Beverley Knight coming home to star for the first time at Wolverhampton's Grand Theatre

Express & Star

Her week-long appearance in Wolverhampton will fulfil a dream that she held ever since she was a child.  The 51-year-old has always credited youth theatre in the city for sparking her love of drama. And she continues to support amateur productions at her former school, Highfields in Penn, often returning to watch shows and give advice to students.  Now she will have her name in lights at the theatre's historic Grand Theatre when the show Marie & Rosetta visits in May.

Transcript

00:00People talk of the architects of rock and roll.

00:04Everybody talks about Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins.

00:09Very few people will reference Sister Rosetta, and she came before them all.

00:14Sister Rosetta Tharpe came up through the church and made gospel music,

00:19but because she sped it up and put a real beat and a groove behind it,

00:24she laid the seeds for what would be rock and roll.

00:27She is the godmother of rock and roll.

00:31So, the play is about Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Marie Knight,

00:34two famous gospel singers,

00:36and over the course of the play, you learn about their relationship.

00:40She marched to the beat of her own drum,

00:42but she had enough room in her heart to be able to share the spotlight

00:48with an up-and-coming Marie Knight.

00:51It is full of the most amazing, iconic songs you can imagine.

00:55It's also about joy, and I think a lot of the time

00:57when you think about black narratives, it's always deeped in trauma,

01:00and it's also quite sad that this is not the case.

01:03We are true and real in terms of the context,

01:05and definitely that's explored in the conversations that the two of them have.

01:09However, it's rooted in joy,

01:11and it's rooted in women being in charge and knowing what they want.

01:15Today, we have been shooting some images of Sister Rosetta

01:21with her iconic guitar.

01:23But the brief was, please, we want you to be singing.

01:25We want to capture you live, in motion, in action.

01:29We put on some tunes, Beverly was singing along.

01:31Her pipes are incredible.

01:33These were women who were turning the world upside down

01:37in the most wonderful way.

01:39I want people to come out of the theatre with huge grins on their faces

01:43and knowing that rock and roll was not just the creation of men.

01:48The audiences are going to be in for a treat.

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