Harley, Alice DuPre Jordan, Dick Latham, Phoebe J. Williams, Amy Hudock, Roger West, Ross Magoulas, Trisha Gufstafson, and Padgett Skardon.

This one-hour performance reading is inspired by The Cigar Factory by Michele Moore, to be published by the University of South Carolina Press in February 2016. Pat Conroy praises the novel as “Courageous, transcendent—a story in which the truth of language and the truth of lives hold equal sway.” The performance is a musical prose poem of Charleston labor, spoken through 12 voices, a medley of Gullah-Geechee and Charleston English-Geechie.