John Robinson

Caballero is a post Civil War western set in a West Texas saloon, The Oasis. The good folk, Eilley and Lem Parker, strive to run an honest business and worry that their daughter, Molly, isn’t being treated right by the man she's living with. The bad folk, racist authorities, scheme to takeover The Oasis and re-enslave its owners. Into town rides, Raymond Jefferson, believed by some to have supernatural powers; believed by others to be a fool. Stirring bitter memories of their recent enslavement, Raymond rallies the town to fight their enemies and preserve their fragile community.

Mr. Robinson is a winner of the National Endowment for the Arts Award for playwriting. His radio plays have been produced by the BBC. Other plays were produced at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco and Seven Stages, Atlanta. Mr. Robinson has had staged readings at The Ensemble Studio Theater, New York and Marin Theater Company of California. His play Wolves was published in West Coast Plays, Volume II. Mr. Robinson teaches English as a Second Language to Hispanic and Chinese immigrants in San Francisco.

Saturday, June 5th, 6 p.m. DARASA – a celebration to benefit Juneteenth Legacy Theatre with Guest of Honor/Auctioneer, Sharon Hope.

DARASA is a Swahili word meaning 'celebration' and we do it in the spirit of the original occasion with food, cash bar, dancing, silent art auction, and Recognition of volunteers, sponsors and donors. Also two play readings, Mrs. Reader andBang! Bang! Bang! are included.

Sharon Hope

Sharon Hope has numerous professional credits in theatre, film and television, including the national tour of Having Our Say – the Delaney Sisters’ First 100 Years in the role of  "Dr. Bessie," Actors Theatre of Louisville’s 2004 Humana Festival of New American Plays, television’s Law and Order and Another World, and the film Little Senegal which was nominated for the Golden Bear Award at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival.  Sharon has also produced her one-woman show, Women I Have Known, at New York’s John Houseman Theater Center.

Lorna Littleway

In Lorna Littleway’s Bang! Bang! Bang! the audience hears the thoughts of a young man as he lays dying, shot by a police officer. 

Ms. Littleway is founder/producing director of Juneteenth Legacy Theatre. Other produced works include Juneteenth Cotton Club Revue, Tall Tales and Short Sayings, Billy, Lena and The Duke: A Night of Ellington Music!, A Collective Piss and the Devil's Beating His Wife, If You Love Me, and Motion and Location.

Sunday, June 6th, 7 p.m.Juneteenth at the Apollo – a showcase of local talent in music, song and drama with guest panel judge, Sharon Hope.

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 at the Apollo. 

Margo Reese

Rise Up Signing! tells the true story of  the world-renowned Fisk Jubilee Singers, who embarked on a groundbreaking U.S. concert tour in 1871 to save their college from financial ruin.  Based on letters, memoirs, diaries, and newspaper articles, the play features the sacred hymns, work songs, and ballads of everyday slave life, known today as Negro Spirituals. These beloved songs, such as Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Steal Away were introduced to the world by the chorale from Fisk, the first college for Freedmen. During Reconstruction these courageous young people fought their own fears, poverty, and entrenched social mores to establish their unique classical style.

Margo Reese is a graduate of UCLA in Music Composition and Theory.  She has written three short Christmas musicals for children: Not Even a Mouse?,And the Lion…, and From the Realms of Glory. Her full-length musical, To Dance Like Fred Astaire, was a winner of the Marshall Award from the University of Michigan. Rise Up Singing! is a finalist in the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild New Musicals Competition. Ms. Reese is a member of the Dramatist's Guild of America.

Grenoldo Frazier

Lillian R. Butler

photo

coming soon!

Lenora, a cleaning woman, takes us on a historical journey when Harlem clubs on 139th Street off Seventh Avenue (Jungle Alley) were in vogue with live jazz bands and hot dancers. Lenora weaves magic in verse and lyric in this humorous.  and honest musical tribute to Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald and Josephine Baker. These pioneer artists' songs include, Gimme a Pigfoot, Mood Indigo, Strange Fruit, plus many more, which deeply influenced future generations of singers.

Lillian R. Butler has enjoyed a career encompassing theatre, television and cabaret.  She wrote and performed Jungle Alley Salutes Ladies of Jazz, which represented a culmination of her many years as a jazz vocalist, an actress and a tap and jazz dancer. Ms. Butler recently released her jazz CD, Sincerely, which includes many songs from Jungle Alley. She is currently working on a screenplay called The Juke Joint.

Antoinette Oglesby Taylor

More Than Cooking Going On In This Kitchen,performed by the Green Castle Baptist Church Arts Ministry,  is the prequel to Miss Amanda's Place,  last year's Kentuckiana writers entry. Set in the late 50's and early 60's, black domestics stand tall to participate in the Civil Rights Movement.

Antoinette Oglesby Taylor has been writing for twenty years, but wrote her first play in 1999. Several of her other plays have also been produced in the Juneteenth Jamboree.

Jennie Redling

In Lavinia Speaks an actress must support her dream with two jobs, each of which strains the amiable facade she has struggled to create.  She is alternately at the mercy of an attorney who hasn’t a clue that she is human and a brood of precocious children learning from Lavinia how to "act" for TV  commercials.  In the midst of these career challenges, her father is hospitalized and doesn’t seem to want to live.  As her father’s anger is directed at Lavinia, she discovers her own wrath which appears to have a life of it’s own, placing her jobs, relationships and dreams at stake.

Jennie Redling’s plays have been produced nationally and in New York City. Ms. Redling is a Fine Arts graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her other plays include A Stream in the Wasteland and Desperate Territory.  She was a 2001 finalist for the Arts & Letters Prize for Drama as well as a finalist in the Actors Theatre ten-minute play contest, the Midwest Theatre Competition and The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s Summer Conference 2000 and 2001.  She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and Actors Equity Association.   

Sue Lawless

James Gillard

This riveting new play about the Hip-Hop generation, set during the post 9/11 tragedy, poses the question: Are rappers socially responsible for the images they create?  MC MANIFEST, one of America's hottest rappers, declares himself a changed man after his highly anticipated album "Destiny Manifested" flops.  Reporter Darlene Jenkins of "Black World Newspaper" doesn't buy Manifest's redemptive act of trading gangster lyrics and opulent lifestyle for scriptures and verse. During their "anything goes" interview, as Jenkins prepares to expose Manifest, stories come to life, morality is questioned and the truth will set them free. Destiny Manifested was awarded the 2003 ‘Best Audience Winner’ at the Downtown Urban Theater Festival and was read at the National Black Theatre Festival.

James Gilliard is a New York based artist – Harlem born and raised.  Mr. Gillard is an accomplished film and video maker.   Poetry and spoken word is often an integral part of his visual interpretation due to his interest in the location where images and language merge. His film Out Of Focus was the 1999 ‘Best Short Film Winner’ of the Harlem Film Festival and a finalist in the 2002 Hollywood Black Film Festival.  Mr. Gilliard’s play, A Message in Our Music, was featured in the Fringe NYC 2001 Play Festival. His story, The Diss, was published in the 2003-2004 edition of Signifyin Harlem Literary Journal. 

Sunday, June 20th, 7 p.m. Juneteenth at the Apollo – a showcase of local talent in music, song and drama with guest panel judge Sue Lawless.