Three decades ago playwright Samm-Art Williams, a member of the Negro Ensemble Company, wrote Home. It was presented in New York City in 1979-80, picking up Tony Award and Drama desk nominations for best play, and had a busy life onstage for several years including a 1981 production at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park that was shepherded by D. Lynn Meyers, today the producing artistic director at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati. It’s had a resurgence of popularity in recent years, thanks in part to the advocacy of Ron O.J. Parson, whom Meyers has hired twice to direct plays by August Wilson at ETC. Parson staged Home in 2010 at Chicago’s Court Theatre, where it was a big hit. Now Cincinnati’s resurgent Queen City Theater will present that cast in a series of performances of Home at the new School for Creative and Performing Arts. Three actors portray more than 30 characters in the life of Ceephus Miles, a dirt farmer from North Carolina. The show covers 20 years of his life, from the late 1950s to the early 1970s — while reflecting the backdrop of social change in America as civil rights became a focal concern of the nation. Home is a significant work of American theater, one certainly worth seeing. Three weekends, concluding Sept. 18. $25.
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