Carvery One-woman show in Las Vegas
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By Lindsay Jones
The Daily News
HALIFAX - As people celebrate the vibrant culture and heritage of Nova Scotia's black community in metro this month, ACTRA Maritimes member Linda Carvery will bring it all south of the border. The Halifax singer and actor is traveling to Las Vegas later this month to perform the one-woman show This is Nova Scotia From Where I Stand and a jazz duet with singer Jeremiah Sparks.
'It's a challenge because they know so little about us up here,' said Carvery. 'That's exciting for me to bring something Nova Scotia to them.'
The opportunity came about because of her connection with Los Vegas pianist composer Woody Woods, a past director of the Nova Scotia Mass Choir. Woods worked with the choir about a dozen years ago.
Whenever he traveled back to Las Vegas, friends and colleagues would ask 'What's happening in Nova Scotia?' said Carvery. 'Why do you go there?'
'Sometimes, they still think we're polar bears and Eskimos.'
Held at the West Las Vegas Library Theatre, the show is part of a host of Black History Month activities.
In her 20-minute show of spoken word and song, Carvery explains the black connection between the United States and Nova Scotia. She will focus on how local black communities settled here from the southern states in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
She will relay how African American jazz celebrity Duke Ellington used to hang out at an after hours venue in Africville in the '50s and '60s, and had a relationship with a local dancer and wrote a song for Maynard Street jazz musician Bucky Adams's wife Clara.
'I want to build a connection. I'm sure a lot of them don't know a lot of Americans are part of the black community here.'
Carvery leaves for Las Vegas Feb. 15, the day after she performs as a hotel receptionist for the locally-shot Warner Brothers TV movie Sybil, starring Jessica Lange.
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