Quick: name a black superhero. Now, name five more. Well, even if you were able to rattle off a list of well-known African-American superhumans, you'd be hard pressed to find one as bad and funky as Herald M.F. Jones, the caped crusader of Jade City. In "Jade City Chronicles - Vol. 1," a new play by Durham-based writer Howard Craft, we meet Herald, his friends and a cast of charismatic villains willing to run the fictitious metropolis into the ground for financial gain.
The audience meets Herald just as he's considering hanging up his cape for good...and just as a serial killer begins a murderous rampage through Jade City. The humorous, yet poignant plot questions a community's collective morality in the context of race, class and politics. "Jade City Chronicles - Vol. 1" is currently running at Man Bites Dog Theater in Durham. Craft joins host Frank Stasio along with director Jay O'Berski and actors Kashif Powell and Mike Wiley to talk about bringing the eye-catching energy of a comic book to life on stage and taking the audience inside the mind of a suffering superhero.
