JLT & NYC Activities

Juneteenth Legacy Theatre Remount “Promising” Passing Ceremonies

NEW YORK CITY- October 2009 - JLT in partnership with Sugar Valley Theatricals remounts its acclaimed mainstage production of Steve Willis' Passing Ceremonies, a gay, love story about an imagined meeting between poets, Bruce Nugent and Essex Hemphill, set in the hereafter, November 5 - 21, 2009, at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 236 E. 3rd Street. Passing Ceremonies was presented at the 7th Annual Fresh Fruit Festival in July, when Backstage.com acclaimed it a “promising new play” and praised SVT producer Bryan Webster's “glistening” performance as Nugent, a Harlem Renaissance Era icon. Hemphill, a 60's Era journalist/AIDS activist, seeks out Nugent to interview him for a book about older, gay black men. [Click here to read full review.]

Webster's credits include both contemporary, Everybody's Ruby, at The Public Theater, and classical plays, King Lear, Medea, and Hamlet. He has also acted in Theatre For a New Audience and Ridiculous Theatrical Company productions. In addition to Webster the production stars James Becton III, Amand Valdes and Tom Martin, and is directed by Obie-winner Sue Lawless. Mr. Becton, too, is adept at both contemporary, On the Waterfront and Colored Museum, as well as classical plays: Measure For Measure, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labor Lost, 12th Night and King Lear.  Becton has acted with the Classical Theater of Harlem. Mr. Valdes has acted in The History Boys, Fiddler on the Roof, King Lear and 12th Night.  He is a graduate of Wagner College in Staten Island. Mr. Martin reprises the role of Joseph Beam.  His credits include Hamlet and the soap opera, All My Children.

Ms. Lawless is an Obie-award winning director for In Gay Company.  She has guest-directed at the Juneteenth Jamboree of New Plays, where she directed a reading of Passing Ceremonies with JLT founders Lorna Littleway and Kristi Papailler in 2006.  Lawless has also staged Faith, Hope and Charity: The Mary McLeod Bethune Story, at the Nuyorican Poets Café (2008), The Lives of Young Black Folk at the NYCFringe Festival (2005), and Motion and Location at the Midtown International Theatre Festival (2006). 

Mr. Willis, a professor of Speech and Theatre at Bennett College in Greensboro, NC, is a former Scholar-in-Residence at New York University, where he worked on a script about actress Diana Sands. Mr. Willis has received numerous awards for his playwriting from North Carolina arts organizations.

Performances of Passing Ceremonies will run November 5 - 21, Thursdays through Saturdays, 7pm, at Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 236 E. 3rd Street, between Avenues B & C, in the East Village. Tickets are on sale now and at $15 - $20, admission is very reasonable.  Tickets can be ordered on line at nuyorican.org, or call 212-780-9386, or pay at the door.  Reserved, youth, senior, and groups of 10 or more sales are discounted.

To reach Nuyorican Poets Café by subway, take the  “F” or “V” to "2nd Ave.", walk east to Ave. B; “R” to 8th St.”, walk south to 3rd St. and east to Ave. B; “#4” or “#5” to “14th St.”, walk south to 3rd St. and east to Ave. B; “#6” to “Astor Place” walk south to 3rd St. and east to Ave. B.

This production of Passing Ceremonies is funded by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.