Ajuana Black stars as Queen Calafia: Ruler of California

Sept. 30-Oct. 2 in Buriel Clay Theatre, AAACC, San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO -- Phenomenal singer/songwriter/actress/educator Ajuana Black becomes the black queen who gave California its name in the three-day run of Queen Calafia: Ruler of California Sept. 30-Oct. 2.

The one-woman play graces the Buriel Clay Theatre in the African-American Art and Culture Complex for two evening performances at 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday and a student matinee on Wednesday at 2 p.m. Tickets are available on-line at queencalafia.com or by calling 415-447-4234.  General admission is $35.

Black plays a Los Angeles anthropologist, Dr. Wright Now, preparing for a major speech in a San Francisco hotel ballroom, when the nine murals on the ballroom walls--depictions of the 1510 allegory Las Serges de Esplandian--begin transforming her.

Las Serges de Esplandian by Garcia Montalvo featured Queen Calafia and her island nation "California" populated solely by black women, part of a genre of medieval literature which extolled beautiful, rich black women warriors as an outgrowth of the influence of the Moorish civilizations of southern Europe and the Middle East.

The play is drawn from the books Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 by John William Templeton, which conclusively established that Hernan Cortes used Las Serges as his inspiration for assigning the name California to this region of Mexico and the United States. 

It is a benefit for Up From Darkness, a highly-successful re-entry program in San Francisco's Western Addition for persons leaving incarceration and addiction founded by Rev. Regnaldo Woods and the late Reggie Glover.  September is Re-entry Month in San Francisco, underscoring the importance of re-integrating ex-offenders into society.

Ajuana Black has performed in shows like Dream Girls, Ain't Misbehavin' and Once on This Island for area theatre companies including TheatreWorks and Lorraine Hansberry Theatre.

Her new debut album A Soulful Journey (ajuanablack.fuzz.com) is infused with uplifting, yet funky music that she says "are so timely and needed for the times we are living in."  Hailing from Bishop O'Dowd High School and San Francisco State, she also performs with her band Black Out at Oakland's Soft Notes Restaurant.

Hundreds of students are expected for the matinee performance, kickoff for a two-day conference Preserving California Black Heritage, which will share techniques for infusing California's extensive African-American history in the classroom during seminars after the play on Wednesday, Oct. 1.

Black is also editor of Mama Earth Magazine and home schools nine children in Oakland, she'll join the panel Family Jewels, which features Regina Mason, co-author of the new Oxford University Press book The Life of William Grimes, (the life of her great-great-great grandfather who wrote the first self-published slave narrative), Sharon McGriff Payne, author of John Grider's Century: African-Americans in Napa, Sonoma and Solano County and filmmaker Kevin Epps, producer of The Black Rock: the Dark Side of Alcatraz, the first exploration of the hundreds of black prisoners on the fabled prison island.