CLICKME to listen to Richard Pryor An all-star lineup of stand-up comedians will play in Peoria so that a comedic legend’s statue can stand tall in that town for generations to come.
George Lopez, Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley, Eddie Griffin and Mike Epps will headline “A Night For Richard,” on Nov. 2 at the Peoria Civic Center in Illinois.
Tickets for “A Night For Richard” go on sale Wednesday through Ticketmaster, by phone at 1-800-745-3000 or at the @PeoriaCivicCntr Box Office.
Richard Pryor Gets the Last Laugh in Peoria
Richard Pryor used his birth place, Peoria, as a prop for biting comedy about American racism. Now the only memorial to Pryor in this town is a street sign, but the sculptor Preston Jackson is changing that.
In the town that Pryor talked about, drugs, prostitutes, crime, poverty, and bigotry shaped Pryor’s anger. These problems still exist. “You can kind of feel the anger when he walks on stage,” Jackson says. “This is what drove me to start this statue, even without a committee. Just my little black ass. I’m going to do this piece, I said. I can relate to him. I can relate to his reaction to society.”
Phil Luciano, the Peoria Journal Star’s longtime columnist, says that Jackson’s statue is a step in the right direction for a city where much of the physical evidence of the environment … brothels and drug houses, has been replaced by office buildings. Adapted from an article in The Daily Beast.