On Friday, October 25th at 9:00pm, producers James Arntz and John Paulson, in collaboration with Maryland Public Television, present A Raisin in the Sun Revisited: The Raisin Cycle. Filmed at Baltimore's Center Stage, the one hour documentary explores the history and legacy of Lorraine Hansberry’s groundbreaking 1959 drama through the staging of two contemporary plays it inspired: Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park and Beneatha’s Place by Kwame Kwei-Armah, Center Stage Artistic Director. This past spring, Center Stage mounted both plays in repertory as The Raisin Cycle. Filmmakers captured the drama and cultural significance of simultaneously running these two issue-driven plays. With two opening nights looming, rehearsals, meetings, and costume fittings are paired with footage of Center Stage’s performances, the 1961 film, and insights from theater historians. Lorraine Hansberry's groundbreaking 1959 drama, A Raisin in the Sun, was the first Broadway play to depict the strength and humanity of an African-American family as it strives for a piece of the American dream by buying a house in a white working-class neighborhood in Chicago. More than 50 years later, playwright Bruce Norris created Clybourne Park, a sardonic Pulitzer Prize-winning prequel and sequel that takes place in the same Chicago house and revisits the questions of race, real estate and gentrification in America. Inspired by Hansberry's original and Norris' follow-up, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Artistic Director of Baltimore's Center Stage, penned a third play, Beneatha's Place, which follows two of the Raisin characters to Nigeria and its post-colonial struggles. Center Stage mounted Clybourne Park and Beneatha's Place as "The Raisin Cycle" and as part of its 50th anniversary season. Please enjoy these wonderful production photos by Richard Anderson. Click here for more information about both productions, including photo credits. Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris (Center Stage)Beneatha's Place by Kwame Kwei-Armah (Center Stage)Opening Night of Beneatha's Place (Center Stage) "How thrilling it is to partner with PBS on this project," said Kwame Kwei-Armah. "When I first came to Centerstage, one of my goals was to expand the role of this theatre in civic discussions, not just locally but nationally. 'A Raisin in the Sun Revisited' is the perfect opportunity to both explore the social impact of great art and to contribute to the ongoing dialogue around race and class in our nation."
“A Raisin in the Sun is a powerful story of perseverance that arts followers have come to know and love, and we think our viewers will be just as interested in learning more about the Clybourne Park and Beneatha’s Place storylines,” said PBS Vice President of Programming Donald Thoms. “PBS is committed to giving millions of viewers a front-row seat and a backstage pass to the best music, theater, dance, art, and cultural history programs on-air and online, and we’re excited that CENTERSTAGE will provide us with great content to feature this fall.” A Raisin in the Sun Revisited: The Raisin Cycle was filmed as part of the PBS Arts Fall Festival, a "multi-platform event anchored by seven films that highlight artists and performances from around the country, and related online content that together invite every American into the worlds of music, theatre, opera and cultural history." If you're in the area, Center Stage will be hosting a viewing party in honor of the PBS premiere. Starting at 8:00pm, enjoy complimentary drinks and snacks in the lobby. Then, at 9 pm watch A Raisin in the Sun Revisited—along with thousands of viewers nationwide. Click here to learn more.
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Tomorrow, October 12th at 3:00pm, Hampton University Museum will present a student reading of my play, THE HAMPTON YEARS, as part of their Homecoming Festivities and in conjunction with the opening of The Diane Whitfield-Locke & Carnell Locke Collection: Building on Tradition. RSVP for both today by calling 757.727.5308. This will be my first time at Hampton University and I can hardly wait. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures and share them here.. Hampton University Museum events for Saturday, October 12, 2013 3:00pm -THE HAMPTON YEARS: A READING written by Jacqueline E. Lawton, directed by Artisia Green at Little Theater, Armstrong Hall). Come hear the reading by HU students and meet the playwright! About the Play The Hampton Years explores the relationship between art professor Viktor Lowenfeld and his students, John Biggers and Samella Lewis. Lowenfeld joined the Hampton Institute in Virginia in 1939 as assistant professor of Industrial Arts and studio art teacher. He was later appointed as Chairman of the Art Department and in 1945, he was named curator of the distinguished collection of Black African Art at the Hampton Institute. Burgeoning artist John Biggers, who went on to become an internationally acclaimed painter, sculptor, teacher and philosopher, was his student. As was Samella Lewis, artist, printmaker and educator, with whom Lowenfeld had a contentious, but respectful relationship. The Hampton Years examines the impact of World War II on Jewish refugees living in the United States and their role in shaping the lives and careers of African American students in the segregated south. Then, be sure to stop by the Hampton University Museum for the opening reception of the exhibit. More details below: 6:30pm - Opening Reception and Music by the Jason Jenkins Trio 7:30pm - Comments & Special Presentations 8:30pm - Opening Receptions Ends The Diane Whitfield-Locke & Carnell Locke Collection: Building on Tradition The exhibition will include master artists from both the 19th Century including Henry O. Tanner, Robert Duncanson, and Grafton Tyler Brown; from the Harlem Renaissance period with pieces from Aaron Douglass, a rare work by William H. Johnson, as well as works by Palmer Hayden, Jacob Lawrence; and from the modern tradition like Benny Andrews, Gwen Knight and Faith Ringgold. Additionally, the exhibition will also reflect the Locke's move towards collecting contemporary artists such as Clarissa Sligh, Betye Saar and James Phillips and feature twenty sculptures including works by Richard Hunt, Augusta Savage, Beulah Woodward, Richmond Barthe, and art historian and artist, Dr. David Driskell have been selected. Co-curator, Woodson Reid states, "The Dianne Whitfield-Locke and Carnell Locke collection of African American art can be seen as a product of these groundbreaking years of research and inventiveness," begun by the many art historians and institutions that have focused on collecting African American art. Vanessa Thaxton-Ward is the curator of collections at the Hampton University Museum and Shirley Woodson- Reid is a noted artist, educator and curator. Woodson-Reid resides in Michigan. Click here to learn more. Recently, I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with playwright Aditi Kapil about her life as a playwright and the inspiration for AGNES UNDER THE BIG TOP, now playing at Forum Theatre. In this candid, and insightful interview, Aditi speaks of her childhood in Sweden and of the first time she ever saw her work produced. She also speaks quite passionately about the impact and role of cultural identity in her writing and what it means to be an immigrant in the United States. Please enjoy. JACQUELINE LAWTON: Why did you decide to get into theatre? Was there someone or a particular show that inspired you? ADITI KAPIL: I didn’t see much theatre growing up in Stockholm, Sweden, probably because we couldn’t afford it. But there was this small theatre in town that did English-speaking productions, and when I was in high school (English-speaking IB program) we received tickets to their touring productions once a year. My mom and I went, we saw musicals the first two years, I think “Guys and Dolls” and “Carousel”, which was great. The 3rd year we went to see a German company’s English production of Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love”. It was intense, I was maybe a little young, and I had one of those completely raw experiences that only happen when you have no idea what’s coming and it just catches you wide open. There’s an old guy mooing off to the side, what’s that about? And these two intensely complicated characters fighting and loving their way across the stage, a crazy backstory that I had to figure out for myself, and then Eddie is on the floor after getting kicked in the balls, and May takes off her bra and wipes herself down, and it’s exposed, practical, not at all lascivious, but hot at the same time, and I remember thinking “is this ok? Are we supposed to be here?” And I looked over at my mom to see if we’re embarrassed, if we’re leaving, if we have some sort of opinion that I can latch on to. She’s mesmerized. I looked around the full house, everyone was mesmerized, they had us. Because it was brilliant theater. And I remember thinking- theater is hot... theater is cool… I want a piece of this. That moment is probably what led to my taking an acting class as a blow-off in college, hardest class ever. JL: Next, tell me a little bit about your writing process. Do you have any writing rituals? Do you write in the same place or in different places? AK: I guess I’ll work anywhere. I’m city, so too much quiet is hard for me. Ambient noise, like a coffee shop, or listening to music, helps me tune out, and then tune in, gives me something to push back against maybe? And then when I come back and realize itunes dj has had me in children’s music for the past half hour and I didn’t notice, I know I went someplace. But then I also wonder how what’s going on around me or in my headphones is sneaking into the work in ways I don’t even realize. Oh, and I have to type, can’t write longhand, my handwriting is illegible, had I been born pre-typewriter I probably wouldn’t have been a writer. Had I been born pre-computers, I might have been a writer, but some shorter form, like haikus or something, because I’m also a shitty typist. One wonders how I get through the day. JL: Describe for me all the sensations you had the first time you had one of your plays produced and you sat in the audience while it was performed...what was different about the characters you created? How much input did you have in the directing of that work? AK: My first premiere experience was my play “Love Person” at Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis, directed by the lovely Risa Brainin, wonderful cast, wonderful design team. I saw preview night on a Thursday, and then opening night on Friday. Opening night was pretty amazing, the show had settled just enough into its bones, the audience was open and receptive, I saw my story get communicated with so many layers of intricacy and individuality that I couldn’t possibly have created on my own, I watched the audience as closely as I watched the play and seeing them love my messy, confused, characters did that thing that fills your soul, made me feel less lonely in the world, feel like other people thought about these things too. That kind of connectivity is I think what theater is all about. Ok, so I wanted to say that first because, by contrast, preview night was really hard for me. This might be a consistent thing, because I feel like the exact same thing happened when I went to see “Agnes Under the Big Top” at Long Wharf, directed by the very amazing Eric Ting, again wonderful cast, wonderful design team. Preview night was choppy, I imagine the show wasn’t as tight as it was on opening, but I don’t think that was all of it, other people in the audience seemed to get it, to go on the ride with it. But I did not, I was not on the ride, I was resistant to the ride, and honestly the ride can’t have been that much different on the 2nd night when I did get on board, so part of that must have just been me. First off, I guess I have to accept that the thing on the stage is the play that has up until this moment lived exclusively in my mind. And in both cases I’d been part of rehearsals, but it’s not really the thing, it’s not theater, until there’s an audience in the room, for me that’s the moment I write to, the moment between the audience and the work. So when that moment hits for real, I seem to be wary and kinda resistant. And then there’s the fact that seeing your words on stage in front of people feels a whole lot like standing in a crowded room naked. It’s hard, it’s scary, it’s incredibly vulnerable. What if they laugh and point? So I guess I’m wary and resistant. To my own plays. On the first night, that is, by the second night my body and mind seem to have acclimated, and I can have an experience in the theater. JL: What do you hope to convey in the plays that you create--what are they about? What sorts of people, situation, circumstances, do you like to write about? AK: I don’t know that it’s always purposeful, but themes of displacement, language, communication, identity, mythology, survival, tend to work their way into my plays. Little known fact, perhaps to anyone but myself and my dramaturg, nearly every play I’ve written contains the line “I am Indian!”, see if you can spot it. It’s like ‘where’s waldo’. Not so hard to work it in when Indian characters keep showing up in plays I never intended for them. Possibly I have something to prove in this area, I’ve been to India twice in my life, I speak no Indian languages. By contrast I’m fluent in Swedish and Bulgarian and feel deeply connected to those cultures. My Indian side I seem to be desperately grabbing at, often through my writing. I think my characters also tend to be fiercely unsentimental. And they tend to be people you don’t generally see in mainstream theater. Maybe what interests me most is taking characters who normally would be in the outskirts of mainstream narrative, and shifting the lens to position them center stage, move the mainstream narrative out to the margins, see what happens. Give my traditionally marginalized characters (be they deaf, immigrant, comic relief) the great tragedy to live, the great romance. I’m also very interested in writing complicated, difficult, women, and working with directors and actresses to put those women unapologetically into the public psyche. I feel like our public images and ideals of womanhood could use some shaking up, bit of an update. JL: Tell us about your play and what inspired you to write it. AK: “Agnes Under the Big Top, a tall tale” began as a 10-minute piece called “Cirkus Kalashnikov”. In 2004, I traveled to Sweden and Bulgaria with my then 2-year old daughter to visit family. In Bulgaria an uncle told me about the Kalashnikov factory that had closed in the town of Kazanlak, destroying the town’s economy. A few days later I took my daughter to this rickety little traveling circus, the Cirkus Arena, I spent the whole show watching this ringmaster with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth run the really pretty underwhelming show brilliantly with a well-placed “OPPA!” “BRAVO!” “DA!”. Later, in Sweden, my Indian father, who spent the last decades of his life driving Stockholm subway trains told me how he’d killed 3 people and 1 dog in his time in the subway. All of this worked its way through me on the 13-hour plane ride back to Minneapolis, and when we landed I wrote “Cirkus Kalashnikov”, a 10-minute piece about a former Bulgarian ringmaster turned subway driver in a US city. Then a couple of years later I read an article in the NY Times about how starlings came to the US, imported by an ornithologist and Shakespeare fan, and over the next century became this invasive chattering nuisance species, and I decided to try to expand the short play into a larger exploration of immigrant stories, so I added Agnes and Ella, loosely based on two women I worked with while I was in college (I spent my summers in Sweden as a home care worker) and a hybrid character loosely based on two Indian cousins named Happy. Oh and I gave my ringmaster a wife, named after my Bulgarian Aunt Roza. To be clear, while I stole extensively from family mythos, the play grew into its own thing and no single character has a direct real world correlation. The same way the ringmaster is a conflation of my uncle, the ringmaster I saw at the Cirkus Arena, and my father’s subway stories, every other character in the play became something very different from the original point of inspiration. JL: What do you hope audiences are thinking about after experiencing this play? AK: Audiences have had such extreme reactions to this play… I guess my hope is that we see the beauty in the leap that so many people take daily into the unknown. I guess I’d love to see us celebrate the beauty in our failures, and in loving each other even when we’ve grown less beautiful, in fact isn’t it even more beautiful to love after the illusions are stripped away, however painful the stripping? Like many immigrants, my parents had big dreams when they took the leap. By the measure of those dreams, they failed, most do. The identity displacement that takes place when you move to another culture can be this huge bite out of the soul, and then I watched my mother go through a similar displacement when she went from being an extremely healthy woman to dying of cancer. I watched many of my patients, in my time as a homecare worker, rage and kick against being defined as ill or bedridden, against this identity imposed upon them by life, one they never signed up for. My mother felt like she had somehow failed in her battle against cancer, many of my patients felt they had somehow failed at life, and I guess I grew to resent the idea of ‘winning’ as the purpose of life. I’d like to celebrate the courage it takes to grasp at life, to leap, to keep telling your stories, to keep reaching for the brass ring, to touch each other even when you feel invisible. That’s beautiful to me. That’s uplifting. JL: How has the community where you work and live addressed issues of race and gender parity? How has this particular issue impacted you and your ability to get your work produced on the main stages? AK: I’m very fortunate in that I, in Minneapolis, have an artistic home at Mixed Blood Theatre. Mixed Blood is this amazingly progressive theater with really high artistic values, and a commitment to putting marginalized stories center stage, who in a recent act of radical hospitality stopped charging for tickets a couple of years ago, which has really revolutionized our audiences. It’s a pretty amazing place to premiere work, allows for a kind of dialogue that is hard to find anywhere else. Our community has all the same issues as many others, we are constantly in a debate about how our major theaters can be leaders in a dramatic discourse that reflects our place and time in all its diversity, but for my own work I feel pretty well cocooned from all that in that I have this phenomenal theater premiering my work. JL: What excited you about taking part in Forum Theatre’s 10th Season? AK: I’m so excited about all the plays in this season, and so ridiculously honored to be included! Theater to me is a dialogue with ones community that ideally starts in a room with a group of people having an intense live experience, and then trickles out from there, and the dialogue represented by Forum’s 10th season excites me so much. I’m excited to be a strand in that dialogue, but also really excited for the artists and audiences who will be connecting over these ideas across an entire season. JL: What advice do you have for up-and-coming playwrights? AK: I can tell you what I tell students. Develop your own taste through voracious intake of art, aspire to create what you most want to see in the theater right now, and then try to make that. Try really hard, hold on to the vision in your mind, and don’t quit until your artistry is equal to your imagination. And along the way don’t be afraid to fail a lot. And the upside is that theater is a collaborative art form, so you won’t be on your own trying to figure it out. But yes, it’s that hard, so let’s not pretend it’s not JL: What’s next for you as a playwright? Where can we follow your work? AK: I have a trilogy based on the Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva that we’re premiering in repertory at Mixed Blood Theatre in October. Each play displaces a deity into a contemporary immigrant in the west, and each play is in a different style. The Brahma play is “Brahman/I, a one-hijra stand-up comedy show” and it’s literally a stand-up routine. The Vishnu play is “The Chronicles of Kalki” about a girl who may or may not be the final avatar of Vishnu come to save the world from demons and evil, and it’s more of a comic book style girl gang thriller. The Shiva play is called “Shiv”, this is the one where I try to get into post-colonial residue more, it has more of a memory play quality. It’s a pretty epic undertaking, and I’m so excited about the artistic team gathered around the project, doing such beautiful work to get such a huge beast up and running. I try to keep my website updated-www.aditikapil.com, I’m sporadically active on twitter @AditiBKapil AGNES UNDER THE BIG TOP Written by Aditi Brennan Kapil Directed by Michael Dove Featuring Joy Jones, Annie Houston, Nora Achrati, Ed Christian, Jon Jon Johnson, and Jason Glass. September 5-28, 2013 Click here for a full list of performance dates and here for ticketing information About the Play To the music of the subway, six lives intersect in this comic adventure about immigrant life in America. A Liberian nurse, a Bulgarian one-time ringmaster and his wife, an Indian subway driver trainee, a nomadic busker, and a bedridden woman pursue dreams, peace, and a place in this strange new world. HAPPENING TODAY: 2:00pm - Matinee of Agnes Under the Big Top (Click here for ticket information) 3:30-4:00pm - Break 4:00-6:30pm - Town Hall on Diversity and Inclusion in Theatre If you're unable to attend, follow the conversation on Twitter with #ForumTH For questions, click here to contact Artistic Director Michael Dove. Saturday, September 21, 2013 Forum Theatre @ Round House Silver Spring 8641 Colesville Road, Silver Spring, MD Forum Theatre produces adventurous, relevant, and challenging plays from a diversity of voices that inspire discussion and build community -- and that are accessible, affordable, and entertaining. Since Forum Theatre’s inception, we have aimed to be both the home for stories that provoke discussion and the place to host that discussion. We want our plays to be a conversation with the audience. We tell stories about who we are as a local, national, and global community. So what is a Forum show? That’s never been the easiest thing to describe, but a few things tend to always be true: A Forum show asks big questions. A Forum show is intricate and challenging, but has a big heart at its center. And a Forum show gives you something to think about and a lot to talk about. Hey Folks! Tomorrow, September 21st, from 4:00pm to 6:30pm, Forum Theatre is convening a Town Hall on diversity and inclusion in theatre. I'm serving as a Breakout Session Facilitator alongside Jiva Manske (Educator and Organizer for Human Rights & Social Justice) and Jordana Fraider (Projects Coordinator at (e)merge art fair). Here's what they have to say about it and why you should attend and participate: As Forum celebrates its 10th season, we are looking back not only on what we have done, but on how we move forward. For the past few years, Forum has worked to address issues of gender, race, and class inequality through our art. We have done so in order to better realize our mission to“tell stories about who we are as a local, national, and global community.” The purpose of this Town Hall will be to gather our stakeholders--artists, audience members, and neighbors--around the idea of making diversity and inclusion essential core values of Forum Theatre. Essentially, we have decided to explore changes in our mission and practices of the organization and we need you to be a part of this conversation. It is only by actively engaging with and listening to our community that we can accomplish true, lasting and meaningful change within our organization. About the Town HallThe day will begin with a matinee performance of Agnes Under the Big Top and then transition into a variety of action-based conversations culminating in a final gathering to state next steps. Forum Theatre believes that our art is a reflection of our community and that a multitude of voices are necessary to truly grapple with the issues of today. We'd like to make sure that all of the right voices are being heard and hope you can join us. The schedule: 2:00pm - Matinee of Agnes Under the Big Top (Click here for ticket information) 3:30-4:00pm - Break 4:00-6:30pm - Town Hall If you're unable to attend, follow the conversation on Twitter with #ForumTH For questions, click here to contact Artistic Director Michael Dove. Saturday, September 21, 2013 Forum Theatre @ Round House Silver Spring 8641 Colesville Road, Silver Spring, MD AGNES UNDER THE BIG TOP: A TALL TALE by Aditi Brennan Kapil Directed by Michael Dove Featuring: Joy Jones*+, Annie Houston+ (bobrauschenbergamerica), Nora Achrati+ (Church), Ed Christian (The Language Archive), Jon Jon Johnson, and Jason Glass. Photos by Melissa Blackall. Happening Today on Twitter - #ForumTHToday, September 20th from 2:00pm to 3:00pm (EST), Forum Theatre will be hosting a national and global conversation about diversity and inclusion ahead of this Saturday's Town Hall at the theatre. Artistic Director Michael Dove will moderate the conversation and all are invited. This open-access discussion will focus on what efforts are being done in the theatre field to promote audience/artist/aesthetic diversity, the ways we are making our theatres more inclusive, and ways that we can measure that progress. The twitter conversation will help provide broad context to the town hall event on Saturday which will focus on Forum's specific local community and actions moving ahead. To join the conversation, search for #ForumTH on twitter and be sure to include #ForumTH in your messages and responses. I've had the extreme pleasure of working with the lovely, sharp and talented Azie Mira Dungey on a number of occasions. The recent attention and immediate success for her new web series Ask a Slave! comes as no surprise. Ask a Slave! is based entirely on the day-to-day encounters she had while working as a slave character at George Washington's Mount Vernon. The character of Lizzie Mae is a made up person, who did not live at Mount Vernon, but is inspired by the women she portrayed. This smart, witty, satirical look at race relations is a welcome and useful addition to current racial and social discourse. Click here to hear her recent interview NPR's Meghna Chakrabarti on Here and Now. Episodes One and Two have already been released. New videos will be released every Sunday. Make sure you don't miss a single one by subscribing here. Four more videos will be released in the series. Please enjoy Episode One: Meet Lizzie Mae. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider making a donation to Ask a Slave! by clicking here. To learn more about Azie Mira Dungey, the process and inspiration for Ask a Slave!, and a behind-the-scenes look at production, please enjoy this interview. JACQUELINE LAWTON: Why did you decide to get into theater? Was there someone or a particular show that inspired you? AZIE MIRA DUNGEY: That is an easy question. I have always loved television and films. When I was a little girl, I watched The Carol Burnett show every night before bed. I spent most of my time writing stories and acting them out. This is how I entertained myself as an only child who did not attend preschool. What sealed the deal for me, so to speak, was a performance I attended with my mother. It was “Ragtime” at the Kennedy Center. My mother is not a fan of musicals, but I remember looking over to her in middle of Act II and her eyes were filled with tears. And I thought, “I want to do that.” I don’t mean that I wanted to make my mother cry. I wanted to make people connect with a story and find an emotional release--laughter, tears, what have you-- for the greatest purpose: to learn more about themselves, and each other, and grapple with this question of what it means to be human. For me, Ragtime did that. And it’s still my favorite show. JL: How long did you live and work as an actor in the D.C. area? What brought you here? AMD: I moved to Prince George’s County when I was 8 years old. I grew up mostly in College Park. I went to NYU, and soon after graduation, I came back. Honestly it was because I got married, and we decided to make a go of it there. It was a great decision and I enjoyed working in theatre there. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for about 9 months now. JL: You describe “Ask a Slave” as a new comedy web series hosted by the plucky Lizzie Mae, housemaid to George and Martha Washington. What inspired you to create this provocative, smart and humorous new show? AMD: I worked at Mount Vernon as a part-time day job for about two years. I actually quite enjoyed it, mostly because I loved the people I worked with and I love learning. The subject matter was horrifying, but the working experience was quite pleasant. The impetus for this series came from friends and family. I would tell them the stories of these crazy or disturbing or humorous interactions with visitors, and we would laugh or be incredibly angry together (many times both). They encouraged me to write it down, which I started doing. I had a conversation with the DC-area actress Jennifer Mendenhall while in her kitchen, and she was very insistent that I make a show about it. She was thinking theatre, maybe a one-woman show. As I ruminated over it, it became clear to me that it would work best on film because the questioners could sort of pop in and out, and my character would still be in control. I wanted to talk about these crazy Mount Vernon questions, not just to make fun of them or the experience I had, but also to give kind of a “checking-in” on where we are as a country with this. History is our narrative, it shapes what we think of ourselves and our society. How it is controlled, and whose stories get told (or not told) has a strong effect on culture, and even on public policy. These misconceptions about black history and the modern black experience is really dividing us politically and socially. If we don’t understand racism and where it comes from, how can we end it? How can we weed it out? We have to be critical of these things to make true progress. JL: What is a living history character? How is this different from playing a character from history in a film or play? AMD: I spent about two months in the MV library reading about the time period, and George Washington’s life, and the very specific stories of three enslaved women that I portrayed. That was amazing. I learned so much and I was eager to give that knowledge away. Living history can be very effective, but it is also very strange. The strange part is that you are kind of caught between actor and educator, and you are put in situations that this person you are playing would never have experienced. Caroline Branham, Mrs Washington’s Lady’s maid, would never have been sitting in a Greenhouse sewing shirts and talking to a school group from Ohio that keeps trying to explain to her what a cell phone is. So it can be very frustrating and awkward. I should say that MV actors don’t do living history, exactly. At Williamsburg, you will see living history, because they are living as a town in that time, and you, as a visitor, walk into that world. At Mount Vernon, there were maybe 5 of us, and on any given day, perhaps 1-3 of us working at a time, and we were the only ones “living” in 1797. We were really just there to answer questions. I did not wash clothes, or dye wool or fetch tea for Mrs. Washington. I was a “housemaid” who wasn’t even allowed to be in house because it is a museum! So that is why is was all about the questions. JL: What do you love about playing Lizze Mae? What is the most challenging part of bringing her to life? AMD: Lizzie Mae is just great. I love playing her. (I mean, I wrote her!) I love that she is candid but thoughtful, and gracious. I think she is very classy, though she is a low-status person. That is something that I believe is a part of the African American female experience: Having to find grace and dignity in yourself and your life in a world that thinks you are less than a man, and even less than a human. That was actually also the most challenging. To tow the line between her own high sense of herself and her inherent oppression. People at MV often asked me if I (my character) was happy. I would say “People like me aren’t given happiness in this life, we have to make it.” I wanted to make sure that came across. She can find laughter and goodness in a moment, but she is living in the pain and horror of slavery. Another issue was making sure that she did not become a minstrel show. I don’t think I have to get into that. We all know what I mean. But she is not the butt of the joke. Her speech patterns, her looks, her situation is not what makes the comedy. It’s the ignorance and misconceptions of others that bring the laughs. That was very important. JL: What is the process of creating a web series? Who are your collaborators? How long does it take from when you’ve written an episode to when it’s finished and ready? AMD: For me it started with the writing. I wasn’t going to do anything until I was very comfortable with the scripts. And that took a lot of effort because it’s such a delicate process, finding humor with slavery staring you in the face. Slavery is not funny, and no one should try to make it so. The script underwent many revisions. The director, Jordan Black, is a phenomenal person and artist. He was on-board from the moment I contacted him (with no introduction) on Facebook. He is the creator of a show at the Groundlings called “The Black Version” which is an all-black improv show that is one of the most popular comedy shows in LA. I am a student at the Groundlings, and a mutual friend, a brilliant actress named Katierose Donahue told me about him. He really pushed the script in the right direction, impressing upon me that I should focus focus focus on the questions. He pulled in many of the actors you see in the show from the Groundlings Sunday Company that he directs. I couldn’t have been happier with his work. We shot all the content for six episodes in two days, with about 2 1/2 hours on a third day for pick-up shots. Ryan Moulton was our DP and editor. He is fantastic. One day we shot all of the “Questions” right outside of the Groundlings Theatre on Melrose Ave in West Hollywood. People came in 10-20 minute blocks. Our Production Manager Pamela Peters kept us on schedule. The second day was shooting the “Guest Appearance” scenes, like the one with the abolitionist and all of my answers. We didn’t even know which Q&A would go where. We just shot it and then later collaborated on how to situate the content within the episodes. Then Ryan cut it all six episodes. Johnny, my husband, did the sound, and Jamie Noguchi, who is a fabulous visual artist and comic book author, made the cute animated intro. We shot it and went through several drafts of the editing and such, and all in all it was about 2-3 months. JL: On the show, different people ask Lizzy Mae questions about her life. Issues of race and race relations are addressed with great candor and wit. Where do you get these questions? AMD: The questions were word for word what I was asked while working at Mount Vernon. You really can’t make this stuff up. A few of the actors used their amazing improv skills to come up with some questions while we were shooting. About 3 ended up in the series. I only chose them if they were close to something I remembered being asked. For instance the one about face products. She made that up on the spot. People were always commenting on my skin being so pretty. I did tell a woman, “You don’t want this skin. It hasn’t done me any good.” JL: If there is one thing you want audiences to walk away knowing or thinking about after experiencing Ask a Slave, what would that be? AMD: Read a book. That is all I ask. Really a book. No, really, on a serious not. One thing I notice at Mount Vernon was how visitors felt such strong and immediate affinity to George Washington and his story. And rightly so, he deserves it. However, in this series, I hope people begin to feel that same passion for the Lizzie Maes of history as well. Her history belongs to all of us as well. I wish people would see America differently. We made this country together. White, black, American Indian, and everyone else. When I look at my family history, which I know back to the 1690s, that is what I see. We need to have an interest in everyone’s American story. Black history is not a separate history or a less important one. We have been here from the beginning. We are America, too. JL: Where can we watch new episodes of “Ask a Slave?” AMD: Please subscribe to our "Ask a Slave" youtube channel. There are two episodes up now. We will post one new episode per week. They will also be posted on the web site AskASlave.com and our Facebook page. JL: How can we support “Ask a Slave” to make sure this wonderful new series continues? AMD: Well, I would love to make more than our initial 6 episodes, but I am currently out of funds. If you would like to see more, please give to our gofundme page. AZIE MIRA DUNGEY Azie is an actor/writer living in Los Angeles. She is from the Washington, DC area where she worked in both historical interpretation and professional regional theatre, performing in shows at the Smithsonian, Folger Shakespeare Theatre, and the Studio Theatre, one of which earned a Helen Hayes nomination. She is soon to be featured in the upcoming web series Josie and Dale, directed by Mark Rutman. Azie is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and is currently studying at the Groundlings Theatre and School. On Monday, September 2, 2013 at 3:00pm, African Continuum Theatre Company opens the 2013/14 Season of the Phoenix with a reading of Producing Artistic Director Thembi Duncan's new play, Mon Chaton as part of the 12th Annual Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage Festival. The reading, which will be directed by Thembi Duncan, features Tricia Homer, Audra Polk, Patricia Dugueye, Carolyn Agan, Kendell Lee, Justin Fair, and Matthew Sparacino. This event is free and open to the public. It will take place at the Family Theater. For more information, visit: http://www.kennedy-center.org/events/?event=XNPTS About the play Summer, 1926. A country schoolteacher inherits a Harlemboardinghouse from her worldly, sophisticated aunt and finds herself caught in a whirlwind of enthralling characters and events that teach her more about herself than she ever imagined. Mon Chaton is one of the untold stories of lesbians and gays during the period that came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. I had the opportunity to speak with Thembi about her writing process and the inspiration for her new play. JACQUELINE LAWTON: Why did you decide to get into theatre? Was there someone or a particular show that inspired you? THEMBI DUNCAN: Back in 1998, I took an acting class at the local recreation center for fun. The culmination of the class was a performance of the children’s play Yours Truly, Jack Frost. I played Evilina Muggleworth, the head of an advertising agency that would do anything to make money. I took such pleasure in playing that deliciously dastardly character that I began to look for more opportunities to embody various personas on stage. Shortly thereafter, I pursued more formal training in acting and movement, and then I and began to audition all over town. I landed a couple of roles, things began to snowball, and I found myself enveloped in the world of theatre. Once I figured out that I could actually get paid to act, that was all she wrote. I was hooked. Poetry was my thing since elementary school, but after acting for a few years, I decided to try my hand at writing plays. I didn’t want to complain that someone else wasn’t writing the stories I wanted to see. I figured, why not write them myself? JL: Next, tell me a little bit about your writing process. Do you have any writing rituals? Do you write in the same place or in different places? TD: I prefer to write at home, where I can hold loud conversations with my characters with minimal outside judgement or intervention. I have a large, rectangular wooden table where my laptop lives. A friend calls it the “Last Supper” table. It’s big enough to spread drafts and notes everywhere, so that I always have my ideas at arm’s length. When it comes to editing drafts and revising, however, I prefer Cosi or Panera Bread. A specific Cosi, and a specific Panera Bread. And I like to sit at the same table. I give people the stink eye if they’re sitting at my table when I come in. JL: Describe for me all the sensations you had the first time you had one of your plays produced and you sat in the audience while it was performed...what was different about the characters you created? How much input did you have in the directing of that work? TD: As a rule, I try to stay out of the director’s hair unless she/he asks me a direct question. I try. I have had several short plays produced, and the first time I sat in the audience and watched one, I was somewhat confused, because a lot of what was going on in my head was not necessarily communicated through the work. Not saying that’s a bad thing, because the piece was still well done, it simply didn’t turn out the way that I’d imagined. The actors imbued the characters with qualities that I hadn’t considered, the director had a vision, and so on. I also learned to think about how effectively I communicate my ideas through the work itself. That’s definitely my biggest challenge. JL: What do you hope to convey in the plays that you create--what are they about? What sorts of people, situation, circumstances, do you like to write about? TD: I like to make opposing ideas crash into each other. I like to educate and create nostalgia. I write about people with quirks, people with weaknesses. People who defy categories and assumptions. I write mainly about women and African-Americans, but several of my characters have no particular race. I write stories that will create images that I want to see on stage. Images that we don’t see often enough – women and people of color as main characters, heroes, complex beings, with agency over their own destinies. I am thinking these days about being more theatrical. Getting away from writing that stages like TV or film, which is hard. I want to give people a compelling reason to get off their couches and go sit in a dark building with no windows. JL: What inspired you to write Mon Chaton? TD: In 2009, I was at the University of Maryland in my last semester of finishing my undergraduate degree in Theatre (it’s never too late, kids!). I decided to write a play as an Independent Study, so I worked with Dr. Walter Dallas on The New Negro, which was the original title of the play, based on the 1925 anthology of the same name by Alain Locke. My fascination with the Harlem Renaissance led me to the subject matter – but I was interested in the average, everyday people who lived amongst the renowned artists that we often associate with that era. JL: Why is this story relevant for today’s audience? TD: Anyone engaged in the current public discourse on LGBT equality will be interested in this piece. Everyone else will (hopefully) appreciate it for its exploration of the complexities of love and identity in that particular space and time. Some people consider LGBT issues a modern phenomenon, as if gays and lesbians were invented in the 80’s. The fact that there was a thriving LGBT scene in Harlem in the 1920’s was interesting to me, and I wanted to share some of those stories, based on my exhaustive research of the period. Audience members have cornered me, asking how much of the play I “made up,” and the answer is very little. Nothing is new under the sun. About the Playwright A native of the Washington D.C. area, Thembi Duncan has performed as an actor in the region for almost fifteen years. As an emerging playwright, she penned Gridiron: Adventures from the Sidelines,for the Active Cultures 2011 Sportaculture Play Festival, which was re-produced in the Best of Sportaculture Festival later that year. Champagne, her 15-minute play commissioned by The Brave Soul Collective, was performed for National Black AIDS Day 2012, the 2012 National Black Theatre Festival, and the 2012 International AIDS Conference. She wrote Coop in the Yard for Active Culture's Govaculture offering in the Atlas Intersections Festival, and BLUEP for Rorschach Theatre's Klexography Festival. Mon Chaton is her first full-length play, which was first developed in 2009 under the tutelage of Dr. Walter Dallas at the University of Maryland, and has had successful staged readings in D.C. and Virginia. Her cross-gendered adaptation of the cult classic film Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, called WTF Happened To Baby Sister?, will receive a workshop performance in February 2014 as part of the Mead Theatre Lab Program. Thembi serves as Lead Teaching Artist at historic Ford’s Theatre, and also serves as Producing Artistic Director of African Continuum Theatre Company. About African Continuum Theatre Company The African Continuum Theatre Coalition was created in 1989 as a service organization to assist the dozen or more small black community theatres in the improvement of the quality and visibility of their work. In 1995, the Coalition transitioned into a theatre company, with a primary mission to produce professional, high-quality programming for the general public that preserves and highlights African-American history and culture. African Continuum Theatre Company has presented over 35 fully-produced, main-stage plays, seven of which were world premieres, along with numerous public readings of new works by playwrights of color. African Continuum Theatre Company is committed to providing new and traditional performing art forms from main-stage productions to community engagement programs. Its focus and strength is engaging the community with exciting and meaningful theatrical productions, educational programs, partnerships, and volunteer opportunities that bring us to the larger community. African Continuum has garnered recognition for its artistic endeavors and leadership from the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington and other agencies, including 16 Helen Hayes Awards nominations, 3 Helen Hayes Awards, the Washington Post Award for Distinguished Service to the Community, and the Mayor’s Arts Award. Once again, Norman Allen, Renee Calarco and I served as mentors to young playwrights who had been awarded the 2013 Playwrights Discovery Award as part of The Kennedy Center's Department of VSA and Accessibility. This year’s distinquished recipients were chosen from more than 350 applications nationwide and an excerpt of their work will be presented at the Kennedy Center as part the 11th Annual Page-to-Stage Festival. In my next post, I'm going to introduce you to the mentors and share their experience and the role of mentorship! For now, here's more information about the reading and the wonderful young playwrights!!! The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts presents the 28th Annual Playwright Discovery Performance Staged readings of four award-winning student scripts Sunday, September 1, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. MILLENNIUM STAGE SOUTH I had a wonderful experience again this year, so wanted to check in with Norman and Renee. They were kind enough to share their thoughts. Please enjoy and I hope to see you on Sunday! What excited you about working with VSA Playwrights Discovery Program again this year? I had such a fantastic time working with the program last year that I jumped at the opportunity to return. The process itself is rather dramatic. You spend several weeks working with your young playwright by phone and email. You get to know them and their work and their goals. You share ideas about what it means to collaborate with actors and directors. Then suddenly the day comes when they arrive in Washington and you get to be in the same room together. Last year, it was especially interesting to watch the young playwrights during the rehearsal process. I think it’s always difficult and complicated when a playwright lays their work before other artists. It takes a level of maturity to be open and flexible, and yet also hold fast to your central vision. A lot of adult playwrights I know have never mastered this. To watch young writers move toward it can be very moving. Who is your playwright and why should audiences come experience his/her play? Will Hedgecock is a brilliant young writer, with an incredibly mature comic sense. His play Bad Days is an exploration of depression, how it affects a person, and how that person is perceived by others. But he does this with a light, comic touch. It’s a very difficult line to walk – taking a very serious subject and dealing with it in a humorous way. Will walks that line brilliantly. He also has a lot to say with this play. It touches on family relationships, on romance, on loyalty. It’s the portrait of a young man discovering his own strength, and I think audiences will discover some new perspectives by stepping into this story. What are your thoughts on mentorship? You know I can’t get through this interview without quoting The King and I. Mrs. Anna sings, “If you become a teacher, by your pupils you’ll be taught.” And she’s right. I spent the last year working as a mentor with the Center for Inspired Teaching, coaching teachers in DC public schools. I never left one of those classrooms without knowing more than I went in. It’s the same here. The key to mentoring is, actually, recognizing that it’s very different from teaching. You’re not there as the expert, or the one who holds all the knowledge. You’re there to enter into conversation with another artist who has similar interests and similar goals. There was definitely stuff I had to share with Will after working as a playwright for the last twenty years, but Will and I met as equals, and I think we both benefited from the experience. NORMAN ALLEN Norman Allen’s work for the stage has been commissioned and produced by the Kennedy Center, the Shakespeare Theatre Company and the Karlin Music Theatre in Prague, where his contemporary Carmen (score by Wildhorn & Murphy) ran for three years and was recently released as a 3D film. While playwright-in-residence at Signature Theatre, Allen premiered Fallen from Proust, In the Garden (MacArthur Award), and Nijinsky’s Last Dance (Helen Hayes Award, Outstanding Play), with subsequent productions across the U.S. and Europe. A member of Playwrights Arena at Arena Stage, his recent projects include Word Dance Theater’s inter-disciplinary Once Wild: Isadora in Russia, an adaptation of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, and upcoming productions of Carmen in Tokyo and Seoul. What excited you about working with VSA Playwrights Discovery Program again this year? Last year, I had such a great time—and learned so much from my mentee—that I absolutely jumped at the chance to work with VSA again. I love working with young playwrights because they’re still exploring and learning and doing astonishing things with their scripts. And their energy is contagious! Last year, after the weekend was over, I dove right back into a script I’d been struggling with. There’s something about the community of young writers that’s so inspirational. Who is your playwright and why should audiences come experience his/her play? Mickey Liebrecht is 16 and thinks big. Really big. Her play, BROKEN BODIES, has a cast of 13. Several characters speak American Sign Language. It’s a play about broken bodies…broken relationships…and the ultimate healing that comes with time. Also, Mickey’s got an amazing ear for dialogue, which is something you just can’t teach. Though her play has 13 characters, each one of them has his or her own unique voice. It’s quite an accomplishment. (A note: the excerpt we’ll be hearing at Millenium Stage does not involve all 13 of those characters!) What are your thoughts on mentorship? I love it. We so often talk about “giving back” to our communities in one way or another, but I have to admit that I feel like I’m taking more than I’m giving. Again, it’s that energy and enthusiasm that inspires me so much. And I think we all need mentors—no matter how old we are or how many hours we’ve spent writing and revising. It helps to have someone to not only guide you, but to also act as a sounding board and peer. It’s more of a give-and-take relationship, which I just love. RENEE CALARCO Renee Calarco is a playwright, teacher and performer. Her plays include The Religion Thing (2013 nominee for the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play), Short Order Stories (2007 recipient of the Charles MacArthur Award), The Mating of Angela Weiss, Bleed, First Stop: Niagara Falls, If You Give a Cat a Cupcake, and others. Her plays have been produced, developed, and commissioned by Theater J, Charter Theater, Geva Theatre, Project Y, Adventure Theatre, Doorway Arts Ensemble, and the Source Theatre Festival. Renee teaches both playwriting and comedy improv at The Theatre Lab, and she teaches playwriting at George Washington University. She’s a founding member of The Welders and a proud member of The Dramatists Guild. Fun random fact: she’s also a licensed professional tour guide. What excited you about working with VSA Playwrights Discovery Program again this year? The mission of the program is what drew me back. Also, it’s wonderful to be a part of the professional experience that these young playwrights get to experience. It’s amazing to be at the beginning of a process with a young playwright. I get to all the things to her that I wish had been said to me in terms of honoring voice and vision for the play. Both years, I was in the process of writing my own play and I learned a lot from each meeting about coming back to the “What if?” and about remembering what originally drew me to the story and characters in the first place. What’s more, any and all advice I gave to my mentee, I turned back and gave to myself! Finally, there’s nothing like getting that late night text that says, “I finished the next draft! It’s only its way!” It’s beautiful to be able to celebrate that success with someone who understands that feeling. Who is your playwright and why should audiences come experience his/her play? Nicole Zimmerer is an extraordinary young woman and I am fortunate for having spent this time with her. She is a talented, passionate, smart and hardworking writer. In her play, Falling with Grace, we meet a teenager working to figure out the rest of her life. She has cerebral palsy, but doesn’t want to be defined or limited by her disability. She is quite independent, which makes it difficult to confront feelings of the loss and anxiety that comes with major transitions in life such as graduation. She lashes out at those she loves, when really she wants to hold on them and keep every still, everything in place. It’s a beautiful play, a brilliant journey of struggle, acceptance, and hope. What I love most about this play are the relationships between women. It’s a play about mothers and daughters, and also about best friends of two generations. It’s funny, insightful and unlike any play that I’ve ever before experienced. What are your thoughts on mentorship? When I think about mentoring, I think about this quote from Benjamin Franklin: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” I completely agree with Norman that being a mentor different from being a teacher. It’s a process of engaging another person in rich, inspired and challenging dialogue about shared passions, thoughts and ambitions. This allows each person to come to the conversation at different points of entry, different levels of experience and different points of views. You meet in a place of respect and admiration. After reading Nicole’s play, I was excited to speak with her about the process of writing and about how we go deeper into our characters to make them bolder, richer and more realized. But this wasn’t about what I could teach her; it was about sharing what we each experienced in our lives and how that could manifest on the page. I consider myself very fortunate to have been a part of this experience. JACQUELINE E. LAWTON Jacqueline E. Lawton received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. Her plays include Anna K;Blood-bound and Tongue-tied; Deep Belly Beautiful; The Devil’s Sweet Water;The Hampton Years; Ira Aldridge: the African Roscius; Lions of Industry, Mothers of Invention; Love Brothers Serenade, Mad Breed and Our Man Beverly Snow. She has received commissions from Active Cultures Theater, Discovery Theater, National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of American History, Round House Theatre and Theater J. Her play, Cinder Blocks, was published in Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia, and the Austin Project (University of Texas Press). A 2012 TCG Young Leaders of Color, she has been nominated for the Wendy Wasserstein Prize and a PONY Fellowship from the Lark New Play Development Center. About VSA
VSA, the international organization on arts and disability, was founded more than 35 years ago by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to provide arts and education opportunities for people with disabilities and increase access to the arts for all. VSA is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. For more information, www.vsarts.org. About Education at the Kennedy Center As the national center for the performing arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is committed to increasing opportunities for all people to participate in and understand the arts. To fulfill that mission, the Kennedy Center strives to commission, create, design, produce, and/or present performances and programs of the highest standard of excellence and of a diversity that reflects the world in which we live—and to make those performances and programs accessible and inclusive. It's on the rare occasion that I get a chance to leave the city. I spend many a holiday here in the Nation's Capitol and by far, Labor Day Weekend is one of my favorites. With it, comes the Kennedy Center's annual Page-to-Stage Festival. This year, for the first time in five years, I will not be presenting a play in the festival. This made me really sad until I remember that I'm doing something even greater: I'm mentoring a young playwright who will be presenting her work in the festival for the first time as part of the VSA Playwright Discovery Award Program! The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts presents the 28th Annual Playwright Discovery Performance Staged readings of four award-winning student scripts Sunday, September 1, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. MILLENNIUM STAGE SOUTH “We are inspired by the work and enthusiasm of these talented high school students,” said Betty Siegel, Director of VSA and Accessibility at the Kennedy Center. “These works tell important stories from a unique perspective, and we are proud to support the development of these young writers.” This extraordinary, worthwhile and inspiring program is an annual competition that invites middle and high school students to take a closer look at the world around them, examine how disability affects their lives and the lives of others, and express their views through the art of playwriting. Young playwrights with and without disabilities can write from their own experience or about an experience in the life of another person or a fictional character. The program began in 1984, and has continued annually since. . This year’s distinquished recipients were chosen from more than 150 applications nationwide and an excerpt of their work will be presented at the Kennedy Center as part the 12th Annual Page-to-Stage Festival. The award winning plays include The Broken Ornament by Margaret Abigail Flowers, Bad Days by Will Hedgecock, Sons of Atlantis by Nik Kerry, Broken Bodies by Mickey Liebrecht, Sertraline Lullabies by Elana Loeb, Cal Sheridan: Not Suffering by Cal Sheridan, Joanna’s Baby by Dimitra Skouras, Love Like Anything by Nathan Wilgeroth, and Falling with Grace by Nicole Zimmerer. The young playwrights will engage with seasoned professional playwrights, directors and actors to refine their work and developed their playwriting skills. I'm in the finest of company, as many of my esteemed colleagues are taking part including playwright and previous Playwright Discovery Competition winner Janet Allard; award-winning D.C. playwright Norman Allen; award-winning D.C. playwright Renée Calarco; D.C.-based director and actor Lee Mikeska Gardner; award-winning dramaturg and director Sonya Robbins-Hoffmann; award-winning Chicago-based theater artist Michael Patrick Thornton; and award-winning D.C.-based playwright Karen Zacarias will spend the weekend coaching, mentoring and working with the young playwrights. In my next post, I'm going to introduce you to the mentors and share their experience and thoughts on the role of mentorship. For now, here's more information about the reading and the wonderful young playwrights. About the Plays and PlaywrightsThe Broken Ornament by Margaret Abigail Flowers Margaret Abigail Flowers, 17, originally hails from Houston, Texas, and has recently graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. She is the winner of numerous regional and national awards for her poetry and playwriting, including The Blank Theatre Young Playwright's Competition and multiple Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She will be attending Stanford University in the fall of 2013 as an undergraduate student. About the Play When Sam returns to find his childhood home decorated as if it were Christmastime in the middle of July and that his sister has been lying to him about his mother's decaying mind, he begins to tear down the routine his family has established in order to achieve his own satisfaction. As he rips apart the Christmas tree, his familial bonds and own guilty conscience are put to the test and they each must look at who they are and what they won to each other and themselves. Bad Days by Will Hedgecock Will Hedgecock, 17, is a senior at Edison High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is an editor of Eyrie, the school's nationally recognized journal of creative expression, an active participant in his school's drama program, as well as an Eagle Scout. Will received the regional and state All-Star awards for the OSAI one-act competition for his role as Claudius. In addition, he has produced and directed two of his own one-act plays locally. He plans to major in theatre before pursuing a graduate program in playwriting program. About the Play Due to a perceived suicide attempt and a diagnosis of depression, Carrol Jacobs is forced to confront the darkest parts of himself and the scorn and misunderstanding of his friends and relatives until he is "no longer a threat to himself or others." In this poignant, honest and surprisingly funny play, Carrol must face events in his past if he ever hopes to move on to his future. Sons of Atlantis by Nik Kerry Nik Kerry, 19, is a recent graduate of Centerville High School in Centerville, Ohio. Those that know him would describe him as energetic and enthusiastic about life. Born in Utah in 1994, he grew up in Ohio where he spent most of his time writing or playing musical instruments. Since being published in a poetry collection in fifth grade, Mr. Kerry’s work has been seen in the Teenink.com magazine, A Celebration of Young Poets magazine, Dark Gothic Resurrected magazine, and he is the self-published author of Nevermore, a book for Kindle. He currently resides in Utah. About the Play Henry was a creator of his own city, his own universe, and his own happiness all within his day dreaming and his obsession over Water worlds and shipwrecks due to his Asperger's Syndrome. Broken Bodies by Mickey Liebrecht Mickey Liebrecht, 16, is a junior at Arapahoe High School in Littleton, Colorado. She is currently enrolled in honors and AP courses. Her greatest love is the choir she is a part of, Young Voices of Colorado, where she has been taught to read and make music. More critically, she has also learned to use music as a tool for her own creative originality—a skill she truly values. She hopes to become a profiler with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. About the Play A troubled youth has never been able to forgive himself after his father was killed and his sister made deph in a car-accident he believes he could have prevented. Three years later, he and his sister find themselves dragged off by their mother into a new town, with new faces--some old--and new discoveries of how life can go on after ANYBODY has been in ANY way, broken. Sertraline Lullabies by Elana Loeb Elana Loeb, 18, recently graduated from Palo Alto High School in Palo Alto, California. She is a big sister, a singer-songwriter, and an avid Shakespearian. In addition to Sertraline Lullabies, she has written two one-act comedies, an one-act musical, and a full length play. This fall Elana will begin her freshman year at Cornell University. About the Play In a parked car in a hospital parking lot, two teenagers worry about a friend of theirs who is under suicide watch. Cal Sheridan: Not Suffering by Cal Sheridan Cal Sheridan, 18, recently graduated from Boise High School in Boise, Idaho. For Cal, the stage is his life. Whether writing or acting, he loves being a part of the theatrical experience. He has written two plays: Chestnuts Roasting and Cal Sheridan: Not Suffering. His theater experience also includes working on stage crew as well as numerous acting credits. When not participating in theater, he enjoys writing scripts for cartoons and songs on Garageband. Cal studies under Dwayne Blackaller, a professional playwright at the Boise Contemporary Theatre. About the Play Cal, a young philosopher, shares with you the things you need to know but haven't been said. For the weight of the walker is less than the weight of words. Joanna’s Baby by Dimitra Skouras Dimitra Skouras, 18, is a recent graduate of Dallastown Area High School in York, Pennsylvania, where she was involved in the music and drama programs. Her lifelong involvement in community theatre fostered her love for all aspects of the performing arts. She enjoys literature, baking, and comedic television, and it is her dream to one day write for TV. Dimitra hopes to attend college sometime in the (hopefully near) future, as soon as she figures out how to pay for it. About the Play A woman must reexamine her beliefs and make a very difficult decision when she learns that her child will be born with a disability. Love Like Anything by Nathan Wilgeroth Nathan Wilgeroth, 18, recently graduated from Vista Ridge High School in Cedar Park, Texas. He was Vice President of the theatre department, having won multiple school- and district-wide acting awards. In addition, he was a member of the Texas All-State Mixed Choir and President of his school's choir department. In the fall, Nathan will attend Boston University and plans to major in English Literature. About the Play Love Like Anything is a story about Roger Bolden and Sylvia Harrell, two teenagers dealing with the turmoil of their own parents' divorces. To fight against the seemingly inevitable withering of relationships, they try to convince each other and themselves of the durability of lasting love, asking themselves, "Does love exist and, if so, must it always die?" Falling with Grace by Nicole Zimmerer Nicole Zimmerer, 19, just graduated from Westside High School in Houston, Texas. She was a member of the school’s theatre company for four years, as well as a member of National Honors Society. She has had cerebral palsy since birth and has written the words “non-progressive, non-contagious condition” on more college essays than she would like to admit. She is an avid writer and is very passionate about theatre, television, and film. Nicole will be attending the University of Houston in the fall, with plans to major in Playwriting and Dramaturgy. About the Play A seventeen-year-old girl, Grace, has dealt with cerebral palsy, anon-contagious, non-progressive condition, her whole life. This is the story of her coming to accept her disability and herself. About VSA
VSA, the international organization on arts and disability, was founded more than 35 years ago by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to provide arts and education opportunities for people with disabilities and increase access to the arts for all. VSA is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. For more information, www.vsarts.org. About Education at the Kennedy Center As the national center for the performing arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is committed to increasing opportunities for all people to participate in and understand the arts. To fulfill that mission, the Kennedy Center strives to commission, create, design, produce, and/or present performances and programs of the highest standard of excellence and of a diversity that reflects the world in which we live—and to make those performances and programs accessible and inclusive. From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin: A Town Hall Meeting on Black Bodies and American Racism “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company was one of my first theatre homes. They taught me how to be a dramaturg, a craft which has served me well these past eight years. I have attended nearly every single production. I have stood in praise and enthusiasm of their programming, which reflects a commitment to diversity of form, gender, race, ability and sexual orientation. But I have never been more proud to be affiliated with them than I was this past Friday night when I took part in the town hall event. From the beginning, there was an immediate sense that folks needed to be a part of this conversation. They needed a safe, but charged place to engage and process, to validate and confront all of what they had been feeling in response to the recent verdict in the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. With the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington upon us, now was the time for civic action and leadership. Woolly Mammoth took that the helm in our theatre community and executed it brilliantly. When I walked into the theatre, the energy of the room was palpable. It was hungry, passionate and urgent. There was a radiant sense of expectation, curiosity, and hope. Howard Shalwitz (Woolly Artistic Director) and Jocelyn Prince (Woolly Connectivity Director and Town Hall Facilitator) welcomed the panelists, facilitators, volunteers and more than 100 guests. We were invited to channel what we were feeling into action and change for the betterment of our society. We were encouraged to engage in an honest, open, and challenging conversation with local activists, academics, artists, policy makers and each member in the audience. In preparation for our convening, Jocelyn Prince worked with civic engagement expert, Michael Rohd, to shape our Goals and Rules for the evening: Woolly Mammoth Town Hall Goals
Woolly Mammoth Town Hall Rules
Once these rules and goals were agreed upon, we were then led in an Interfaith Prayer by Reverend Carolyn Boyd, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ. Her prayer served as a reminder that we have come together in the service of work that is greater than us. Click here to her powerful, healing and uplifting words. Then, poet and Woolly Claque Member, Ray Crawford delivered his beautiful, raw and captivating poem, Worthless. His poem was a reminder of how art can help us to contextualize an otherwise painful, disturbing and inexplicable experience. Next, Jocelyn facilitated the discussion with panelists: Reverend Carolyn Boyd, Minister of Organizational Development at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ; Louisa Davis, activist and Adjunct Professor of Religion and Ethics at Montgomery College; Jessica Frances Dukes, Woolly Company Member; Dr. Dennis B. Rogers, Lecturer in the Department of History and Government at Bowie State University; Gabriel Rojo, Site Manager, Identity Youth, Inc.; and Dawn Ursula, Woolly Company Member (and cast member in Woolly’s production of We Are Proud to Present…) These were the questions that were asked and the responses that really resonated: How has the outcome of the Trayvon Martin trial impacted you as a minister/activist/theater artist/academic? As a citizen? As a human being?
How would you situate the Trayvon Martin trail and verdict (as well as the ongoing national actions and dialogues in response to the verdict) within the context of the civil rights movement? Is there a linkage that you would draw between Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin?
What implications do the case and verdict have for ongoing issues in the DC community (racial profiling, police brutality, criminalization of marijuana, race relations, prison and military industrial complex, etc)? What role can DC citizens play in changing the societal conditions that contributed to the death of Trayvon and the acquittal of George Zimmerman?
Towards the end of the panel discussion, an interesting, profound and shattering point was raised about our collective understanding of Race: Success is about moving toward whiteness. This bears repeating (and perhaps even saying aloud): Success is about moving towards whiteness. There is a disturbing, frightening and undeniable truth to this statement that I feel resonating in conversations around the risk of producing plays by playwrights of color. From there, we had a brief group conversation where the audience had an opportunity to ask questions and share their own thoughts. What I found most valuable in this discussion was the sharing of essays, books and online resources:
From there, we broke out into smaller sessions for deeper investigation of these issues. We were tasked with identifying potential next steps and action plans for our own community. We were reminded to be patient, open, and generous with ourselves and others. Academics (Ray Crawford Jr.)
Activists and Policy Makers (Kymone Freeman)
Artists and Arts Workers (Jacqueline E. Lawton)
Youth and Youth Workers (Goldie Deane)
I’m writing this blog as I listen to the commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. So, I will end where we began with an inspiring quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: "We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." More than anything, “the fierce urgency of now” was the real power of the Woolly Mammoth Town Hall event. We all entered the theatre that night for different reasons. We all came from different life experiences. We all have different beliefs for how to solve the problems of systemic racism and injustice. However, we all have a clear understanding that NOW is the time for this work to happen and that we can only achieve great success by coming together as a unified force. Fifty years ago, Washington DC Wednesday morning, August 28 1963 - my mother turns to me and says "Heidele, go put on your shoes. We're going downtown to do something important. Don't tell your father" We head downtown on the bus and make our way towards the Washington Monument, there is a huge crowd below, we manage to work our way near the far left corner of the Reflecting Pool and can go no further. There are thousands and thousands of people there, facing the Lincoln Monument, listening to sounds coming out of speakers which seem far away so it's a bit hard to hear. There is talking and singing…the men and many women around us, as dark or darker than my mother, are both serious and elated. Then a man starts to speak who has the crowd enraptured. I ask my mother is this is Moses? - somehow I got it into my head that we were at a big play, a pageant, and the women around us smile and laugh. I can't understand much of what he is saying, but the crowd is getting more and more excited…I hear words "wa wa wa weem" and then "free" and the crowd shouts and surges and I half-topple into the Reflecting Pool. The women shriek and help pull me out and hug me and pat me and laugh with my mother. I have never seen her this happy. I will never see her this happy again. I perhaps have never been happier than that day of our shared secret and a feeling of a moment so filled with hope and love and a sense of what I would come to know as solidarity. Years later someone pointed out that this was my baptism. Years and years later I realized my mother was happy because she, as a dark Italian/Croatian with probable Turkish blood woman, was for one time around people whom she looked more like, with whom she felt more comfortable than the people she was around who were part of my father's world…my father who would shout at her not to get too much sun because she'd look like a N…… I was going to go down to Washington today, in honor of that day…but I hear they have fenced off the Reflecting Pool, and Obama will take the time of the speech, and thinking about it I thought perhaps continuing to hold on to the memory and how it will shape future actions was more appropriate. So I got off the bus and am back home writing this. Some things have changed since that day. Much has not. The issue of racism, jobs, poverty, inequity, a sham of democracy in this country has not changed. I thank and honor you, Martin Luther King and all the people who marched and participated in that day and so many days before and after and who fought, and still fight, for justice and equality and the real US/American Dream. Mother, gone a few years later, I thank and love you. I still have that dream. -- Morgan Jenness, Wednesday, August 28th, 2013 About Morgan Jenness
Morgan Jenness spent over a decade at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, with both Joseph Papp and George C. Wolfe, in various capacities ranging from literary manager to Director of Play Development to Associate Producer. She was also Associate Artistic Director at the New York Theater Workshop, and an Associate Director at the Los Angeles Theater Center in charge of new projects. She has worked as a dramaturg, workshop director, and/or artistic consultant at theaters and new play programs across the country, including the Young Playwrights Festival, the Mark Taper Forum, The Playwrights Center/Playlabs, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Double Image/New York Stage and Film, CSC, Victory Gardens, Hartford Stage, and Center Stage. She has participated as a visiting artist and adjunct in playwriting programs at the University of Iowa, Brown University, Breadloaf, Columbia and NYU and is currently on the adjunct faculty at Fordham University. She has served on peer panels for various funding institutions, including NYSCA and the NEA, with whom she served as a site evaluator for almost a decade. In 1998 Ms. Jenness joined Helen Merrill Ltd., an agency representing writers, directors, composers and designers, as Creative Director. She now holds a position in the Literary Department at Abrams Artists Agency. In 2003, Ms. Jenness was presented with an Obie Award Special Citation for Longtime Support of Playwrights. Morgan Jenness has worked in various capacities from literary manager to associate producer at the Public Theater, New York Theater Workshop and LATC and as a dramaturg, workshop director, artistic consultant and teacher at theaters, play development programs and universities across the country. Formerly at Helen Merrill Ltd. she is currently creative consultant at Abrams Artists Agency. |
My BlogI'm a playwright, dramaturg, and teaching artist. It is here where you'll find my queries and musings on life, theater and the world. My posts advocate for diversity, inclusion, and equity in the American Theatre and updates on my own work. Please enjoy!
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