About Lorna

Lorna Littleway is Co-founding producing of Juneteenth Legacy Theatre. Lorna is a director, playwright, actress, and educator. She is a member of the Society of Directors and Choreographers (SDC), where she serves on the Calloway Committee, and the Dramatists Guild. She is a Drama League alum, a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, and served as President of Black Theatre Network (BTN.)

In addition to the plays she has staged for Juneteenth Legacy, Lorna has directed extensively on the regional theatre circuit and at colleges and universities. Some of her credits include: Willie and Esther, featuring Ella Joyce, Black Spectrum (Queens) & National Black Theatre Festival (Winston-Salem, N.C.); In the Continuum, National Black Theatre Festival and St. Louis Black Rep; Radio Golf, Robert Johnson Trick the Devil, 7 Guitars, Home, Kingdom of Earth, Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery, and Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, St. Louis Black Rep; Miss Evers Boys, The Grandmama Tree: a folkfable, Stamford Theatre Works; Honey, Hush! An Uprising Over Some Green, Horizon Theatre (Atlanta); Your Obituary Is a Dance, Actors Theatre; Spunk, New Rep (Boston); Fences, Fleetwood Stage and South Jersey Regional; A Member of the Wedding, TNT (Pa.); Photographs: Lovers in Motion, InterAct (Philadelphia); Mister Bluesman, 5th Biennial National Black Theatre Festival and International Fringe Festival (NYC); A Raisin in the Sun, with Irma Hall , Little Theatre (Dallas) and Lehigh University; for colored girls who've considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, Queens College; The Grapes of Wrath, Iowa State University; Twilight Los Angeles, 1992, The Homecoming, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Trouble in Mind and Funnyhouse of a Negro, University of Louisville. Lorna was a Minskoff Fellow at Lehigh University.

Lorna is a 2002 Dramatist Guild Fellow, a recipient of the 2002 Sallie Bingham Award from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the 2009 Tower Award for Women Leaders in Arts & Communication from Presentation Academy. She has received new play development grants and fellowships from the Drama League, Stage Directors Foundation, Kentucky Arts Council and Kentucky Foundation for Women. Lorna's plays, Bang! Bang! Bang! Again and Again, Bang! Bang! Bang!, Young Sistas, Motion and Location, A Lil Chat With God, If You Love Me, A Collective Piss and the Devil's Beating His Wife, Fin'ly Free, Billy, Lena and The Duke: A Night of Ellington Music!, Juneteenth Blues Cabaret, and Kindler Genter Nation; and adaptations, Tall Tales and Short Sayings, August Wilson’s Women have been produced in New York City for “Field Day” at Abrons Art Center, Ensemble Studio, Vital Theatre Company, Black Spectrum Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, Midtown International Theatre Festival, and FringeNYC [Click here for link to press page]; and regionally:  Luna Sea (San Francisco), Little Theatre (Dallas), Chocolate Church (Bath, Maine); colleges: Iowa State University (Ames) and Purdue University.

Onstage Lorna has performed in the company's cabaret production . . . A Night of Ellington Music! as "Billy", in the chamber theatre production, The Last Dust Track, assuming the persona of Harlem Renaissance writer, Zora Neale Hurston, and in several Jamboree plays, Junetenth Blues Cabaret, Till, Passing Ceremonies and Diva Daughters DuPree as "Grandma". Lorna, also, was featured lecturer/performer for Women's History Month, 2004, at Central Florida University in Orlando, where she presented Bang! Bang! Bang! and The Last Dust Track.

Lorna has taught acting, directing, voice, movement and African-American dramatic literature and history at Queens College, University of Louisville, where she designed the African American Theatre minor degree program and served as Co-Director of the AATP ('94- '99), and Iowa State University-Ames, where she was Artistic Director of Minority Theatre Workshop ('93.)