Stage Review of Matrix Theatre's Two Trains Running
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Fences Study Guide
Pacific Conservatory Theatre Student Matinee Program Presents August Wilson’s Fences Generously sponsored by Franca Bongi-Lockard Nancy K. Johnson A Study Guide for Educators Welcome to the Pacific Conservatory Theatre A NOTE TO THE TEACHER Thank you for bringing your students to PCPA at Allan Hancock College. Here are some helpful hints for your visit to the Marian Theatre. The top priority of our staff is to provide an enjoyable day of live theatre for you and your students. We offer you this study guide as a tool to prepare your students prior to the performance. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDENT ETIQUETTE Note-able behavior is a vital part of theater for youth. Going to the theater is not a casual event. It is a special occasion. If students are prepared properly, it will be a memorable, educational experience they will remember for years. 1. Have students enter the theater in a single file. Chaperones should be one adult for every ten students. Our ushers will assist you with locating your seats. Please wait until the usher has seated your party before any rearranging of seats to avoid injury and confusion. While seated, teachers should space themselves so they are visible, between every groups of ten students. Teachers and adults must remain with their group during the entire performance. 2. Once seated in the theater, students may go to the bathroom in small groups and with the teacher's permission. Please chaperone younger students. Once the show is over, please remain seated until the House Manager dismisses your school. 3. Please remind your students that we do not permit: - food, gum, drinks, smoking, hats, backpacks or large purses - disruptive talking. -
Copyright by Charles Patrick Tyndall 2002
Copyright by Charles Patrick Tyndall 2002 The Dissertation Committee for Charles Patrick Tyndall Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: August Wilson’s Play Cycle: A Healing Black Rage for Contemporary African Americans Committee: Ann Daly, Supervisor Oscar G. Brockett Charlotte Canning Joni L. Jones Stacy Wolf August Wilson’s Play Cycle: A Healing Black Rage for Contemporary African Americans by Charles Patrick Tyndall, B.A., M.A. DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY The University of Texas at Austin May 2002 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank God, without whom I would not have been able to complete this endeavor. I must acknowledge my supervisor, Ann Daly, for her tireless devotion to this project. Thank you for helping me with my transition from student to scholar. You know I could not have done this without your support, tenacity, dedication, and humor. Thank you to my committee members, for making an insane process pretty painless. I appreciate the immense knowledge that you brought to this experience, both in and out of the classroom. I would like to acknowledge my family, especially: Mom, Dad, Chris, and Carl, for helping to shape me into the person I am today. Much thanks to my friends: Lana Williams, Richard Perry, C. Francis Blackchild, and Jacqueline E. Lawton, for enduring the madness with me! Much appreciation to the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin and the Drama department at the University of Arkansas – Fayetteville, where I currently teach, for all of the support offered to me. -
AUGUST WILSON: the GROUND on WHICH I STAND a Documentary Presented by AUGUST WILSON’S WQED Multimedia and the PBS Series, American Masters
AUGUST WILSON: THE GROUND ON WHICH I STAND A documentary presented by AUGUST WILSON’S WQED Multimedia and the PBS series, American Masters Premiering February 2015*… August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Stand details 10-PLAY CENTURY CYCLE August Wilson’s unexpected rise from humble beginnings 1966 and adversity to create a 10-play cycle about African American life — a groundbreaking achievement in theater Rise of the Black Power 1865 1896 Movement history. From the 1980s into the first decade of the 21st century, Wilson was the most produced playwright both 13th Amendment to the Plessy v. Ferguson 1965 Constitution ratified, upholds racial 1995 1990s 1986 1980s on Broadway and in regional theaters. His unprecedented prohibiting slavery segregation and Voting Rights Act 10-play Century Cycle (also known as the Pittsburgh Cycle) Million Man March Martin Luther King establishes “separate KING HEDLEY II outlawed discrimination helped launch the careers of countless actors and earned but equal” RADIO GOLF Jr. Day is declared a 1968 in the voting process national holiday in An ex-convict tries to rebuild Wilson two Pulitzer Prizes. Harmond Wilks has ambitious the U.S. his life, family, and sense of plans to redevelop the Hill District, but Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. self in a community plagued clashes with his partner over whether is assassinated A native of Pittsburgh’s Hill District where all but one with violence and prejudice. to deny the past in the name of Civil Rights Act outlaws housing of the plays in the Cycle are set, Wilson put the joys, development, or to preserve the Hill’s history. -
An Interview with American Playwright August Wilson
AUGUST WILSON/ Tibbetts/ 1! AN INTERVIEW WITH AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT AUGUST WILSON By John C. Tibbetts Interviews on 30 April and 3 May 2002 Raphael Hotel and Hallmark Corporate Headquarters, Kansas City MO TIBBETTS INTRODUCTION TO INTERVIEW: August Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Hill District, an area famous for the many black performers who began their careers there—Lena Horne, Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal, Earl (Fatha) Hines, and Billy Eckstine. The fourth child of six children of a baker and a cleaning woman (whose maiden name was Wilson), he was an avid reader and displayed early on a gift and a passion for poetry. But the world of theatre eventually claimed him, and he co-founded the Black Horizons Theatre in 1968 and turned to playwriting in earnest. He moved to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1978, where he began writing Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a play about the struggle between black musicians and their white bosses in the 1920s, and Jitney, whose story was set at a taxi stand on the Hill. Wilson’s career was launched when his work came to the attention of Lloyd Richards, an experienced director and head of the Yale Drama School Thus began a creative partnership that has lasted to the present day. Ma Rainey debuted on Broadway in 1984 and was a sensational success. Despite the fact that there were many esteemed black playwrights working at the time—Amiri Baraka, Ron Milner, Richard Wesley, Ed Bullins, and Phillip Hayes Dean, to cite just a few—no African-American plays had hitherto been successful on Broadway. -
Lou Bellamy 2006 Distinguished Artist
Lou Bellamy 2006 Distinguished Artist Lou Bellamy 2006 Distinguished Artist The McKnight Foundation Introduction spotlight is a funny thing. It holds great potential to expose and clarify whatever lies within its glowing circle—but for that to happen, eyes outside the pool of light must be focused Aon what’s unfolding within. Theater gains meaning only through the community that generates, participates in, and witnesses it. For McKnight Distinguished Artist Lou Bellamy and his Penumbra Theatre Company, using one’s talents to connect important messages to community is what art is all about. Bellamy believes that theater’s purpose is to focus the community’s attention and engage people in the issues we face together. He relishes the opportunity life has presented to him: to work in an African American neighborhood and develop art responsive to that neighborhood, while presenting ideas that are universal enough to encourage a world of diverse neighborhoods to take notice. This is not a spectator sport. Bellamy is a strong proponent of active art, art driven to do something. Ideally, audience members should see what’s onstage and listen to the message, then carry that message with them when they leave the theater. “You put all these people in a room,” he has said, “turn out the lights, and make them all look at one thing. You’ve got something powerful in that room.” More than 40,000 people experience that power annually, in Penumbra’s 265-seat theater in St. Paul. Universal messages are not crafted through European American templates only, and Bellamy recognizes that presenting a multifaceted reality means showing all the rays of light that pass through it. -
Regulatory Taking's Anti-Subordination Insights
REBUILDING THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE CITY: REGULATORY TAKING’S ANTI-SUBORDINATION INSIGHTS FOR EMINENT DOMAIN AND REDEVELOPMENT AUDREY G. MCFARLANE* ABSTRACT The eminent domain debate, steeped in the language of property rights, currently lacks language and conceptual space to address what is really at issue in today’s cities: complex, fundamental disagreements between market and community about development. The core doctrinal issue presented by development is how can we acknowledge the subordination of citizens who happen to live in areas that are attractive to wealthier citizens. In particular, how should we address the political process failure reflected in the privatized methods of decisionmaking that typify redevelopment? The conceptual language and analytical construct for appropriately addressing these issues come from critical race theory and its project of anti-subordination. The doctrinal model for resolving urban development disagreement comes from the anti-subordination principles reflected in regulatory takings doctrine. This Article argues that regulatory takings doctrine reflects one of the most developed, yet underappreciated, anti-subordination doctrines in the law. Both takings and critical race theory provide a template for properly focusing on ways to improve the lack of public accountability in development and the unresponsiveness of eminent domain doctrine to commonly accepted notions of fairness as a component of the public good. “They don’t know I got a[n] [eminent domain] clause of my own . They can carry me out feet first . but my clause say . they got to meet my price!”1 —Memphis Lee, Two Trains Running * Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law. This Article was made possible by the generous research support of the University of Baltimore Law School. -
Print This Article
Vol. 1 | Spring 2019 August Wilson Estate, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and August Wilson House Establish August Wilson Century Cycle Awards By Christopher Rawson Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh Theater Critic, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Office, August Wilson House [August] remains most at home in the people, places and stories from what we call August Wilson’s Hill, and in the theaters that bring them to life. The August Wilson American Century Cycle Award celebrates the conjunction of the two. − Christopher Rawson Abstract August Wilson House, the August Wilson Estate, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have teamed-up to celebrate the work of August Wilson by co-sponsoring the August Wilson Century Cycle Awards for those theaters that have successfully staged all ten plays of the Cycle. Keywords August Wilson, American Century Cycle Awards, August Wilson Estate, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, American Stage, Hattiloo Theatre, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Yale Rep, Huntingdon Theatre Company, O’Neill Theater Center, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Penumbra, Christopher Rawson August Wilson’s creative imagination and the rich life of his native Hill District can take his 10-play American Century Cycle only so far. The Cycle can complete its full journey only in what has proved to be its ultimate home, the mainly not-for-profit theaters country- wide. So while interviewing and reviewing Wilson since 1983 for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and teaching an August Wilson course at the University of Pittsburgh (which he urged me to do), I began tracking which theaters had completed their own Cycle. Flash forward, and to celebrate those theaters, the Post- Gazette, supported by August Wilson House and with the collaboration of Constanza Romero Wilson and the August August and Wilson Estate, established the August Wilson American Century Chris Rawson Cycle Award. -
The Piano Lesson
Educational Tools Penumbra Theatre Study Guide Greetings! Thank you for visiting Penumbra Theatre Company’s Study Guide Library. We are so pleased that you seek to extend and engage your understanding of the drama we produce and the thematic issues it brings to the fore. Penumbra Theatre Company occupies a very unique place within American society, and by extension of that, the world. Penumbra was borne out of the Black Arts Movement, a time charged by civic protest and community action. An artist making art by, for and about the black community was charged with merging aesthetic (artistic) principles with ethical (moral) ones. Subsequently, in this historical and political context, art had an agenda to strive toward social change. African American artists were part of, and greatly influenced, the social currents that carried people from their homes, schools and places of worship to the streets. Bonding artistic interpretation with civic responsibility engenders an important kind of creative dissonance, a harmony of balance. It creates something neither art nor civic action could do alone. This is mission driven art, informed by a black ethos and aesthetic, which can adequately illuminate our experience. Ensemble Theatre in that context is the creation of a community of people committed to the telling of a story that acknowledges the experience of everyone involved. This kind of art demands that each audience member recognize his or her place in relation to the art. When that happens, we begin to think about ourselves as interactive forces in a greater social context. Our own agency becomes clearer to us; our choices and reactions start to make sense within a broader, more nuanced environment. -
A King's Royal Scars
University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2020 A king's royal scars. Xavier Mikal Harris University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Education Commons Recommended Citation Harris, Xavier Mikal, "A king's royal scars." (2020). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3374. Retrieved from https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd/3374 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A KING’S ROYAL SCARS By Xavier Mikal Harris B.F.A., North Carolina A&T State University, 2017 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Arts Department of Theatre Arts University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky May 2020 Copyright 2020 by Xavier Mikal Harris All rights reserved A KING’S ROYAL SCARS By Xavier Mikal Harris B.F.A., North Carolina A&T State University, 2017 A Thesis Approved on April 14, 2020 By the following Thesis Committee __________________________________________________ Dr. Baron Kelly _________________________________________________ Dr. Ariande Calvano __________________________________________________ Dr. -
Cast of King Hedley II by Sherri Randolph WELCOME ABOUT the PLAY
Cast of King Hedley II by Sherri Randolph WELCOME ABOUT THE PLAY In August of 1998, I had the extreme pleasure of sharing August Wilson’s the stage with August Wilson at the Edward Albee Theatre Festival in Valdez Alaska. That KING HEDLEY II year, the festival was honoring Mr. Wilson for his many Directed by Mark Clayton Southers, theatrical achievements. Along with actors Ella Joyce, Monteze Freeland, and Dennis Robinson Jr. Derrick Sanders, Javon TONYA Karla Payne (through May 13) Johnson, Delroy Lindo and August Wilson himself, we Dominique Briggs (beginning May 18) performed stage readings of RUBY Etta Cox* several of Mr. Wilson’s plays. ELMORE Wali Jamal For our finale, we did a reading of a new play that Mr. Wilson was working on: King Hedley II. We sat KING Leslie Ezra Smith on stools in front of an audience in excess of three hundred people. I was so excited to be onstage MISTER Sam Lothard and actually reading with Mr. Wilson that I can’t remember the dialogue, but I do remember that STOOL PIGEON Sala Udin during these characters’ conversations in the back yard of a Hill District home, we were throwing *Appears courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association darts as we talked. It was during this time that I started to take a liking to playwriting. With this massive first-hand exposure to August Wilson, anyone who loved theatre would have. KING HEDLEY II is produced by special arrangement with Samuel French. Fast forward to the world premiere of King Hedley II at the Pittsburgh Public’s O’Reilly Theater. -
2013 Suggestions for Teaching Two Trains Running by August Wilson
2013 Suggestions for Teaching Two Trains Running by August Wilson Before seeing/reading the play 1. Who was August Wilson? What is his unique contribution to American theatre? Research Wilson’s ten-play series, the Pittsburg Cycle, of which Two Trains Running is the seventh play. These and other websites provide information: http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/wilson_a.htm http://www.augustwilson.net/ http://www.august-wilson-theatre.com/index.php 2. Research the migration of African-Americans from the south to the north during the early part of the 20th century. What were the catalysts that led African-Americans to leave the south? What were they searching for? What were they running from? What were they leaving behind? These and other websites provide information: http://www.pbs.org/jazz/places/faces_migration.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129827444 3. Two Trains Running takes place during 1969 in Pittsburgh’s historic Hill District. Investigate the history of the Hill District, paying special attention to its transformation during the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. What were the consequences of urban renewal on the Hill District? How did the Civil Rights Movement affect the Hill District community? These and other websites provide information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_District http://www.clpgh.org/exhibit/neighborhoods/hill/hill_n4.html http://www.freedomcorner.org/civil_rights_in_pittsburgh.html http://www.wqed.org/education/pghist/logs/wylie.php 4. Research the timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement, paying attention to events beginning in 1954 and ending the year before Two Trains Running is set, in 1968. -
The Women of August Wilson and a Performance Study and Analysis of the Role of Grace in Wilson's the Piano Lesson
University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2009 The Women Of August Wilson And A Performance Study And Analysis Of The Role Of Grace In Wilson's The Piano Lesson Ingrid Marable University of Central Florida Part of the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Marable, Ingrid, "The Women Of August Wilson And A Performance Study And Analysis Of The Role Of Grace In Wilson's The Piano Lesson" (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 4150. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/4150 THE WOMEN OF AUGUST WILSON AND A PERFORMANCE STUDY AND ANALYSIS OF THE ROLE OF GRACE IN WILSON’S THE PIANO LESSON by INGRID A. MARABLE B.A. University of Virginia, 2005 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in the Department of Theatre in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Summer 2009 © 2009 Ingrid A. Marable ii ABSTRACT In the fall of 2007, I was cast in the University of Central Florida’s production of The Piano Lesson. My thesis will examine my performance in the role of Grace, as well as understudying the role of Berniece under the direction of Professor Belinda Boyd.