Zora Is My Name! (1990)

Ruby Dee and Zora Neale Hurston

Zora is my Name! is perhaps the most wonderful current presentation that you can buy of the work of Zora Neale Hurston in terms of the spirit of African American culture she worked all of her life to convey. Hurston was, herself, a great believer in performance as a mode of communicating the cultural richness of the people she studied.

Videotaped in 1990 (according to Amazon), with an all star cast featuring the brilliant Ruby Dee in the title role, and superbly supported by Richard Mosley, musician Olu Dara, Louis Gossett, Flip Wilson and Paula Kelly back when we were still taking such magnificent African American actors and musicians for granted. Effortlessly and gracefully, this ensemble cast blends a variety of Hurston texts and songs (I recognize most readily excerpts from Mules and Men and Dust Tracks on the Road) in an original production written by Ruby Dee. Of course, since it was rcorded eighteen years ago, It doesn't hurt at all that everybody in the cast looks so young, vigorous and down right handsome. This production is both a classic and a deeply pleasurable thing to watch. Thank God it was preserved on dvd and made readily available for purchase. I would snap it up before it disappears again. You've got to see this for yourself. February 19, 2008

A Woman Called Zora

This DVD is a rendition of a live stage play called "All About Zora" which was performed by Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Guy Davis and others. If I cannot have the stage play, this is the next best thing. In this body of work by literary great Zora Neale Hurston, you get folk tales, folk lores and other "lies" as Zora herself put it. This DVD stage act includes Ruby Dee and Guy Davis, along with such noted stars as Flip Wilson, Louis Gossett, Jr., Lynn Whitfield, Paula Kelly, Roger E. Mosley (known for his role in Magnum P.I.), Beah Richards, Oscar Brown, Jr. and Eartha Robinson (a former dancer on the TV show Fame). The cast is rounded out with Olu Dara, Otis Sallid, Count Stovall and Leontine Guillard. There is a bonus interview with Zora's personal secretary and a historian, who give even more insight into the woman called Zora. Absolutely great! October 8, 2007

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