Sue Lawless (Director) has directed several plays for JLT including: The Lives of Young Black Folks at the NYCFringe Festival, Juneteenth Cotton Club Revue with Grenoldo Frazier, The Last Dust Track with Sharon Hope as Zora Neale Hurston, Remembering Ossie, Till, Jungle Alley Salutes Ladies of Jazz, Lavinia Speaks and Destiny Manifested.
Sue, also 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. In a professional career spanning forty years, she has directed almost 500 plays and musicals at such prestigious theatres as Brooklyn Academy of Music, Goodspeed Opera House, Walnut Street Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cleveland Playhouse, George Street Playhouse and Papermill Playhouse. Internationally, she has traveled with the Theatre Guild directing luminaries such as Richard Kiley, Colleen Dewhurst, Zoe Caldwell, Patricia Neal and Larry Kert.
As Guest Director/Faculty/Lecturer, she has taught naturalistic acting at Opera McGill, McGill U in Montreal, Canada; the art of comedy at the Tisch School of the Performing Arts, New York U., and acting and directing at the U. of Virginia and Mt. Holyoke College. Lawless is Secretary of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Union's Executive Board, and 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.
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A.C. Smith hails from Chicago and makes his JLT debut! A.C. has acted with the top Midwestern regional theaters including Victory Gardens, Hambone; the Goodman, Black Star Line and The Visit; New Harmony, Steppenwolf, Golden Boy; Indianapolis Rep, Color of Justice “Thurgood Marshall”; St. Louis Black Rep, Bourbon at the Border and Fences, “Troy”; Missouri Rep, The Gospel at Colonus; Second City, The Beatles Are Getting Back Together; and Peninsula Players, Shady Business and Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 as well as New Federal Theater (NYC), Jelly Belly. He has also played “Boy Willie” in the Broadway National Tour production of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. Film credits include Robert Altman’s Kansas City and Columbia Pictures’ Mo’ Money. A.C. can also be seen hawking Big Macs for McDonalds. He is a graduate of Columbia College. |
A.C. Smith
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Linda KennedyLinda Kennedy is making her JLT debut! Linda has acted and directed for many seasons at St. Louis Black Rep as well as Passage Theatre Company in New Jersey and the Theatre Project in St. Louis. Ms. Kennedy has appeared in Intimate Apparel, Pretty Fire, St. Lucy’s Eyes, Conversations on a Dirt Road, Sty of a Blind Pig, Bubblin’ Brown Sugar, Steal Away,Fences, for colored girls, Flyin’ West, Purlie, Jar the Floor, Boesman and Lena, The Piano Lesson, A Raisin in the Sun. Also for SLBR, Linda has directed Before It Hits Home with A.C. Smith and I’m Not Rappaport. Linda has been directed by JLT founder/producing director, Lorna Littleway, in several St. Louis Black Rep productions including Robert Johnson Trick the Devil and Shakin the Mess Outta Misery.
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