Past and present intermingle on The Red Program which explores Jim Crowism, minstrelsy and homosexuality during the Harlem Renaissance. Guest artists: Sue Lawless and A.C. Smith..

Jump Jim Crow by Henry Hank Meyerson, Friday, June 2, 2006 at 8 p.m.              

Henry Hank Meyerson

In this political satire the late Senator Strom Thurmond is transported to the mid 19th Century to visit famed minstrel Thomas Rice backstage at a London theater. Rice’s black writer-partner, Jack Washington, is troubled by the increase in lynchings of blacks in the U.S. for which he blames their “Jim Crow” act. Unable to persuade Rice to change the act, Washington quits.  Thurmond, as an expression of gratitude to Rice, offers to partner with him explaining that his  legacy of segregationist politics thrived because of “Jim Crow” stereotyping of blacks.

Henry Hank Meyerson is Co-Artistic Director/Literary Director of New Jersey Dramatists and is a member of The Dramatist Guild.  Hank’s plays have been produced in New York City at FringeNYC, Midtown International Play Festival, the Samuel French Festival and the Producer’s Club, and at First Stage in Los Angeles. Hank has a dozen short stories published, and he earned a MFA from Brooklyn College. This is the first public performance of Jump Jim Crow.

Imagining and Improvisation with Sue Lawless and Lorna Littleway. Saturday, June 3, 2006 at 5:30 p.m.

Essayist Essex Hemphill seeks out Harlem Renaissance poet, Bruce Nugent, in the afterlife to interview him about his life as an out, gay black man in America during the 20's and 30's.

Steve Willis is a member of the Dramatists Guild, and a founding member of Greensboro Playwrights’ Forum. His plays have been produced in South Africa, New York City and Chicago. His play, Sprouting Wings,  was a finalist in North Kentucky U.’s YES Festival of New Plays ‘03.Steve is an Assistant Professor of Speech and Theatre at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina. Passing Ceremonies was commissioned by the OutCharlotte Cultural Festival, 2000.

by Kim Euell

In a contemporary comedy of manners, the two younger sisters Dupree, Sarah and Abby, rebel against eldest sister, Billy, and her assimilating, over-the-top ways regarding their choices of spouse, boyfriend, hair-style, dress, you name it!
 
Kim Euell's The Diva Daughters DuPree premiered at Detroit’s Plowshares Theater, ‘02, and the Penumbra  Theatre production was named Outstanding New Play of 2004 by the Minnesota Star Tribune. . . . .Divas was also presented at New York City’s  Voices from the Edge Festival, ‘03, and will be published  by Northwestern U. Press. Kim has served as Director of New Play Development at Hartford Stage, Director of Play Development and The New America Playwrights Festival at San Jose Rep, and most recently, Director of Blacksmyths Play Development and Playwrights Lab at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Kim is currently co-editing an anthology of plays for  Theater Communications Group. She is presently a Dean’s Fellow at the U.of Iowa in pursuit of a MFA in Playwriting.

Set in the early 60's, a south Missouri family must deal with the consequences of miscegenation and the denial of paternity.  Bappy Riggett wants to honor his housekeeper’s desire to send their grandson, Harmon, to college. But what reason, publicly, could he give? The situation comes to a head when Harmon throws himself a going away party at Bappy Riggett’s house, and he refuses to serve Bappy and his colleague, Judge Kemper, when so ordered by Bappy. 

Marette Mollet is a first-time playwright. Her ear for the delicious dialogue of Black America, and the expressive hillbilly language of the Ozarks, inevitably drew her into the theatre. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri in art and art history.  She teaches at Lincoln University, a traditional African-American college, where the seeds of The Kitchen Garden began to take root. 

by Elizabeth Orndorff

Inspired by a column in the Lexington Herald-Leader, in 2003, about the history of the Colored Women’s Clubs in Kentucky, The Bathroom Cleaner describes the Benevolent Sisters Club No. 1, and their service project of “maintaining” a bathroom at a downtown beauty parlor for those colored citizens denied the use of facilities elsewhere in the city.

Elizabeth Orndorff lives in Danville and writes both plays and fiction.  This is the first public performance of The Bathroom Cleaner in its entirety. Excerpted performances have been presented at the Kentucky Human Rights Commission’s induction ceremony for the Civil Rights Hall of Fame in Frankfort, July 2005, and at Juneteenth Legacy Theatre’s fundraiser, DARASA: A Civil Rights Tribute, in January 2006.  Elizabeth has a PhD in Intercultural Communication from UK, and a MA in Journalism from the U. Of Georgia.

Betty Cobb Arnett

Elijah Dooling gets into a confrontation with his work supervisor and must report to the Employment Assistance Counselor, who discovers that the source of Elijah’s anger is his inability to read.    

Betty Cobb Arnett is a native Louisvillian and has taught children in primary and middle schools as well as illiterate adults. She likens the relationship between Elijah and the counselor to the relationship between Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.  Betty has a degree in Humanities from UofL.

Anotinette Oglesby Taylor

n The Triangle, three students in a genealogy class, studying the Middle Passage and the slave trade, discover some hidden family relationships among themselves. 

Antoinette (Toni) Taylor, of Prospect, is the most often produced playwright in the Juneteenth Jamboree. Past works include: And the Next Day They Changed the Water, This Land Is Your Land/Can You Hear It?, Miss Amanda’s Place, and More Than Cooking Going On In This Kitchen.  The company recently honored Toni as a “Stalwart Jamboree Artist” at DARASA: A Civil Rights Tribute,  in January.  Toni was educated in Louisville public schools and graduated from Eastern Kentucky U. with a degree in Medical Record Science.