ABOUT THE SHOW
HELLO THERE!
Bricktop: The Toast of Paris is the funny, raucous, spirited and moving story of the life of Ada Smith, known best as “Bricktop.” Told in one-act and featuring songs from Ragtime to Cole Porter to jazz. The musical play traces the joys and challenges of her life from rural Appalachia through her years in vaudeville to her time as the Queen of café society in Jazz Age Paris and beyond. As only the second black female entertainer in Paris, her career as a cabaret performer and club owner took her around the world, made her the companion of European royalty and a favorite of writers and musicians such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Elliott, John Steinbeck, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Jelly Roll Morton and many others. Told by one actress accompanied by a jazz combo, her remarkable story is also a picture of music and race relations in the 20th Century.
"
Our guests can’t stop raving
about this show! The Reviewers
called it
A Baptism
of
JOY! "
Lynn Felder
Winston-Salem Journal
"
I was able to take strangers from all parts of the world and all classes and make a Party!"
Ada
BRICKTOP
SMITH
I was FASCINATED
by the story of “Bricktop,” about the entertainer who rose to great success in a racially welcoming Paris before and after the Depression!"
Jay Handelman
Herald Tribune
"
I was FASCINATED
by the story of “Bricktop,” about the entertainer who rose to great success in a racially welcoming Paris before and after the Depression!"
Jay Handelman
Herald Tribune