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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