Harlem Mosaics

In the summer of 1927, two old friends, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston met up in the south through pure synchronicity. While there, they resolved to make a pilgrimage to Sparta, Georgia, the town that inspired Jean Toomer's visionary novel Cane. They were looking for inspiration for a work of art of their own: the first ever authentic blues opera. Over the course of the next three years, their opera would turn into a play about two old friends who fall out. The writing of this play would also end their own friendship. Harlem Mosaics tells the story of this ill-starred collaboration between these two Black Renaissance luminaries, set amidst the backdrop of late 1920's Harlem, Greenwich Village, New Jersey, Cleveland and the south.