Reyno’s early career started at the famed Karamu House Theatre in Cleveland where his roles included: Tambourines to Glory, Fortune in Men’s Eyes, Inner City, and Hymie Finkelstein Used Lumber Company. His film credits include Fort Apache the Bronx in 1981 and the filmed Great Performances of The First Breeze of Summer in 1976.
REYNO CRAYTON
CLARENCE DERWENT AWARD
1975 MOST PROMISING MALE PERFORMER THE FIRST BREEZE OF SUMMER WINNER
Reyno won the 1975 Clarence Derwent Award and OBIE Award for his performance as Lou Myers.
The First Breeze of Summer – Reyno, Ethel Ayler, Moses Gunn, and Charles Brown.
Reyno, Ethel Ayler, Frances Foster, and Moses Gunn
A complex and emotional drama, this “touching and terrifying…wonderfully moving” play deals with the conflicts between a stern, hard-working father and his two discontented sons (New York Times. It also tells the story of the man’s now-elderly mother who recalls, through flashbacks, her youthful affairs with three different men who loved and abandoned her. Stars Frances Foster (Crooklyn) and Emmy-nominee Moses Gunn (Roots).
“The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) was founded in the summer of 1967, under the direction of actor Robert Hooks, actor, playwright, director Douglas Turner Ward, and producer, director Gerald Krone. From its beginning, NEC was criticized for its integrated administration (Krone was white), its grant from the Ford Foundation, its location in Greenwich Village, and its first season’s bill.
The NEC also launched or boosted the careers of numerous African American actors including Moses Gunn, Francis Foster, Adolph Caesar, Denise Nicholas, Roxie Roker, Esther Rolle, Rosalind Cash, David Downing, Judyann Elder, Arthur French, Hattie Winston, Clarice Taylor, Allie Woods, and Ron O’Neal. Others who performed with NEC included Stephanie Mills, Cleavon Little, Richard Roundtree, Lauren Jones, and Roscoe Lee Browne.” (http://www.necinc.org/)
