FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT (NEGRO UNITS)
CONTRIBUTED BY: ANTHONY DUANE HILL
Harlem Federal Theatre Project Production of MacBeth
Courtesy Library of Congress
In 1935, in the middle of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration created the Works Progress Administration Federal Theatre Project (FTP) as part of the New Deal economic recovery program. Negro units, also called The Negro Theatre Project (NTP), were set up in 23 cities throughout the United States. This short-lived (1935-1939) project provided much-needed employment and apprenticeships to hundreds of black actors, directors, theatre technicians, and playwrights. It was a major boost for African American theatre during the Depression era.
These units were situated throughout the country in four geographical sectors. In the East, the most productive units were located in New York City, New York, Boston, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Newark, New Jersey. In the South, units were placed in Raleigh, North Carolina, Durham, North Carolina, and Birmingham, Alabama. In the Midwest, they were situated in Chicago, Illinois, Peoria, Illinois, and Cleveland, Ohio. In the West, units were in Seattle, Washington, and Los Angeles, California.
The best-known and most active FTP was The New York Negro Unit (1935-1939). Located at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, it staged some 30 productions. Two white directors, John Houseman and Orson Welles headed it in 1935. Three black directors, Edward Perry, Carlton Moss, and H. F. V. Edward replaced them in 1936. The unit’s most popular production was the Haitian, or “voodoo,” Macbeth (1935), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play set in the Caribbean, under the direction of Wells. Other productions included Frank Wilson’s folk drama Walk Together, Children (1936), which described the forced deportation of 100 African American children from the South to the North to work for menial wages. Arna Bontemps and Countee Cullen’s The Conjur Man Dies (1936), a farcical mystery in three acts, dramatized Rudolph Fisher’s mystery-melodrama. Also in 1936, J. Augustus Smith and Peter Morrell co-authored Turpentine, a social drama in three acts and ten scenes that focused on the evils of the Southern labor camp system. George MacEntee’s The Case of Philip Lawrence (1937) was a courtroom melodrama. Haiti by William DuBois (not to be confused with W.E.B. DuBois), appeared in 1938 as a historical drama about the overthrow of a Haitian government. The Negro Youth Theatre, a popular subdivision of the New York Negro Unit, produced Conrad Seiler’s social drama Sweet Land (January 1937), which toured the streets of New York with the production during the following summer.
The Newark Negro Unit, in combination with the white New Jersey unit, produced one of the most successful FTP productions by a black author, The Trial of Dr. Beck. Hughes Allison’s play was a courtroom melodrama about color stratification among upwardly mobile Blacks. The Trial was produced at Union City and Newark, New Jersey in 1937 and then transferred to the Maxine Elliott Theatre on Broadway, where it ran for four weeks.
The Philadelphia Negro Unit produced Prelude in Swing, a 1939 musical documentary by Carlton Moss. The Boston Negro Unit was directed and run by Ralf Coleman, also a playwright and one of the leading performers. His brother Warren Coleman, and H. Jack Bates, the main resident playwright, assisted him. Broadway and film actor Frank Silvera was also a member and leading actor in this unit. Among the plays this unit produced (c. 1937-1938) were Bates’s Cinda, a Black version of Cinderella, Dear Morpheus, a fantasy of love and marriage, Streets of Gold, Black Acres, The Legend of Jo Emma, The Lost Disciple, and Coleman’s Swing Song. The Hartford Negro Unit produced Trilogy in Black by Ward Courtney in 1937. The Raleigh Negro Unit produced Heaven Bound, a black morality play adapted by Laura Ward in 1936.
Shirley Graham (later Mrs. W.E.B. DuBois) headed The Chicago Negro Unit from 1936 to 1939. This unit rivaled the New York unit in the originality, popularity, and variety of its offerings. The Chicago unit’s most acclaimed production The Swing Mikado (1938), was a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, which was a hit both in Chicago and New York City. Other productions by this unit included Lew Payton’s Did Adam Sin? (1936), Little Black Sambo (1937), a children’s operetta, and Theodore Ward’s drama on the Depression, Big White Fog (1938).
In the Far West, The Seattle Negro Unit’s (1936-1939) play production over four seasons (1936-1939) was boosted greatly by the presence of playwright-in-resident Theodore Browne. The unit staged four of his plays, including Lysistrata, an African American adaptation of Aristophanes’ comedy, and Natural Man, a dramatization of the John Henry legend. Go Down Moses was a play about Harriet Tubman and her involvement in the Underground Railroad. Swing, Gates, Swing was a musical revue. The Los Angeles Negro Unit produced two plays by black playwrights. John Henry by Frank B. Wells in 1936, about the legendary railroad worker, and Run Little Chillun’! in 1938-1939), a revival of Hall Johnson’s folk drama that originally appeared on Broadway in 1933. – BLACK PAST
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Publicity still portrait of American actor Leigh Whipper (1876 – 1975) in the film ‘Of Mice and Men’ (United Artists), 1939. (Photo by John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive/Getty Images)
Leigh Whipper, the first Black member of the Actors’ Equity Association (1913), was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1876. His father, William J. Whipper, was a Pennsylvania entrepreneur and abolitionist before the Civil War and later a member of two Constitutional Conventions during the Reconstruction era. His mother, Frances Rollin Whipper, was a writer. Whipper attended public school in Washington, D.C. After leaving Howard University Law School in 1895, he immediately joined the theater.
Leigh Whipper as the Crab Man in Porgy (1927)
PORGY AND BESS
PORGY AND BESS (A FOLK OPERA) was the last thing George Gershwin wrote for the Broadway stage. ALVIN THEATRE 1935
– “It is a Russian who has directed it, two Southerners who wrote its book, two Jewish boys who wrote its lyrics and music and a stage full of Negroes who sing and act it to perfection. The result is one the far famed wonders of the melting pot. The most American opera that has been seen or heard” – John Mason Brown ( New York Evening Post)
– It was a finacial failure. It would take many years to reach landmark status.
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess (1935)
Porgy and Bess is an English–language opera by the American composer George Gershwin, with a libretto written by author DuBose Heyward and lyricist Ira Gershwin. It was adapted from Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward’s play Porgy, itself an adaptation of DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel of the same name.
Porgy and Bess – The American Opera
“Opened at the Alvin Theatre in New York on October 10, 1935. 124 performances. An opera by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, Dorothy Heyward, and Ira Gershwin. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Produced by The Theatre Guild. Cast: Todd Duncan, Anne Brown, John W. Bubbles, Ruby Elzy, Warren Coleman, Abbie Mitchell, Edward Matthews, Georgette Harvey, and the Eva Jessye Choir.
PORGY AND BESS is probably the most famous and most successful American opera from the twentieth century and at times has been the most controversial. Based on DuBose Heyward’s novel, PORGY, and the play that was adapted from it by Heyward and his wife Dorothy, it has long been considered the crowning achievement in the stellar careers of all of the authors. Since its debut in 1935, the story of the crippled beggar transformed by his unexpected and improbable love for Bess has been performed all over the world by theatre and opera companies. The landmark 1953 Broadway revival toured for years as a goodwill ambassador on behalf of the U.S. State Department, and in 1959 the opera was filmed by Samuel Goldwyn. In 1993 Trevor Nunn’s lauded staging for Glyndebourne Opera and the Royal Opera at Covent Garden was televised.”
The best-known Black opera ever to play on Broadway, Porgy and Bess was written by a trio of White men: the brothers George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, a southerner who wrote the novel “Porgy” about a crippled beggar who lives in the poor black fishing community of Catfish Row and falls for the local bad-girl Bess. George Gershwin had long been fascinated by African-American culture and he was excited about setting Heyward’s story to music. But Porgy and Bess were controversial right from the start. Music critics thought the score was too lightweight. Theatre critics thought the operatic recitative was off-putting. And many African Americans complained that the story, which dealt with drugs, gambling, and loose sex, stereotyped Black people. The original production closed before it could recoup its investment but a1976 Houston Grand Opera production restored the show’s reputation, Diane Paulus’ recent 2012 revival with Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald in the title roles won a Tony, and such songs as “Summertime” and “My Man’s Gone Now” remain among the best-loved and most performed in the American Songbook.
1935 – Porgy and Bess
George and Ira Gershwin penned this opera, featuring an all-Black cast of classically trained singers. Even though it has been criticized for stereotyping African-Americans with depictions of drug abuse, poverty, and prostitution, it has been revived on Broadway seven times, most recently in the 2012 Audra McDonald- and Norm Lewis-led production. – Broadway.com
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“In a July 1947, issue of The NAACP’s publication The Crisis, John Lovell, Jr. wrote an article titled “Roundup: The Negro in the American Theatre (1940-1947),” which examines “the theatrical doings of Broadway and its environs” in regards to African American actors. In the article—which was published in a post-World War II, pre-Civil Rights Movement era U.S.—Lovell Jr. writes, “Of marked interest is the fact that this integration into the American theatre is making superlative demands. It requires that the Negro’s talents be twice as good as would be the case if he were already accepted.”
During his roundup, Lovell Jr. discovered, “In the less than seven years since America went, psychologically, to war, the central American theatre has employed Negro performers in 110 plays which ran an aggregate of 13,373 performances.” The number of shows with Black performers steadily increased from three in 1940 to 28 in 1946. These productions starred Canada Lee, Katherine Dunham, Pearl Bailey, Josephine Premice, Pearl Primus, Avon Long, Maurice Ellis, Melvin Howard, Frank Miller, Juanita Hall, Frederick O’Neal and other luminaries. (Some these artists were members of the American Negro Theatre, and an exhibit commemorating the 75th anniversary of this company’s founding is on display at the Schomburg Center.)”
– African Americans on Broadway Then and Now
By A.J. Muhammad, Librarian III
Katherine Dunham and Jean Leon Destine in”Bal Negre.” NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 5057016
As is the case this season, the shows that African Americans performed in on Broadway during the 1940s were a mixture of plays and musicals such as Cabin in the Sky, Big White Fog, Porgy and Bess, Native Son, Othello, South Pacific, Carmen Jones, Anna Lucasta, Show Boat, Juno and the Paycock, Lysistrata, Bal Negre, Striver’s Row, Run Little Children, You Can’t Take it With You, Finian’s Rainbow and St. Louis Woman. Lovell Jr. pointed out that with the exception for Theodore Ward’s The Big White Fog, and Our Lan, and Street Scene for which Langston Hughes penned lyrics, that were no “full-fledged Negro writers” whose work was being produced on The Great White Way. Ironically, even Native Son, which received two productions in 1941 and 1942, was adapted by Orson Welles and Paul Green from Richard Wright’s novel of the same name. However, numbers improved slightly only when taking Black musicians represented on Broadway into account: Thomas “Fats” Waller, Duke Ellington, Hall Johnson and Noble Sissle.
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The American Negro Theatre
Sidney Poitier, Robert Earl Jones, Hilda Haynes, and the American Negro Theatre ©NYPL for the Performing Arts
1940 The American Negro Theatre is founded in Harlem by writer Abram Hill and actor Frederick O’Neal. Before it closed in 1949, the group produced 19 plays in Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. And it’s Studio Theatre training program for beginning actors, launched in 1942, kickstarts the careers of actors such as Ruby Dee, Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitier.
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Paul Robeson – Othello
Paul Robeson in Othello, (1943)
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American bass-baritone concert artist and stage and film actor who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political activism. Educated at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, N.J., where he was an All-America football and Columbia University, he was also a star athlete in his youth. He was an all-American football player in college and earned a law degree at Columbia University, but Paul Robeson scored his greatest accomplishments on the stage.
A scene from “Othello” with Paul Robeson as Othello, Theatre Guild Production, Broadway, 1943/ 1944
Tall, charismatic and blessed with a deep melodious voice that made him a favorite on the concert circuit, he began acting in all-Black Harlem productions and also became friendly with members of the Provincetown Players, whose resident playwright Eugene O’Neill cast Robeson in All God’s Chillun Got Wings, the controversial 1924 play about the ill-fated marriage between a white woman and a black man. That production, which drew protests letters and newspaper editorials, would help prepare Robeson for his greatest challenge — and greatest triumph — when he took on the title role in Othello, with the husband-and-wife team of José Ferrer and Uta Hagen as Iago and Desdemona. Robeson had played the part earlier in London but he had been unsatisfied with that performance and worked hard to realize a fuller creation of the jealous Moor (he and Hagen even embarked on an affair). The payoff was a production that ran for 296 performances, longer than any previous production of Shakespeare on Broadway.
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Bloomer Girl 1944
Bloomer Girl is a 1944 Broadway musical with music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg, and a book by Sig Herzig and Fred Saidy, based on an unpublished play by Lilith and Dan James. The plot concerns independent Evelina Applegate, a hoop skirt manufacturer’s daughter who defies her father by rejecting hoopskirts and embracing comfortable bloomers advocated by her aunt “Dolly” Bloomer, who was inspired by the women’s rights advocate Amelia Bloomer. The American Civil War is looming, and abolitionist Evelina refuses to marry suitor Jeff Calhoun until he frees his slave, Pompey.
The original Broadway production opened at the Shubert Theatre on October 5, 1944, directed by William Schorr and produced by John C. Wilson in association with Nat Goldstone. Agnes de Mille was the choreographer, and her contributions included a Civil War ballet. The production starred Celeste Holm as Evelina, David Brooks as Jeff Calhoun, Dooley Wilson as the slave Pompey, and Joan McCracken in the featured dancing role as Daisy. While successful—it closed on April 27, 1946, after 657 performances on Broadway—it has seldom been revived.
“Black History of the IATSE.
“In existence since 1886, IA Stagehands Local 1 granted an all-Black auxiliary branch a charter in 1937 after Black workers in Harlem organized independently as a means of stopping white outsiders from hoarding all the theater jobs.”
It wasn’t until almost 20 years later, in 1955, that the all-Black members of auxiliary Local 1A were admitted into Local 1. A year earlier members of 1A filed a complaint with the NY State Commission Against Discrimination (SCAD) and sought to merge. Although the IA was reluctant and testified that “[our] members told us they didn’t want to work up there [in Harlem] because they were afraid. It was then that we formed their [auxiliary] group. We’ve been nice to them” SCAD informed the IATSE that niceness had nothing to do with the way Local 1 was “perpetuating a situation that is contrary to the law of this state.”
A Raisin In The Sun
A Raisin In The Sun (1959)
With a cast in which all but one character is African-American, A Raisin in the Sun was considered a risky investment, and it took over a year for producer Phillip Rose to raise enough money to launch it. There was disagreement with how it should be played, with a focus on the mother or focus on the son. When the play hit New York, Sidney Poitier played it with the focus on the son and found not only his calling but also an audience enthralled. Borrowing its title from the lines of a Langston Hughes poem (“What happens to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”) Lorraine Hansberry’s pioneering drama debuted just five years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision officially ended segregation in the U.S. It told the story of a Black family who’s yearning for a piece of the American Dream included moving to a modest home in an unwelcoming white community. The legendary production starred Claudia McNeil as the family’s widowed matriarch, Sidney Poitier as her grown son, Ruby Dee as his wife and Diana Sands as the intellectual younger sister who, like a growing number of Blacks, was trying to connect with her African roots. Lloyd Richards, who would later go on to head the Yale School of Drama, directed the production, breaking through another color barrier as the first African American to stage a drama on Broadway. A Raisin in the Sun lost that year’s Tony race for Best Drama to The Miracle Worker but 15 years later, its musical adaptation Raisin would win for Best Musical.
Prior to the 1960s, there were virtually no outlets for the wealth of Black theatrical talent in America. Playwrights writing realistically about the Black experience could not get their work produced, and even the most successful performers, such as Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen, were confined to playing roles as servants. It was disenfranchised artists such as these who set out to create a theater concentrating primarily on themes of Black life. In 1965, Playwright Douglas Turner Ward, producer/actor Robert Hooks, and theater manager Gerald Krone came together to make these dreams a reality with the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC). The main catalyst for this project was the 1959 production of “A Raisin in the Sun.”Written by Lorraine Hansberry, of “A Raisin in the Sun” was a gritty, realistic view of Black family life.
The long-running play gave many Black theater people the opportunity to meet and work together. Robert Hooks and Douglas Turner Ward were castmates in the road company. Together they dreamed of starting a theater company run by and for Black people. While acting in Leroi Jones’ play “The Dutchman”, Hooks began spending nights teaching to local Black youth. In a public performance primarily for parents and neighbors, the kids put on a one-act play by Ward. A newspaper critic who had attended the performance recommended that Ward’s plays be produced commercially. While Hooks raised money, Ward wrote plays. The pair recruited a theater manager, Gerald Krone, and the three men produced an evening of Black-oriented, satiric one-act plays. One of these short plays, “Day of Absence”, was a reverse minstrel show, with Black actors in whiteface performing the roles of whites in a small Southern town on a day when all the Blacks have mysteriously disappeared.
The plays, performed at the St. Marks Play House in Greenwich Village, were a major success. They ran for 504 performances and won Ward an Obie Award for acting and a Drama Desk Award for writing. Impressed with his work, the NEW YORK TIMES invited Ward to write an article on the condition of black artists in American theater. Ward’s piece in the Times became a manifesto for the establishment of a resident Black theater company. With money from the Ford Foundation and a home at the St. Marks Playhouse, the Negro Ensemble Company formed officially in 1967.
1959 – Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun Premieres on Broadway
Inspired by fellow African-American writer and Broadway playwright Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” (also known as “A Dream Deferred”), Lorraine Hansberry’s legendary play opened on Broadway in 1959. The story follows a Black family at odds over how to transcend disenfranchisement and segregation in 1950s Chicago. The play has had two Broadway revivals and a musical adaptation, Raisin. – Broadway.com
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The Blacks: A Clown Show
The Blacks: A Clown Show (1961)
The Blacks was, after The Balcony, the second of Genet’s plays to be staged in New York. The production was the longest-running Off-Broadway non-musical of the decade. This 1961 New York production opened on 4 May at the St. Mark’s Playhouse and ran for 1,408 performances. It was directed by Gene Frankel, with sets by Kim E. Swados, music by Charles Gross, and costumes and masks by Patricia Zipprodt. The original cast featured James Earl Jones as Deodatus, Roscoe Lee Browne as Archibald, Louis Gossett, Jr., as Edgar, Cicely Tyson as Stephanie, Godfrey Cambridge as Diouf, Maya Angelou as the White Queen and Charles Gordone as the burglar.
The Blacks (1961)
The Blacks: A Clown Show by Jean Genet at the St Marks Playhouse (05/04/1961) directed by Gene Frankel, with Roscoe Lee Browne, Lou Gossett Jr., Cecily Tyson, Godfrey Cambridge, Arthur French, and Maya Angelou.
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Cast
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| Award | Person / Company | Function | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  WON |
1961 Obie Award, Special Citation | Bernard Frechtman | Translator |
| 2 | WON |
1961 Obie Award, Best New Play | Jean Genet | Playwright |
| 3 | WON |
1961 Obie Award, Distinguished Performance | Godfrey M. Cambridge | Actor |
The Blacks: A Clown Show (French: Les Nègres, clownerie) is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Published in 1958, it was first performed in a production directed by Roger Blin at the Théâtre de Lutèce in Paris, which opened on 28 October 1959.
A review of the Theatre Royal Stratford East production (2007) states:
In a prefatory note, Genet specifies the conditions under which he anticipates the play would be performed, revealing his characteristic concern with the politics and ritual of theatricality:
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Day of Absence
Day of Absence (1965)
Since the Whitehouse can’t seem to answer the question concerning the number of Black people working there, I have another theory..
Douglass Turner Ward, one of the founders and former Executive Producer of the Negro Ensemble Company produced a play “Day of Absence”
What would the world look like if everyone that Donald J. Trump had ever disdained — the Mexicans and the Muslims, the nasty women, and the failing journalists — vanished? How would a morning unfold if Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” suddenly turned up empty? If those we look down on disappeared overnight, how would we go on?
That’s the question posed by Douglas Turner Ward’s “Day of Absence,” a “satirical fantasy” that kicked off the pioneering Negro Ensemble Company in 1965.
Fifty-one years later, the company has revived it in a feisty, slapdash production at Theater 80 St. Marks, featuring several cast members who starred in the original version.
In “Day of Absence,” the White residents of a Southern town wake to find all the Black people gone.
As shoes go unshined and babies unfed, the municipality devolves into chaos. It isn’t long before even the segregationist mayor is begging: “I’ll be kneeling in the middle of Dixie Avenue to kiss the first shoe of the first one ’a you to show up. I’ll smooch any other spot you request.
Erase this nightmare ’n’ we’ll concede any demand you make, just come on back — please?”
At one point several white racist townspeople can’t seem to locate their White friends and come to the conclusion and say; “They must have been secret niggras”.
A “reverse minstrel show,” “Day of Absence” is performed by Black actors in whiteface, save for a white actor who appears as an announcer and a Black actor who comes on in the end without the benefit of cosmetics. Mr. Ward’s wit is scathing, if not exactly nuanced.
There’s cruel humor in a White cop who goes crazy when he has no Black men to assault and a Klan member upset that he wasn’t the one to drive the African-Americans out of town.
“Ceremonies in Dark Old Men” by Lonne Elder III was the second play presented in NEC’s second season (circa 1969.)
NEC’s second season (circa 1969) – Ray McIver’s “God is a (Guess What?)”. Here, (From left to right) are, Judyann Jonsson (Elder), Rosalind Cash, Allie Woods, Hattie Winston (Wheeler) Julius Harris, and Chester Sims
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Pearl Bailey in Hello, Dolly!
1967 – Pearl Bailey’s All-Black Hello, Dolly!
November 12, 1967: Pearl Bailey opens in HELLO, DOLLY! on Broadway – Pinterest
In what might be seen as a radical casting move even today, in 1967, the entire Broadway cast of Hello, Dolly! turned over to welcome an all-Black cast, led by actress and singer Pearl Bailey as Dolly Levi.Jack Crowder, Sherri Peaches Brewer, Pearl Bailey, and Winston DeWitt Hemsley Friedman-Abeles/©NYPL for the Performing Arts
The reviews for Bailey and the new cast were glowing, and the production ran for another two years. Bailey received a 1968 Special Tony Award for her performance.
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No Place To Be Somebody
No Place to Be Somebody (1969)
PLAYWRIGHT: CHARLES GORDONE
“No Place to be Somebody is a 1969 play written by American playwright Charles Gordone. It was during his employment as a bartender in Greenwich Village that Gordone found the inspiration for his first major work, No Place to be Somebody, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.”
“It was during his employment as a bartender in Greenwich Village that Gordone found the inspiration for his first major work, No Place to be Somebody, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Gordone’s Pulitzer signified two “firsts”: he was the first African American playwright to receive a Pulitzer, and “No Place to be Somebody” was the first off-Broadway play to receive the award.
Written over the course of seven years, the play explores racial tensions in a Civil Rights-era story about a Black bartender who tries to outsmart a white mobster syndicate. In his final speech, in June 1995, delivered at the Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, Gordone described the play as being “about country folk who had migrated to the big city, seeking the urban myth of success, only to find disappointment, despair, and death.” After an experimental production directed by Gordone, in November 1967, the play was produced in a showcase of three weekends at The Other Stage in Joe Papp’s Public Theater in South Manhattan by director Edward Cornell. The play was then launched on May 4, 1969, by Joseph Papp on a 248-performance run at the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Public Theater, followed by an acclaimed limited engagement at Broadway’s ANTA Theatre. The play’s run (at New York’s ANTA Playhouse) lasted 15 performances, followed by three national touring companies from 1970 to 1977, all of which Gordone directed.
The play was revived in 1987 at The Matrix Theatre Company in Los Angeles, California in an adaptation directed by Bill Duke and starring one of the original cast from the play’s initial 1969 run, Ron Thompson, in the role of Shanty Mulligan.”
AWARDS
| CLARENCE DERWENT AWARD | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | MOST PROMISING MALE PERFORMER |
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WINNER |
| DRAMA DESK AWARD | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | MOST PROMISING PLAYWRIGHT |
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WINNER |
| 1969 | OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE |
|
WINNER |
| 1969 | OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE |
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WINNER |
| PULITZER PRIZE | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | PULITZER PRIZE FOR DRAMA |
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WINNER |
| THEATRE WORLD AWARDS | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | THEATRE WORLD AWARD |
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WINNER |
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PURLIE
PURLIE (1970)
Ossie Davis’s award-winning 1961 play, Purlie Victorious, was turned into an exciting new musical by Peter Udell (lyrics) and Gary Geld (music), two protégés of Frank Loesser, with a book by Udell and producer/director Philip Rose. Driven by a magnificent cast in which Cleavon Little played the title character and Melba Moore, discovered earlier in Hair, took her first starring role, it opened at the Broadway Theatre on March 15, 1970, for a long run of 688 performances. Also on board for that triumphant run were Sherman Helmsley, in the days before he became George Jefferson in TV’s All In The Family; cabaret performer Novella Nelson; and blues and gospel singer Linda Hopkins.
Purlie is a musical with a book by Ossie Davis, Philip Rose, and Peter Udell, lyrics by Udell, and music by Gary Geld. It is based on Davis’s 1961 play Purlie Victorious, which was later made into the 1963 film Gone Are the Days! and which included many of the original Broadway cast, including Davis, Ruby Dee, Alan Alda, Beah Richards, Godfrey Cambridge, and Sorrell Booke.
Purlie is set in an era when Jim Crow laws still were in effect in the American South. Its focus is on the dynamic, traveling preacher Purlie Victorious Judson, who returns to his small Georgia town hoping to save Big Bethel, the community’s church, and emancipate the cotton pickers who work on oppressive Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee’s plantation. With the assistance of Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, Purlie hopes to pry loose from Cotchipee an inheritance due to his long-lost cousin and use the money to achieve his goals. Also playing a part in Purlie’s plans is Cotchipee’s son Charlie, who ultimately proves to be far more fair-minded than his Simon Legree-like father and who saves the church from destruction with an act of defiance that has dire consequences for the tyrannical Cap’n.
PURLIE 1970 Tony Awards
Melba Moore performs “ I Got Love” and is presented the Tony by Jack Cassidy then the company performs “Walk Him Up the Stairs” (look for a ‘pre-Jeffersons’ Sherman Hemsley) and Shirley MacLaine presents the Tony to Cleavon Little.
Purlie! “Walk Him Up the Stairs” (1981 TV Cast)
“The opening number, “Walk Him Up the Stairs,” of the amazing musical Purlie! Starring Robert Guillaume, Melba Moore, Sherman Hemsley, and Rhetta Hughes.”
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Ain’t Supposed To Die A Natural Death (1971)
Ain’t Suppose To Die A Natural Death
Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death is a musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Melvin Van Peebles. The musical contains some material also on three of Van Peebles’ albums, Brer Soul, Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, and As Serious as a heart attack, some of which were yet to come out. Annoyed that he wasn’t seeing the kinds of Black people and issues onstage that he saw on the streets, Melvin Van Peebles wrote the book, music, and lyrics for a linked series of vignettes in which characters such as prostitutes, junkies, militants, and everyday working stiffs lamented the drugs, homelessness, unemployment, police corruption and other ills of ghetto life.
Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death (1971 Original Broadway Run) Tony Awards 1972
The show famously ended with a female character (Minnie Gentry -Actress) facing the audience and intoning, “I put a curse on you.” Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death (Musical, Original) opened in New York City on Oct 20, 1971, and played through Jul 30, 1972. Critics were conflicted, and traditional theatergoers were wary. So Van Peebles drummed up support for his show by persuading Black stars like Bill Cosby and Nipsey Russell to make cameo appearances and by reaching out to Black churches and civic groups, a form of target marketing that would be adapted, by other productions seeking to bring out African-American and other under-represented ticket buyers.
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Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope (1971)
Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope
Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope is a musical revue first staged in 1971 with music, lyrics, and book by Micki Grant. It was originally produced by Edward Padula.
REVIEWS
“Zesty and fun…lively score and lyrics…Deserves a wide audience.” – The New York Times
“The kind of show at which you want to blow kisses.” – Sunday Times
“Sends you home wanting to snap your fingers and click your heels.” – The New York Daily News
“Magical combination of passion and humor…perfect.” – The New Yorker
The all-singing, all-dancing show focuses on the African-American experience with songs on such topics as tenements, slumlords, ghetto life, student protests, black power, and feminism. The music is a mixture of gospel, jazz, funk, soul, calypso, and soft rock.
The show had its first staging at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. in 1971, with subsequent stagings at the Locust and Walnut Street Theatres in Philadelphia.
The restaged Broadway production, directed by Vinnette Carroll and choreographed by George Faison, opened to acclaim on April 19, 1972, at the Playhouse Theatre, where it ran for two months before transferring to the Edison. It had a total run of 1065 performances. In his The New York Times review of the opening night, Clive Barnes described it as “a mixture of a block party and a revival meeting” and wrote: “It is the unexpected that is the most delightful. Last night at the Playhouse Theater a new musical came clapping, stomping and stamping in. It is fresh, fun, and Black. …Black heroes such as Flip Wilson and Godfrey Cambridge, and even Bella Abzug and Ralph Nader are mentioned and the show makes wry mockery of the changing times and celebrates the rise of Black aspiration and achievements. …the show is full of talent working together with a cohesion rarely encountered outside the dance world.” Time Magazine theatre critic T. E. Kalem also praised the show, writing: “…all heaven breaks loose on stage. This is the kind of show at which you want to blow kisses.”
The cast included Grant, Alex Bradford, Hope Clarke, and Arnold Wilkerson. With Vinnette Carroll as director, Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope became the first Broadway play to be directed by an African-American woman, and Micki Grant was the first woman to write both the music and lyrics to a Broadway musical.
The 1972 Los Angeles production featured Paula Kelly.
An original cast recording was released on the Polydor label in 1972, produced by Jerry Ragovoy.
In 2016 the York Theatre Company staged a limited engagement of Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope with 10 performances between February 27 and March 6.
In July 2018 the show was revived in the Encores! Off-Center season at New York City Center, choreographed and directed by Savion Glover.
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INNER CITY
Inner City (1971
Musical – Original
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
First Preview: November 29, 1971
Opening Date: December 19, 1971
Closing Date: March 11, 1972
Previews:24
Performances:97
Music: Helen Miller
Lyrics: Eve Merriam
A Street Cantata – Ethel Barrymore Theatre, (12/19/1971 – 3/11/1972) – “Once upon a time in 1969 the prolific and insightful poet, Eve Merriam, penned a book of poems using traditional nursery rhymes as a jumping-off point for social and political commentary of the day. Covering such topics as crime, drug abuse, unemployment, and inadequate housing, by 1982 Ms. Merriam’s book had become one of the most banned in the country. In 1971 Broadway director Tom O’Horgan conceived a new musical based on Ms. Merriam’s book called Inner City. Instead of a cynical and pessimistic observation of life in the urban jungles of America, O’Horgan shaped the material into a theatrical event that was fast, funny, playful, touching and, ultimately, a rousing celebration of everyday contemporary life to which everyone – including those comfortably nestled in the suburbs – could relate.”
– The original Broadway production of Inner City ran for just under 100 performances and featured cast member Linda Hopkins, who was awarded the 1972 Tony Award for her performance. A cast album was recorded by RCA (recently re-issued digitally by Sony’s Masterworks division), and the show developed a cult following.
Inner City: Opening Night Cast
Joy Garrett
Carl Hall
Delores Hall
Fluffer Hirsch
Linda Hopkins
Paulette Ellen Jones
Larry Marshall
Allan Nicholls
Florence Tarlow
Synopsis
A series of nursery-rhyme parodies highlighting the diminishing quality of life in the center of America’s cities are presented in song.
[“The subtitle to Inner City, “A Street Cantata,” pretty much describes what the revue that opened on December 14, 1971, at the Barrymore Theatre was all about – a celebration of urban life as seen through the eyes of its ghetto citizens, but with a twist. Based on Eve Merriam’s The Inner City Mother Goose, it dealt with the classic nursery rhymes repertory, suffused with social protest attitudes that were not in the original, the whole thing set to music by Helen Miller, and directed by Tom O’Horgan. Larry Marshall, Linda Hopkins, and Delores Hall were the undisputed stars of the show, which ran for three months, playing 97 performances.”}
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The WIZ Photo by Martha Swope
The Wiz (1975)
The Wiz, Charlie Smalls’ musical adaption of The Wizard of Oz, opened at the Majestic Theatre on January 5, 1975. The show ran 1,672 performances and won the Tony Award for Best Musical.
The original production starred Stephanie Mills as Dorothy and featured Tiger Haynes, Hinton Battle, Ted Ross, and Andre De Shields in supporting roles. The show was revived again in 1984 starring Stephanie Mills as Dorothy once more..
Geoffrey Holder had already been a successful actor, dancer, choreographer, TV pitchman (most famously as 7-Up’s “Uncola” man) and was working as the costume designer for this disco-era retelling of “The Wizard of Oz” when he was asked to take over as director during the show’s out-of-town tryout. He recast the principal roles of Dorothy, the girl who leaves her Kansas home for the magical land of Oz, and the traveling companions she finds there. He also expanded the exuberant approach he’d taken with the costumes to encompass the entire production. But opening night reviews were still so tepid that the producer considered closing the show until a TV commercial featuring its signature “Ease on Down the Road” number and the resultant good word of mouth from those who followed that advice turned The Wiz into a hit that ran for four years and won seven Tonys, including the top prize for that year’s Best Musical. In 2015 The Wiz Live! joined NBC’s series of live musical events.
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for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf
for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf (1976)
Poet and playwright Ntozake Shange debuted her groundbreaking work, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf in 1974. Using an innovative form she defined as a choreopoem, a blend of poetry, storytelling, music, and dance, Shange presented a series of dramatic monologues that invoked the lives, loves, and struggles of women of color.
On September 15, 1976, for colored girls… opened at the Booth Theatre on Broadway and became a smash success, running for 742 performances. Since then, the play has been produced by theater companies around the world and also adapted for television and as a feature film.
Inspired by personal events—including Ms. Shange’s multiple attempts to take her own life, the “choreopoem” weaves spoken word and dance pieces to tell the story of seven Black women, each identified solely by a color (Ms. Shange herself played the Lady in Orange). While ultimately uniting the seven women in “a laying on of hands,” the piece aims to explore the abuse, abandonment, and violence women of color endure.
In 1976, the play earned Ms. Shange an Obie Award, as well as a Tony Award nomination for Best Play. It was adapted for television in 1982 as part of PBS’ American Playhouse series, and a 2010 film version from Tyler Perry
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Ain’t Misbehavin’
Ain’t Misbehavin’ (1978)
Musical by Murray Horwitz and Richard Maltby Jr.
Image result for Ain’t Misbehavin broadway
DescriptionAin’t Misbehavin’ is a musical revue with a book by Murray Horwitz and Richard Maltby, Jr., and music by various composers and lyricists as arranged and orchestrated by Luther Henderson. It is named after the song by Fats Waller, “Ain’t Misbehavin'”. Wikipedia
Composer: Fats Waller
Lyrics: Various Artists
Book: Murray Horwitz; Richard Maltby Jr.
Ain’t Misbehavin‘ opened in the Manhattan Theatre Club’s East 73rd Street cabaret on February 8, 1978. The cast included Irene Cara, Nell Carter, André DeShields, Armelia McQueen, and Ken Page.
The musical is a tribute to the Black musicians of the 1920s and 1930s who were part of the Harlem Renaissance, an era of growing creativity, cultural awareness, and ethnic pride, and takes its title from the 1929 Waller song “Ain’t Misbehavin'”. It was a time when Manhattan nightclubs like the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom were the playgrounds of high society and Lenox Avenue dives were filled with piano players banging out the new beat known as swing. Five performers present an evening of rowdy, raunchy, and humorous songs that encapsulate the various moods of the era and reflect Waller’s view of life as a journey meant for pleasure and play.
Ain’t Misbehavin’ opened in the Manhattan Theatre Club’s East 73rd Street cabaret on February 8, 1978. The cast included Irene Cara, Nell Carter, André DeShields, Armelia McQueen, and Ken Page and was staged by Arthur Faria, now recognized as one of the original authors, and directed by Maltby. The New York Times reviewer wrote: “The show moves with the zing and sparkle of a Waller recording-filled with bright melodies and asides.” Its reception was such that it was decided to develop it into a full-scale production.
The musical opened on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre on May 9, 1978, and transferred to the Plymouth Theatre and then to the Belasco Theatre and closed on February 21, 1982, after 1604 performances and fourteen previews. Maltby was the director, with musical staging and choreography by Arthur Faria. The original cast featured Nell Carter, André DeShields, Armelia McQueen, Ken Page, and Charlayne Woodard. Luther Henderson, who adapted Waller’s music for the revue, appeared as the production’s original pianist. Replacements later in the run included Debbie Allen, Yvette Freeman, Adriane Lenox, and Alan Weeks. An original cast recording was released by RCA Victor.
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Dreamgirls
Dreamgirls (1981)
Dreamgirls is a Broadway musical, with music by Henry Krieger and lyrics and book by Tom Eyen. Based on the show business aspirations and successes of R&B acts such as The Supremes, The Shirelles, James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and others, the musical follows the story of a young female singing trio from Chicago, Illinois called “The Dreams”, who become music superstars.
Staged with a mostly African-American cast and originally starring Jennifer Holliday, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Loretta Devine, Ben Harney, Cleavant Derricks, Vondie Curtis-Hall, and Obba Babatundé, the musical opened on December 20, 1981, at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway. The musical was then nominated for 13 Tony Awards, including the Tony Award for Best Musical, and won six. It was later adapted into a motion picture from DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures in 2006. The film starred Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, Danny Glover, Anika Noni Rose, and Keith Robinson.
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Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984)
Set in a shabby Chicago recording studio, August Wilson’s Broadway debut was based loosely on the recording sessions that the legendary blues singer Ma Rainey made for Paramount Records in 1923. The play’s rivalry between the older and younger generations of musicians in the band reflected the aspirations, frustrations, and rage that African Americans struggled with as they tried to crossover into a white world without losing the vital connection to their roots. Critics hailed the show as the most important Black play since A Raisin in the Sun and cheered Wilson’s arrival as a major new voice in the American theatre. Over the next two decades, he would write a play about the African-American experience in each decade of the 20th century, finishing the last just before his death at 60 in 2005. Nine of his 10-play cycle have been produced on Broadway and two, Fences and The Piano Lesson, won Pulitzer Prizes. Production Team DWIGHT ANDREWS Musical Director PETER MARADUDIN Lighting Designer CHARLES HENRY MCCLENNAHAN Scenic Designer JAN NEBOZENKO Sound Designer DAPHNE PASCUCCI Costume Designer LLOYD RICHARDS Director John Carpenter Sturdyvant studio owner Lou Criscuolo Irvin Ma’s manager Scott Davenport-Richards Sylvester Ma’s nephew Charles S. Dutton Levee trumpeter Leonard Jackson Slow Drag bassist Robert Judd Toledo pianist Christopher Loomis Policeman Theresa Merritt Ma Rainey Aleta Mitchell Dussie Mae Joe Seneca Cutler trombonist Understudies: Peter Boyden (Sturdyvant, Irvin, Policeman), Bill Cobbs (Cutler), Arthur French (Slow Drag, Toledo), Brent Jennings (Levee, Sylvester) and Ebony Jo-Ann (Ma Rainey, Dussie Mae)
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Fences
Fences (1985)
Brian Stokes Mitchell.
Peter Friedman.
Marin Mazzie.
Judy Kaye.
[ It led the 1998 Tony Awards with thirteen Tony Award nominations, but Disney’sThe Lion King won as Best Musical. The musical won awards for Best Featured Actress (McDonald), Original Score, Book, and Orchestrations. According to The New York Times, “The chief competition for The Lion King was Ragtime, a lavish musical.” ]
Ragtime is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and music by Stephen Flaherty. The music includes marches, cakewalks, gospel, and ragtime.
Based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime tells the story of three groups in the United States in the early 20th century: African Americans, represented by Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Black Harlem musician; upper-class suburbanites, represented by Mother, the matriarch of a White upper-class family in New Rochelle, New York; and Eastern European immigrants, represented by Tateh, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia.
Historical figures including Harry Houdini, Evelyn Nesbit, Booker T. Washington, J. P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Stanford White, Harry Kendall Thaw, Admiral Peary, Matthew Henson, and Emma Goldman are represented in the stories.
Ragtime is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and music by Stephen Flaherty. The music includes marches, cakewalks, gospel, and ragtime. Based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Wikipedia
First performance: December 8, 1996
Composer: Stephen Flaherty
Playwright: Terrence McNally
Lyricist: Lynn Ahrens
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Before It Hits Home
Before It Hits Home (1993)
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Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk
1996
Director George C. Wolfe collaborated with the prodigious, young choreographer Savion Glover to bring the story of the Black experience in America to vivid life onstage, from the days of slavery to the advent of hip-hop.
Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk is a musical that debuted Off-Broadway at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater in 1995 and moved to Broadway in 1996. The show was conceived and directed by George C. Wolfe, and featured music by Daryl Waters, Zane Mark, and Ann Duquesnay; lyrics by Reg E. Gaines, George C. Wolfe and Ann Duquesnay; and a book by Reg E. Gaines. The choreography was by Savion Glover.
“Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk is a musical revue telling the story, through tap, of Black history from slavery to the present. The musical numbers are presented along with supertitles, projected images, and videotapes, and continuing commentary. Wolfe took the rap words of Reg E. Gaines and turned them into “tap/rap (tap dancing informed by hip-hop and funk rhythms).”
The production, which showcased tap dance, won five Tony Awards, including trophies for Wolfe, Glover, and featured actress Ann Duquesnay.
Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk 1996 Tony Awards
Michal Daniel
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Topdog/Underdog (2002)
Suzan-Lori Parks centered this existential study of what it means to be a Black man in 21st-century America around two brothers symbolically named Lincoln and Booth, who were abandoned by their parents as kids, share a small room and eke out a living, hustling cards and doing odd jobs. In a subversion of the old theatrical tradition of blackface, Parks gives one of them the job of impersonating Abe Lincoln in a local sideshow which requires him to wear whiteface. Like Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk, this show started at the Public Theater and was directed by George C. Wolfe. The downtown production, which starred Geoffrey Wright and Don Cheadle, sold out, but theatergoers were less enthusiastic when the show moved uptown to Broadway with the rapper Mos Def taking over from Cheadle and the show closed after just 144 performances despite winning that year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which made Parks the first African-American woman to win that honor.
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The SCOTTSBORO BOYS
The Scottsboro Boys (2010)
Musical by David Thompson
DescriptionThe Scottsboro Boys is a musical with a book by David Thompson, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. Based on the Scottsboro Boys trial, the musical is one of the last collaborations between Kander and Ebb prior to the latter’s death.
The Scottsboro Boys is a musical with a book by David Thompson, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. Based on the Scottsboro Boys trial, the musical is one of the last collaborations between Kander and Ebb prior to the latter’s death. The musical has the framework of a minstrel show, altered to “create a musical social critique” with a company that, except for one, consists “entirely of African-American performers”.
The musical debuted Off-Broadway and then moved to Broadway in 2010 for a run of only two months. It received twelve Tony Award nominations but failed to win any. The previous record for nominations without a win was eleven, held by Steel Pier and the original production of Chicago, both also by Kander and Ebb. The musical’s twelve nominations were second only to The Book of Mormon, which garnered fourteen nominations that year. Nevertheless, The Scottsboro Boys played in US regional theatres in 2012 and moved to London in 2013, where, after a sell-out production at the Young Vic, it moved to the West End in 2014.
Music: John Kander
Playwright: David Thompson
Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. (2016)
Musical by George C. Wolfe
DescriptionShuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed is a musical with a score by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle and a libretto by George C. Wolfe, based on the original book of the 1921 musical revue Shuffle Along, by Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles. Wikipedia
First performance: April 28, 2016
Playwright: George C. Wolfe
Award: Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical
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The Trip to Bountiful (2013)
Written by Horton Foote
Directed by Michael Wilson
Cicely Tyson won a Tony Award for her performance as Carrie Watts in the 2013 Broadway production of The Trip to Bountiful. At the age of 88, Tyson became the oldest person to win a Tony Award.
Explanation
The Trip to Bountiful is a play by Horton Foote that tells the story of an elderly woman who returns to her childhood hometown. The play explores themes of family dynamics, memory, and the power of hope.
Production history
The Trip to Bountiful premiered as a teleplay on NBC in 1953. It was adapted into a film in 1985 starring Geraldine Page, who won an Academy Award for her performance.
Broadway production
The 2013 Broadway production of The Trip to Bountiful starred Cicely Tyson. The production also featured Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carrie’s son and Vanessa Williams as her daughter-in-law.
Cast: Cicely Tyson, Cuba Gooding Jr, and Vanessa Williams
The Trip to Bountiful
Scenic design by Jeff Cowie, costume design by Van Broughton Ramsey, lighting design by Rui Rita, original music and sound design by John Gromada
The Stephen Sondheim Theater
Cast: Cicely Tyson, Cuba Gooding Jr, Vanessa Williams, Condola Rashad, Tom Wopat, Devon Abner, Curtis Billings, Pat Bowie, Leon Addison Brown, Arthur French, Susan Heyward, Bill Kux, Linda Powell, Charles Turner
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THE GIN GAME
James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson star in THE GIN GAME
Weller Martin (James Earl Jones) and Fonsia Dorsey (Cicely Tyson) meet on the porch of their nursing home and strike up a friendship, with Weller teaching Fonsia how to play gin rummy. As they play, they share stories about the lives they led in the outside world. But when Fonsia wins every hand, Weller becomes increasingly frustrated, until their gin games and conversations become a battleground, with each player exposing the other’s failures, disappointments, and insecurities.
James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson in D.L. Coburn’s THE GIN GAME, directed by Leonard Foglia. The production is playing through January 10, 2016, at the Golden Theatre (252 West 45th Street).
© Joan Marcus
LEGENDARY, POWERFUL, AND UNDENIABLY UNFORGETTABLE.
Two-time Tony Award® winner James Earl Jones squares off with three-time Emmy® and Tony Award® winner Cicely Tyson in the play The New York Times calls “Thoroughly entertaining. The closest thing the theatre offers to a duel at 10 paces.”
This fall marks their first Broadway rematch in nearly 50 years, as D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning stunner The Gin Game returns to the John Golden Theatre, the same place where it first astounded audiences in 1977 by raising an ordinary pastime between acquaintances to explosive and shockingly real stakes.
D.L. Coburn, James Earl Jones, and Cicely Tyson
Don’t miss your chance to watch this unbeatable pair of Broadway aces expose every last one of their cards under the direction of Leonard Foglia (Master Class) in this brand-new Broadway production.
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Choir Boy
Choir Boy (2019)
Choir Boys For half a century, the Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys has been dedicated to the education of strong, ethical black men. One talented student has been waiting for years to take his rightful place as the leader of the legendary gospel choir. But can he make his way through the hallowed halls of this institution if he sings in his own key?
Now, we’re thrilled to bring this soaring music-filled work to Broadway. Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney is an Oscar®-winning screenwriter of Moonlight and a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship Grant. Directing is Trip Cullman (Murder Ballad). CAST & CREATIVE
Cast
Pharus -Jonathan Burke
Headmaster Marrow -Chuck Cooper
Mr. Pendleton – Austin Pendleton
Junior Davis – Nicholas L. Ashe
Anthony Justin “AJ” James John Clay III
David Heard Caleb Eberhardt
Bobby Marrow J. Quinton Johnson
Creative
Written by Tarell Alvin McCraney
Director Trip Cullman
Set and Costume Designer David Zinn
Lighting Designer Peter Kaczorowski
Sound Designer Fitz Patton
Movement Camille A. Brown
Music Direction and Vocal Arrangements Jason Michael Webb
Cast
Nicholas L. Ashe
Junior Davis
Kyle Beltran
David Heard
Grantham Coleman
Austin Justin “AJ” James
Chuck Cooper
Headmaster Marrow
Austin Pendleton
Mr. Pendleton
Jeremy Pope
Pharus Jonathan Young
Wallace Smith
Bobby Marrow
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SHUFFLE ALONG
George C Wolfe and Savion Glover’s
“Shuffle Along Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed”
Shuffle Along
Justin Barbin
Opening night of ‘Shuffle Along, Or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed’
Brian Stokes Mitchell, with Adrienne Warren (fourth from left), Billy Porter, Audra McDonald and ensemble in Shuffle Along, or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, featuring music and lyrics by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, book by F.E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles, with a new book and direction by George C. Wolfe and choreography by Savion Glover, at The Music Box Theatre (239 West 45th Street).
© Julieta Cervantes
Brandon Victor Dixon (at piano) and Audra McDonald in Shuffle Along, or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, featuring music and lyrics by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, book by F.E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles, with a new book and direction by George C. Wolfe and choreography by Savion Glover, at The Music Box Theatre (239 West 45th Street).
© Julieta Cervantes
The cast of the Broadway musical Shuffle Along, perform the number “Broadway Blues” live at the 2016 Tony Awards
The Shuffle Along Ensemble -(Julieta Cervantes)
Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes
Photographer Lisa Nocella-Pacino: Under The Duvet Productions, NY
Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations. (2019)
Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations. (2019)
A Moving and Personal Story Amid the Civil Unrest that Tore America Apart.
STORY
of Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of The Temptations
CAST & CREATIVE
for Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of The Temptations
Cast
Otis Williams – Derrick Baskin
Paul Williams – James Harkness
Melvin Franklin – Jawan M. Jackson
David Ruffin – Ephraim Sykes
Eddie Kendricks – Jeremy Pope
Creative
Director – Des McAnuff
Book – Dominique Morisseau
Choreographer – Sergio Trujillo
Set Designer – Robert Brill
Costume Designer – Paul Tazewell
Lighting Designer – Howell Binkley
Music Director and Arrangements – Kenny Seymour
Sound Designer – Steven Canyon Kennedy
Projection Designer – Peter Nigrini
Ain’t Too Proud follows The Temptations’ journey from the streets of Detroit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. With their signature dance moves and unmistakable harmonies, they rose to the top of the charts creating an amazing 42 Top Ten Hits with 14 reaching number one. Through friendship and betrayal amid the civil unrest that tore America apart, their moving and personal story still resonates five decades later.
The cast also features Esther Antoine, Shawn Bowers, E. Clayton Cornelious, Rodney Earl Jackson Jr., Taylor Symone Jackson, Jahi Kearse, Jarvis B. Manning Jr., Joshua Morgan, Saint Aubyn, Rashidra Scott, Nasia Thomas, Christian Thompson, Curtis Wiley, and Candice Marie Woods.
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Ephraim Sykes, Jawan M. Jackson, Jelani Remy, Derrick Baskin and the Broadway cast of AIN’T TOO PROUD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE TEMPTATIONS perform a medley from the show including “Get Ready” (by Norman Whitfield and Edward Holland Jr), “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” (by Smokey Robinson), and “I Can’t Get Next to You” (by Norman Whitfiled and Barrett Strong) on NBC’s 93rd Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
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SLAVE PLAY
Story The Old South lives on at the MacGregor Plantation — in the breeze, in the cotton fields…and in the crack of the whip. Nothing is as it seems, and yet everything is as it seems. Slave Play rips apart history to shed new light on the nexus of race, gender, and sexuality in 21st-century America.
Playwright – Jeremy O. Harris
Joan Marcus (Photo)
Thoughts of a Colored Man
BRIAN ANTHONY MORELAND RON SIMONS DIANA DIMENNA KANDI BURRUSS SHERYL LEE RALPH SAMIRA WILEY
Present
A New American Play for a New Broadway
As the sun rises on a single day in the pulsing heart of Brooklyn, seven Black men are about to discover the extraordinary – together. By Keenan Scott II, one of today’s boldest new voices, Thoughts of a Colored Man blends spoken word, slam poetry, rhythm, and humor into a daringly universal new play. Welcome to the vibrant inner life of being Black, proud, and thriving in the 21st century.
This richly theatrical mosaic shines brilliant light onto these men, a tight-knit brotherhood, revealing their most triumphant selves. Their vibrant and vulnerable experiences and feelings reverberate far beyond the barbershops and basketball courts of their community. They reveal the deeply human hopes, joys, sorrows, fears, and dreams of all men, all people.
CHICKEN & BISCUITS
CHICKEN & BISCUITS, the new comedy written by Douglas Lyons and directed by Zhailon Levingston, making its Broadway premiere at Circle in the Square Theatre (235 West 50th Street.) The play began previews Thursday, September 23, 2021, and will celebrate its Opening Night this Sunday, October 10, 2021
CHICKEN & BISCUITS features a dynamic ensemble cast, which on Broadway will include film & television actress Cleo King (“Mike & Molly,” “Deadwood”) in her Broadway debut as Baneatta Mabry, Tony Award nominee Norm Lewis (Porgy and Bess, Da 5 Bloods) as Reginald Mabry, Drama Desk Award winner Michael Urie (Torch Song, “Ugly Betty”) as Logan, Broadway veteran NaTasha Yvette Williams (Waitress, Porgy and Bess) as Brianna Jenkins, and Devere Rogers (Up Here, “OK Boomer”) in his Broadway debut as Kenny Mabry. Reprising their roles from the play’s world premiere at Queens Theatre, and making their Broadway stage debuts, are Ebony Marshall-Oliver (Merry Wives of Windsor and Ain’t No Mo’ at Public Theater) as Beverly Jenkins, Aigner Mizzelle as La’trice Franklin, and Alana Raquel Bowers (What to Send Up When it Goes Down) as Simone Mabry. Joining the company as understudies are Dean Acree (Words, Razors and the Wounded), Jennifer Fouché (Chicago National Tour) as the Baneatta Mabry standby, Michael Genet (The Prom), Miles G. Jackson (Endlings), and Camille Upshaw (“That Damn Michael Che”).
Trouble In Mind
TROUBLE IN MIND
Follow an experienced Black stage actress through rehearsals of a major Broadway production in Alice Childress’s wry and moving look at racism, identity, and ego in the world of New York theatre. At the forefront of both the Civil Rights and feminist movements, the prescient Trouble in Mind opened to acclaim off-Broadway in 1955, and was announced to move to Broadway in 1957…in a production that never came to be.
CAST
Wiletta Mayer
LaChanze
Al Manners
Michael Zegen
Sheldon Forrester
Chuck Cooper
Judy Sears
Danielle Campbell
Millie Davis
Jessica Frances Dukes
John Nevis
Brandon Micheal Hall
Henry
Simon Jones
Eddie Fenton
Alex Mickiewicz
Bill O’Wray
Don Stephenson
TROUBLE IN MIND CREATIVE
Playwright
Alice Childress
Director
Charles Randolph-Wright
Set Design
Arnulfo Maldonado
Costume Design
Emilio Sosa
Light Design
Kathy A. Perkins
Sound Design
Dan Moses Schreier
Hair & Wigs
Cookie Jordan
Original Music
Nona Hendryx
MJ The Musical
“He is one of the greatest entertainers of all time. Now, Michael Jackson’s unique and unparalleled artistry has finally arrived on Broadway in a brand-new musical. Centered around the making of his 1992 Dangerous World Tour, and created by Tony Award®-winning Director/Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, MJ goes beyond the singular moves and signature sound of the star, offering a rare look at the creative mind and collaborative spirit that catapulted Jackson into legendary status.”
LYNN NOTTAGE
BOOK
CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON
DIRECTOR & CHOREOGRAPHER
DAVID HOLCENBERG
MUSICAL SUPERVISION, ORCHESTRATIONS & ARRANGEMENTS
JASON MICHAEL WEBB
MUSICAL DIRECTION, ORCHESTRATIONS & ARRANGEMENTS
DEREK MCLANE
SCENIC DESIGN
NATASHA KATZ
LIGHTING DESIGN
PAUL TAZEWELL
COSTUME DESIGN
Matthew Murphy (Photography)
PURLIE VICTORIOUS
2023
By Ossie Davis
The Music Box, Broadway
Directed by Kenny Leon
Scenic Design by Derek McLane
Costume Design by Emilio Sosa
Sound Design by Peter Fitzgerald
Lighting Design by Adam Honoré
Photography by Monique Carboni
HELL’S KITCHEN
PURPOSE
Photos by Marc J. Franklin
