What People are Saying About
"Live Rich, Die Poor"
What made this performance especially powerful was Wallace’s command of rhythm and pacing—she moved in and out of character with the fluidity of memory itself. Nothing felt forced. Nothing was caricatured. Each voice, each gesture, each silence carried weight. It was performance as praise song, as invocation, as living archive. It was also a necessary correction: too often, Zora is flattened into an icon or misread entirely. Wallace’s embodiment reminded us that Zora Neale Hurston was not just a “genius of the South,” but a radically human being who dared to see Black life—rural, Southern, womanist, spiritual—as worthy of celebration and study.
- Aiesha Turman, Ph.D.
actor, writer, director
Ann C. Perry is an actor and writer from Memphis, Tennessee. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre from UT Chattanooga. Ann was last seen in Tennessee Shakespeare’s To Kill A Mockingbird. She also played multiple roles in Tennessee Shakespeare’s Educational Tour of Romeo and Juliet. Other theatre credits include No Niggers, No Jews, No Dogs; Blues for an Alabama Sky; From the Mississippi Delta; The Death of the Last Black Man in the Entire World; and Women in Shakespeare. Ann can also be seen in the independent films 100 Lives, The Romance of Loneliness and The Department of Signs and Magical Intervention. Ann is a writer of fiction, plays, screenplays, children’s stories and has just started the torture of writing her first novel. Live Rich Die Poor is Ann’s first one person play and is based on the life of Zora Neale Hurston, the famed folklorist and Harlem Renaissance writer.
We All We Got
Written by Ann C. Perry, "We All We Got" is the first commissioned play by the Memphis Orpheum Theater, developed in collaboration with residents of Binghampton, Memphis' oldest neighborhood. This highly successful community-based play celebrates the resilience, hard work, and love of family within the Binghampton community. Inspired by real experiences, the fictional story follows teens Bakari and Shavonne as they navigate issues of race, changing family dynamics, gentrification, violence, and the struggles of adolescence.
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