New One-Man Basquiat Play By One of His Old Friends

[00:00] When writer and actor Nadia Bowers learned that her beloved older sister Sasha died of a drug overdose, she set out to track down the dealer who sold Sasha the fentanyl-laced heroin. Bowers discusses her memoir about the experience, called Dear Dealer.

[28:03] Actor, playwright, and director Roger Guenveur Smith first met artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in Los Angeles in the 1980s, beginning a long friendship. Guenveur Smith discusses his one-man show, ‘In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat,’ which looks back at his memories with Basquiat, along with the show’s sound designer Marc Anthony Thompson, musician and founder of the music collective Chocolate Genius. ‘In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat’ is running at New York Theater Workshop through October 4.

Photo: American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 - 1988), circa 1985. (Rose Hartman/Getty Images)