Featured Artist
Penumbra Theatre founder defines American black stage
By Marjorie Kehe
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the June 24, 2008 edition
Lou Bellamy's vision is that everything is performed as if there were only black people in the audience.
Write, stop, pivot, punch
Monday April 7, 2008
The Guardian
August Wilson was the great chronicler of black America. The New Yorker's John Lahr remembers the school drop-out who wrote standing up - with a punchbag at his side.
Borough of Writers
W.E.B. Du Bois
by Brad Lockwood (edit@brooklyneagle.net),published online 04-04-2008
Rising Above Racism
By Benjamin Genocchio
Published: February 24, 2008
New York Times
Slavery as Seen From the Other Side
By Celia McGee
Published: February 17, 2008
BIYI BANDELE comes bearing human cargo.
Mr. Bandele, a playwright and novelist born in Nigeria, now a resident of England, for a long while wrote mainly about the lives he knew in both. But when the Royal Shakespeare Company had the idea of involving him in a production of “Oroonoko,” the play by the Restoration dramatist Thomas Southerne based on Aphra Behn’s famous novel of the period, Mr. Bandele plunged deep into matters of history, responsibility, power, choices of the heart and the fickleness of freedom. He emerged in 1999 with a new work about Africa and slavery; about slave takers, who are African, and slave traders, who are white.
Making Rich Tales of Diaspora Take Flight
By Felicia R. Lee
Published: February 12, 2008
The torchbearer
The Boston Globe
By Siddhartha Mitter
December 21, 2007
Of all the great expressive traditions in jazz, the male vocal is one that has had difficulty maintaining its position in the music's evolving marketplace. The shortage of prominent male singers is especially pronounced when it comes to African-American voices. For all the reinvigoration of jazz today, few if any inheritors of Nat King Cole or Johnny Hartman have emerged, and there's a case to be made that something important beyond the music itself is thereby threatened.
Fast Chat: Phylicia Rashad
Newsday
By frank Lovece
December 2, 2007
Phylicia Rashad currently plays the mom in Shakespeare's 'Cymbeline,' playing at Lincoln Center, a far cry from Clair Huxtable on TV's 'The Cosby Show.'
Geoffrey Holder, the artist, at Nassau museum
Newsday.com
Robert Kahn
November 20, 2007
Geoffrey Holder's sprawling resumé includes triumphs as a director, dancer, choreographer, painter, sculptor, photographer, author and character actor. Just don't ask the bald, 6-foot, 6-inch Trinidadian which of those role he identifies with most.
Remembering Ira - the first black actor to play Othello
Bromley Times
01 November 2007
A Black Shakespearean actor who challenged the norms of nineteenth century Britain
