What started as a one-man show — The War Shirt, starring actor-dancer Michael Downey and directed by artist Rod Lathim — has evolved a step further into a new documentary.
The War Shirt: A Dialogue with the Ancestors, a locally created and nurtured project that embraces and explores Native American and African American cultural traditions and history, will have its world premiere on Tuesday, September 19, at 7:30 p.m. at the Marjorie Luke Theatre. The screening of the 45-minute documentary will be free to the public and open-captioned, with the live post-film elements of the evening including sign language interpretation.
An accomplished neon sculpture artist who has had art exhibits in Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, Nashville, and New York City, Santa Barbara–born Lathim founded Access Theatre in 1979. He met Downey in 1981, when Lathim hired him to choreograph Stage Struck, an original musical he was co-creating and directing at the time.