Things of the Heart

”Things of the Heart: Marian Anderson’s Story” by Shauneille Perry, playwright and director, is a dramatization of events in the life of the singer.

Miss Anderson, 78 years old (in 1981), a contralto, began her career in Philadelphia’s Union Baptist Church choir. She sang in concert halls all over the world and made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1955. She achieved considerable prominence in 1939, when she was not allowed, because she was black, to sing in Washington’s Constitution Hall by the hall’s owners, the Daughters of the American Revolution. They relented 25 years later and she gave a concert there in October 1964.