Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill is a fictionalized telling of Billie Holiday's final concert. Thomasina Petrus does a masterful job bringing the life and music of "Lady Day" to Yellow Tree's intimate stage in a story that spans the highs and lows of Billie's career, including tales of love, loss, family, drug abuse, and racism.
The production's goal was to turn the Yellow Tree space into a night club in 1959 south Philadelphia. Some audience members were seated on stage at cabaret tables, we physically lowered the house lights, added additional house lights overstage, and used haze to invoke the feeling of the entire theatre being a tight night club from the first moment the audience walks into the space. Private moments with Billie in the dressing room are glimpsed through a scrim hidden in the upstage wall.
Directed by Austene Van
Scenic Design by Justin Hooper
Costume Design by Samantha Fromm Haddow
Sound Design by Jeff Lowe Bailey
Lighting Design by Alex Clark
Photos by Alex Clark
