The Red Program celebrates the artistry of Ray Charles. Featuring guest artist Grenoldo Frazier.

Friday, June 3, 2005 at 8 p.m. The Genius of Ray Pt. 1 with Grenoldo Frazier           

Grenoldo Frazier

Ray Charles’ music is America’s music because he embraced every style and added his distinctive flare. No other American singer-musician had the universal appeal of Ray Charles. Tonight features rhythm and blues and pop songs from the Charles’ collection like I Got a Woman, The Night Time is the Right Time, What I Say, Ruby, Georgia, I Love You So Much, and many many more. Email juneteenthlegacy@aol.com with your favorite Ray Charles song!

Grenoldo Frazier returns to the Jamboree for a third consecutive year. He has acted and/or served as Musical Director for Rise Up Singing, Jungle Alley, Swee’ Pea and the Duke, Robert Johnson Trick the Devil and Colorstruck. Grenoldo also played “Duke Ellington” in the critically acclaimed JLT mainstage production, Billy, Lena and The Duke: A Night of Ellington Music!, and “Cool Dude” in the Bold Journeys Tour cabaret production, Juneteenth Cotton Club Revue.

Grenoldo is a three-time Audelco award winner for Best Supporting Actor,‘93, Music Director and Arranger, ‘91 and for Composer ‘80. Grenoldo has played on Broadway in Hello, Dolly! with Pearl Bailey; Off-Broadway in Moms Mabley with Clarice Taylor of The Cosby Show; and in Seattle Rep’s production of Love Langston. You may recognize Grenoldo from the Dramatic Day-Time series, One Life To Live or as the voice, “Disco D” from Sesame Street.

Grenoldo is a graduate of the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill.

Grenoldo Frazier

Sunday, June 5th, 7 p.m.Juneteenth at the Apollo – a showcase of local talent in music, song and drama.

You may be discovered! Before there was American Idol and Star Search, there was Harlem's famed Apollo Theatre where singers James Brown, Sam Cooke and Ella Fitzgerald; comedians Moms Mabley, Pigmeat Markham and Bill Cosby; music impresario Quincy Jones, and groups like the Jackson 5 and Isley Brothers were discovered. Now, Louisville area performing artists get to "strut their stuff" during Juneteenth @ Apollo. 

Alan Sharpe

When a gay student, Kendall, who attends an historical black college, is beaten by a group of students, he seeks refuge from the only “out” faculty member, David Julian. Pressure on Kendall “to drop the matter before things get worse” from one of the participants, Jabari, strains Prof. Julian’s relationship with his lover, Brian, who does not share Julian’s activist fervor. Both Kendall and Prof. Julian must decide whether to “fight the good fight” or just “let it be.”

Alan Sharpe is founding director of African-American Collective Theater, (ACT), in Washington, D.C., where he has also served as artistic director for the Minority Arts Ensemble, Showcase Theatre, and Black Drama Collective.  A member of the “Playground Playwrights’ Workshop” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, his scripts have been presented at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Roundhouse Theatre, H Street Playhouse, Warehouse Theatre, DCAC, and Smallbeer Theatre at 8-Rock.  His screenplay  Party was produced by AidsFilms, in conjunction with Gay Men of African Descent in New York City, where his drama, Chump ChangeS, was also designated co-winner as “best play” in New Professional Theatre’s 2002 Writers’ Festival.  He is the recipient of a 2001 Artist Fellowship, from the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, which also recognized his work in ‘91,’03 and ‘04 with the Larry Neal Awards for dramatic writing.  BrotherHOODS was recently designated a finalist in the upcoming 2005 competition. His other plays include HeartBeats, Christmas Gifts, Auld Lang Syne, Storm Signals, and Family Business. 

J. E. Robinson

Alfred Macalester, a Republican Black congressman who campaigns on “family values,” knows no limits to his ambition.  This Southern Illinois politician wants it all: power, family, wife, and a mistress!! Will infidelity be Alfred’s undoing? Will Alfred get his comeuppance? Is there justice? 

J. E. Robinson is an award-winning essayist, fiction writer, and poet living in Southern Illinois, near St. Louis. A former student of Edward Albee, Robinson's plays have been presented Off-Off-Broadway and in Alaska. He also acts and recently played "Gabe" to acclaim in the Alton Little Theater's production of August Wilson's Fences. His novel Skip  Macalester, a continuation of Mother’s  Day, is forthcoming from Haworth Press in 2006. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

Ifa Bayeza

Till is a jazzplay that celebrates the spirit of the 14-year old Chicago youth, Emmitt Till, who was brutalized for whistling at a white woman, and his relationship with his mother, whose decision to hold an open-casket funeral for her son awakened America to the barbarity of lynchings in the South.  2005 marks the 50th anniversary of Emmitt Till’s murder.

Ifa Bayeza is a multimedia writer, producer, dramaturg and educator. Her works for the stage include Amistad Voices, Till, Infants of the Spring, and Homer G & the Rhapsodies, for which she was awarded a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays fellowship. Plays for young audiences include Best Enemies, Drink Water, Moonstone, Teresa Pruitt’s Bad Mad Day, The Sea Lion and The Adventures of Kid Zero, about the world’s most misunderstood number.  Her work has been performed at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, New Federal Theatre, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the National Black Theatre Festival, Crossroads Theatre, BRAVA Women’s Center for the Arts, Apollo Theater in Chicago, Cosmic Theater in Amsterdam and at the Sorbonne.

In 2003, Bayeza co-founded DBA Studios (Dickler, Bayeza & Associates) to pursue the creation of new and innovative theatre, encouraging dialogue among races, cultures and people. Bayeza’s Kid Zero, the company’s premiere arts and education initiative, will be produced in cooperation with Chicago Public Schools and the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2005-6. Awards include two fellowships to the Tuck School Minority Business Executive Program (MBEP) and the Arna Bontemps Centennial Writer’s Fellowship. Most recently, Ms. Bayeza received a fellowship from Brown University’s Rites & Reasons Theatre to workshop Till this fall, with the full production slated to inaugurate the new Providence Black Repertory Theatre in February 2006. A graduate of Harvard University, Bayeza is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Theatre Communications Guild and the Writers Guild of America. She lives in Chicago.

Patricia Ramsey

In A Member of the Family , 60 year-old Mattie has raised her grandson, Tim.  She now faces the dilemma of raising money to send him to college. Mattie realizes that if Tim postpones college for lack of money and gets a job, then education will take a permanent back-seat to the temptation of quick money and the things it can be. This one-character play is a tribute to all the grandparents, raising their children’s children, who rely on “mother-wit” and faith in God.

Patricia Ramsey is a therapist/playwright/poet and retired teacher living in Louisville. Originally from Appalachia, Ms. Ramsey hails from a rich heritage of storytelling. “I think the African-American Church is the greatest institution in this country’s history.” She taught at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary, Shawnee Junior High, and Burke H.S. in Charleston, S.C.  Ms. Ramsey retired from Indiana University Southeast where she was the Coordinator of the Student Development Center. Her play,  A-Killin, won the KTA competition for Community Theater, this year. "Mattie represents all of the grandmothers who are raising grandchildren alone. They are legion in the U.S.” A Member of the Family is Ms. Ramsey’s first submission to the Juneteenth Jamboree.

Sue Lawless

This ensemble work weaves monologues, scenes and musical numbers, excerpted from Broadway plays acknowledged by Ossie Davis to be among his favorites. The excerpts from A Raisin in the Sun, Purlie Victorius, On Strivers Row, Anna Locasta, and The Emperor Jones, are connected by anecdotes from Sue Lawless, a Davis peer and Broadway director. 

Sue Lawless returns to the Jamboree where last season she directed Jungle Alley. Destiny Manifest, and served as dramaturg for Rise Up Singing. Sue, also staged, the Bold Journeys Tour original cabaret, Juneteenth Cotton Club Revue. 

Sue  has directed on Broadway, The Five O’clock Girl; off –Broadway The Rise of David Levinsky, Cut the Ribbons,  Body Shop,  Potholes, and In Gay Company for which she earned a Drama Desk Best Musical Director Nomination. Internationally, she has traveled with the the Theatre Guild directing many theatre luminaries such as Richard Kiley, Colleen Dewhurst, Zoe Caldwell, Patricia Neal, Larry Kert.

Among the first in the regional theatre movement as an actress/director, she has also appeared in the NY theatre off B in her own show with her comedy partner Ted Pugh, and on and in tv, cabaret, soap opera. commercials, and of course, The Tonight Show.

Lawless is currently Secretary of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Union's Executive Board.  She also serves as a board member of the SDC Foundation and as a Trustee of the Society-League Pension and Health Funds.  She has served on the Opera/Musical Theatre Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Pat Hagedorn is a Juneteenth Legacy Theatre board member and graphic artist.