WABE Arts

🎭 Golden Globe winner Regina Taylor brings her one-woman show, “Exhibit,” to the closing night of the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival at Spelman College. The play follows Iris, a Black visual artist confronting the fear of erasure. Taylor talks with WABE Arts and Culture Editor Sherri Daye Scott about the childhood memory that inspired the piece and how it found its way to Atlanta’s 15th annual festival.  

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🎭 Playwright Kira Rockwell’s new comedic play, “Holy Chicken Sandwich,” imagines a fictional fast-food chicken chain grand opening where devoted fans camp out overnight — until chaos breaks loose. Rockwell, Suzie Bass Award-winning writer, talks with WABE Arts and Culture Editor Sherri Daye Scott about the real events that inspired the play, the moral stakes of working in the service industry, and the characters she sees herself in. “Holy Chicken Sandwich” runs at Horizon Theatre in Atlanta. 

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🎶 GRAMMY-nominated bassist Divinity Roxx, Beyoncé’s former musical director,  talks with WABE Arts and Culture Editor Sherri Daye Scott about her new children’s album, ‘Starchild Vol. I.’ Roxx explains why she refuses to “dumb down” music for kids, how ditching the microphone changed her live shows, and why community— from her nieces and nephews to Atlanta’s own Genesis Academy Cheer Squad — became central to the project. 

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🎧 Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner and executive producer of "Garner: The Breath That Breathed a Movement," talks with WABE Art and Culture editor Sherri Daye Scott about learning documentary filmmaking from the inside, fighting for New York's Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act, and why she pushed filmmakers toward one particular memory from Eric's childhood.

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🎹 Eight-time Grammy winner Jon Batiste brings his 2026 Fantastical Tour Saturday to Chastain Park with the Atlanta Pops Orchestra, a rare orchestral date. He tells WABE Arts what keeps him grounded on the road, why all music is folk music, and what Atlanta means to him. 🎧

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After more than 30 years as a visual artist, Donna Mintz has written her first book,  'Stars at Noon,' out now from Mercer University Press. Her path from artist to published author began with a reading of James Agee's “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” alone on a Tennessee porch, a decade ago. WABE Arts and Culture Editor Sherri Daye Scott talked with Mintz about what she had to learn — and unlearn — moving from clay and glass to the page, and what she hopes readers carry with them. 📖 

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Mike Jordan and his wife and fellow writer Jacinta Howard created the Lit literary karaoke series back in 2014. The premise was simple: readers take the mic to perform uncensored excerpts from their favorite books over a live music bed. Then COVID hit. Now, after a six-year hiatus, Lit is back. WABE Arts and Culture Editor Sherri Daye Scott talked with Jordan about how the karaoke concept works, why admission is a book instead of cash, and what's brought local writers and first-time readers to the mic. 🎧 

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T. Lang, founder of T. Lang Dance and inaugural chair of Dance Performance and Choreography at Spelman College, is opening a new academy for teenage dancers. Ursa Major is a conservatory-style program for ages 13 to 18, built around movement invention, choreographic process, and what Lang calls "ancestral soul movement." WABE Arts and Culture Editor Sherri Daye Scott talks with Lang about the program’s training labs and why she wants young dancers to treat movement as an intellectual discipline, not just a physical one. 🎭 

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Center for Puppetry Arts Artistic Director Jason Hines has been fascinated by the rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla since building a Tesla coil for a junior high science fair. Now his award-winning puppet spectacle "Tesla vs. Edison" returns to the stage, complete with a live Tesla coil and a Niagara Falls showdown lit to look electrified. WABE Arts and Culture Editor Sherri Daye Scott talks with Hines about restaging the show, building an all-Atlanta creative team, and why, for now, "you gotta be in Atlanta to see it." 🎭 

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Atlanta muralist Nick “Turbo” Benson is leading a team of four painting “Next Stop,” a new Atlanta Beltline Art mural going up under an overpass on Cameron M. Alexander Boulevard in English Avenue. On this episode of WABE Arts, Sherri Daye Scott talks with Benson about honoring the Reverend Cameron M. Alexander — and a surprise nod to Gladys Knight hiding in the paint. 🎧 

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