Footsteps articles from May 2001

Footsteps archives from May 2001

TAKING OFF THE BURNED CORK.(black theater artists started as minstrels coloring their faces with burned cork)
May 1, 2001... The minstrel show represented the best and worst that happened to black theater artists. Blacks entered the theatrical arena as minstrels. However, their success in that form made it difficult for them to move on to others. Audiences and...

SHOWTIME AT THE WPA.(the Works Progress Administration was created to help poeple get back to work during the Great Depression)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2001... Millions of Americans lost their jobs during the Great Depression of the 1930s. As a result, many people could not afford to pay their bills or feed their children. At the same time, theaters across the country were forced to close down....

ROSE MCCLENDON.(dramatic stage actress)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2001... FIRST LADY OF THE STAGE Rose McClendon, dubbed the "Negro first lady of the dramatic stage," was born Rosalie Virginia Scott in Greenville, South Carolina, on August 27, 1884. Before the turn of the century, her family moved to New...

AMERICAN NEGRO THEATRE.
May 1, 2001... The American Negro Theatre (ANT) was the most famous and influential black theater company of the 1940s. Actors Ruby Dee, Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitier and acclaimed playwright and novelist Alice Childress are just a few of the hundreds...

ON STRIVER'S ROW.(opening play for the American Negro Theatre)
May 1, 2001... In the autumn of 1940, the American Negro Theatre (ANT) opened with On Striver's Row. Initially produced by Dick Campbell for the Rose McClendon Players, the play was written in 1939 by Abram Hill one of the founders of ANT. It featured...

STUDIO THEATRE.(American Negro Theatre)
May 1, 2001... TRAINING FOR PRIDE AND PERFECTION When a young, inexperienced immigrant named Sidney Poitier applied to join the American Negro Theatre (ANT), founder Abram Hill wrote on his application: "Talented, uninhibited, expressive, coordinated....

ALICE CHILDRESS.(playwright, novelist, columnist and actress)
May 1, 2001... In a 1987 interview, playwright, novelist, columnist, and actress Alice Childress said, "My grandmother was a member of Salem Church in Harlem. We went to Wednesday night testimonials. Now that's where I learned to be a writer. I remember how...

SIDNEY POITIER.(Academy Award winning actor)
May 1, 2001... More than any other actor of his generation, Sidney Poitier stands out as a supreme talent to audiences everywhere. Poitier's career has lasted more than 50 years. He was the first African American to win the Academy Award for best actor, for...

RUBY DEE.
May 1, 2001... Ruby Dee is an activist, author, and one of today's most beloved and well-respected actresses. She has starred in radio, stage, film, and television roles, from Shakespeare to Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever. She is also...

An Interview with Ruby Dee & Ossie Davis.(Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee talk about performing in the 1940s)(Interview)
May 1, 2001... What was it like being in Harlem in the 1940s as an actor and performer? OSSIE DAVIS: It was an exciting time to be alive. I was a young man in my late 20s. I was ambitious, and Harlem was the place where every black person who had any...

WILD ABOUT HARRY.(Harry Belefonte)
May 1, 2001... When 18-year-old Harry Belafonte walked into a Harlem theater on 135th Street in December 1945, he found an obsession that would haunt him for the rest of his life. The young Belafonte had been working as the assistant maintenance man in an...

ANNA LUCASTA.(successful American Negro Theatre play)
May 1, 2001... The play that was the American Negro Theatre's greatest success was written initially for white actors. When white playwright Philip Yordan first wrote Anna Lucasta, he made the characters Polish Americans. The play is about a young...

A RAISIN IN THE SUN.(play written by Lorraine Hansberry)
May 1, 2001... On March 11, 1959, a new play opened on Broadway. Its title was A Raisin in the Sun; its author, a young black woman playwright named Lorraine Hansberry. Raisin was the first play by a black woman to be produced on Broadway. A review by...

Lorraine Hansberry Theatre.
May 1, 2001... Founded in 1981, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre continues to be one of the leading African American arts institutions in the San Francisco Bay Area and the first to be located in the high-profile downtown theater district of San Francisco....

Lloyd Richards--Director and Educator.(includes information on dramatist August Wilson)(Interview)
May 1, 2001... Lloyd Richards has spent more than 40 years in the theater and has collaborated with some of the best playwrights nationally and internationally. A quiet, soft-spoken man, he has a gentle manner and a wonderful sense of humor. To meet him you...

Investigating Heritage.(August Wilson's play 'The Piano Lesson')
May 1, 2001... In August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson family members struggle to accept their heritage. That heritage--their family's story--was carved into a piano many years before. Read the synopsis of the play below and then learn the "lesson" by...

The H.A.D.L.E.Y. Players.(Harlem Artists Development League Especially for You)
May 1, 2001... In 1933, newly married Gertrude Jeannette moved from Little Rock, Arkansas to New York City. She became involved in theater and the ANT because of a speech impediment. "I stuttered," says Ms. J., as she is known to her friends. "I met Fred...

New Federal Theatre.
May 1, 2001... Founded in 1970 by Woodie King, J., the New Federal Theatre (NFT) in New York City grew out of a neighborhood-based professional theater originally funded by the Henry Street Settlement along with a small grant from the New York State Council...

African American Drama Company.
May 1, 2001... In October 1977, Phillip E. Walker and his wife, Ethel Pitts Walker, founded the African American Drama Company in Urbana, Illinois. Two years later, the company split. One group went to Chicago; the other, under the Walkers, went to San...