Pryor Commitment

Before comedian Richard Pryor died last December, he bluntly told his daughter, Rain, about the ups and downs of show business. "My dad's theory was, 'This is what you want to do. This is what I want you to do. You're definitely talented. If you're going to do it, you're going to do it just like I did,'" says the 36-year-old Pryor, who brings her one-woman show, Fried Chicken & Latkes, to Akron tonight. "He wanted you to develop this skin, because a lot of people are going to tell you no and shut the door at all levels of your career."

The performance is based on Pryor's relationships with her dad, her African American great-grandmother, and her Jewish grandmother. Its series of vignettes includes childhood memories of living in Beverly Hills mansions and then scraping by on welfare after her parents divorced, as well as a new scene that pays tribute to her father. "The new section is what ties up the show, which is the acceptance that I'm black and I'm Jewish," she says. "It's finding your own truth and identifying with that."
Fri., Feb. 3, 8 p.m.