Playwright Charles Smith, André De Shields and director Chuck Smith on the set of the New York production of "Knock Me A Kiss" after the opening night performance at the Abrons Arts Center on November 11, 2011. Photo by Lia Chang
Charles Smith’s new play The Gospel According to James, produced last Spring at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater in Chicago, has garnered 5 Black Theater Alliance Award nods, including Best Direction for Chuck Smith, Best Writing for Charles Smith, Best Leading Actor for André De Shields, Best Featured Actor for Tyler Jacob Rollinson and Most Promising Actor for Wardell Julius Clark.
Created to honor local Black Theater Artists, The Black Theater Alliance Awards, Inc. (BTAA) was founded in 1995 and over the past 17 years, has become an important organization and distinctive featured program of Chicago’s cultural landscape.
The Black Theater Alliance/Ira Aldridge Awards program focuses on gifted local actors, singers, dancers, directors, choreographers, playwrights, set designers, lighting designers, costume designers, etc. Each year BTAA honors a national African American celebrity who got his/her start in theater.
Complete listing of nominees are listed on the website at www.btaawards.org.
The Black Theater Alliance Awards, Inc. was founded and incorporated in 1995 as a
501(C3), not-for-profit organization. BTAA was founded to honor African Americans who achieve excellence in theater, dance or other areas of the performing arts in the Chicagoland area.
As a photographer and videographer, Lia collaborates with artists, organizations and companies in establishing their documentary photo archive and social media presence. She has been documenting her colleagues and contemporaries in the arts, fashion and journalism since making her stage debut as Liat in the National Tour of South Pacific, with Robert Goulet and Barbara Eden. Lia currently plays Nurse Lia on “One Life to Live”. She has appeared in Wolf, New Jack City, A Kiss Before Dying, King of New York, Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, Taxman and “New York Undercover”.
Selections of Lia’s archive of Asian Pacific Americans in the arts, fashion, journalism, politics and space are in the newly created LIA CHANG THEATER PHOTOGRAPHY PORTFOLIO in the ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN PERFORMING ARTS COLLECTION housed in the Library of Congress Asian Division’s Asian American Pacific Islander Collection.
From August 2-4, 2011, Two-time Tony Award Nominee and Emmy Award-Winning actor André De Shields will reprise his critically acclaimed role as W.E.B. DuBois in Charles Smith’s Knock Me A Kiss, directed by Chuck Smith, at The National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, NC, a co-production of Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theatre and Legacy Creative Arts Company.
Performances are Tuesday, August 2 @ 8pm, Wednesday, August 3 @ 3pm and 8pm, and Thursday, August 4 @ 8pm, at the Hanesbrands Theatre – Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts, 209 N. Spruce Street in Winston-Salem, NC. Tickets are $40 and can be purchased online.
The cast also features Erin Cherry as Yolande Du Bois, Gillian Glasco as Lenora, Morocco Omari as Jimmy Lunceford, Sean Phillips as Countee Cullen, and Marie Thomas as Nina Du Bois.
The New York Times called Knock Me A Kiss “a dandy play about the ill-advised marriage of W. E. B. Du Bois’s daughter,” and went on to say “suchrollicking fun that you may find yourself worrying at the intermission about whether there’s any way this production can successfully work itself around to the serious part of the story that you know lies ahead. But somehow it does, keeping its sense of humor but muzzling it just enough to allow some drama and poignancy to enter the mix. There are moments in the second act when the play seems less like a work about the past and more like a work from the past… an engaging, well-acted production that deserves a better theater and a longer run.”
Knock Me a Kiss is a fictional account inspired by the actual events surrounding the 1928 marriage of W.E.B. Du Bois’ daughter Yolande to one of Harlem’s great poets, Countee Cullen. The marriage marked the height of the Harlem Renaissance and was viewed as the perfect union of Negro talent and beauty. It united the daughter of America’s foremost Black intellectual, cofounder of the NAACP and publisher of Crisis Magazine, with a young poet whose work was considered to be one of the flagships for the New Negro movement. The marriage is a triumph of pomp and pageantry but fails to be a union of man and woman.
Erin Cherry and Marie Thomas Photo by Lia Chang
Larry Leon Hamlin founded the National Black Theatre Festival® in 1989. His goal was to unite black theatre companies in America and ensure the survival of the genre into the next millennium. With the support of Dr. Maya Angelou, who served as the Festival’s first Chairperson, NBTF was born. The ’89 Festival offered 30 performances by 17 of America’s best professional black theatre companies. It attracted national and international media coverage. According to The New York Times, “the 1989 National Black Theatre Festival® was one of the most historic and culturally significant events in the history of black theatre and American theatre in general.” Over 10,000 people attended. It lived up to its theme: An International Celebration and Reunion of Spirit. The NBTF enables Black theatre professionals to express cultural values and perspectives inherent to the African Diaspora candidly, dramatically and powerfully. Staged components of the NBTF foster the creation and sharing of new works while educational components document and preserve the history and traditions of the genre. Intense week-long interactions focus on renewing their commitment to preserve professional Black theatre and to revitalize its genre. Held biennially, the NBTF attracts more than 65,000 people during the six-day event. The 2011 National Black Theatre Festival will be held in Winston-Salem, NC, August 1 – August 6.
André De Shields as W.E.B. Du Bois with Erin Cherry, who play his daughter Yolande, in Charles Smith's Knock Me A Kiss. Photo by Lia Chang
In a career that has spanned four decades, De Shields is best known for his electrifying performances in the original Broadway productions of The Wiz in 1975 (title role), Ain’t Misbehavin’ in 1978 (Drama Desk nomination), Play On! in 1997 (Tony nomination) and The Full Monty in 2000, for which he received Tony, Drama Desk and Astaire Award nominations, in addition to both the Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Awards. His other Broadway credits include an autobiographical revue, Haarlem Nocturne, and the world premier of two new American plays: Mark Medoff’s Prymate (Drama Desk nomination) and Michael Jacob’s Impressionism, with Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen. He is the recipient of the 2009 National Black Theatre Festival’s Living Legend Award, the 2007 Village Voice OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance and the 2009 AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Performance in a Musical/Male. He won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Achievement for his performance in the 1982 NBC broadcast of Ain’t Misbehavin’. New York theatre audiences have seen De Shields in productions as varied as Cato at The Flea, as the farmer Old Banks opposite Charlayne Woodard, in the Red Bull Theater’s Off-Broadway production of The Witch of Edmonton at The Theatre at St. Clement’s, Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor at the Melting Pot Theatre, Let Me Sing at The George Street Playhouse, Lonnie Carter’s The Gulliver Trilogy at La MaMa e.t.c. and his solo work-in-progress Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory: From Douglass to Deliverance at The Abingdon Theatre about abolitionist Frederick Douglass. At the Classical Theatre of Harlem, he has been seen as Makak in Derek Walcott’s Dream On Monkey Mountain, in the title roles of Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe, CALIGULA and King Lear, directed by Alfred Preisser. Regional audiences have witnessed him as Henry Drummond in Inherit The Wind, Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman, Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came To Dinner, Scott Joplin in Tin Pan Alley Rag, Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, Jacob Strand in Ibsen’s Ghosts (starring Jane Alexander), and the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. He recently appeared as the title character of Charles Smith’s The Gospel According to James, directed by Chuck Smith at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater in Chicago. Upcoming projects include directing a staged reading of Jacqueline Malcolm’s The Trade at The Player’s Club in New York on July 19; jetting off to Italy after the Festival to be a teaching artist at the 1st Annual La MaMa Umbria International Master Acting Workshops; and directing the New Jersey-based Crossroads Theatre Company’s production of the Fats Waller revue Ain’t Misbehavin’, October 6-24. A triple Capricorn, he is the ninth of eleven children born and reared in Baltimore, Maryland. www.andredeshields.com.
Playwright Charles Smith is a member of the Playwrights Ensemble at the Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, alumni playwright of the Tony Award-winning New Dramatists in New York, and Head of the Professional Playwriting Program at Ohio University. His plays have been produced Off-Broadway and around the country by theaters such as Victory Gardens, The Acting Company, Indiana Repertory Theatre, People’s Light & Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, Penumbra, Ujima Theatre Company, St. Louis Black Rep, New Federal Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and Berkeley Repertory Theater. His work has also been produced for the HBO New Writers Project, the International Children’s Theater Festival in Seattle, and the North Carolina Black Arts Festival. His play Pudd’nhead Wilson enjoyed a 22 city national tour and his plays Takunda and City of Gold enjoyed tours of the west coast. His other plays include Free Man of Color, which recently premiered in Australia after being awarded a Joseph Jefferson Award and John W. Schmid Award, both for Outstanding New Work. He is also author of two Emmy Award-winning teleplays, “Fast Break to Glory” and “Pequito.” A graduate of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and recipient of the 2008 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, Smith has received commissions from Victory Gardens, The Goodman, Seattle Rep, Indiana Rep, The Acting Company, and Ohio University. His most recent work, The Gospel According to James, was commissioned by Indiana Rep and is the result of a Joyce Award. The Gospel According to James received its World Premiere production at Indiana Rep and had a success run this Spring at the Victory Gardens Biograph in Chicago.
Director Chuck Smith has had 25 years of experience in African-American theater. He is resident director of the Goodman Theatre, where he has directed Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, A Christmas Carol, and Vivisections from the Blown Mind. Smith is a founding member of the Chicago Theatre Company, where he was artistic director for four seasons, staging plays including Sizwe Banzi is Dead, Fathers and Other Strangers, Suspenders, the Jeff-winning musical Po’, and The Meeting. He has also directed at Fleetwood-Jourdain, The New Regal, Kuumba, Pegasus Players, New Federal Theater, ETA Creative Arts, Columbia College, and Chicago Black Ensemble Theater. He is also artistic director of the Chicago Historical Society’s Voices in History program and an artist-in-residence at Columbia College Chicago, where he facilitates the Theodore Ward playwriting contest.
Woodie King Jr. is the Founder and Producing Director of New Federal Theatre. Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theatre has presented over 200 productions in its 40-year history. Mr. King has produced and directed on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in Regional Theatres, and in universities across the United States. He co-produced For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf (first produced by NFT and Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre), What the Wine Sellers Buy, Reggae and The Taking of Miss Janie (Drama Critics Circle Award). His directional credits are extensive and include work in film as well as theater. For more information, visit www.newfederaltheatre.org/
As a photographer and videographer, Lia collaborates with artists, organizations and companies in establishing their documentary photo archive and social media presence. She has been documenting her colleagues and contemporaries in the arts, fashion and journalism since making her stage debut as Liat in the National Tour of South Pacific, with Robert Goulet and Barbara Eden. Lia currently plays Nurse Lia on “One Life to Live”. She has appeared in Wolf, New Jack City, A Kiss Before Dying, King of New York, Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, Taxman and “New York Undercover”.
Selections of Lia’s archive of Asian Pacific Americans in the arts, fashion, journalism, politics and space are now in the newly created LIA CHANG THEATER PHOTOGRAPHY PORTFOLIO in the ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN PERFORMING ARTS COLLECTION housed in the Library of Congress Asian Division’s Asian American Pacific Islander Collection.
On Tuesday, July 19, 2011, Two-time Tony Award nominee and Emmy Award winning actor André De Shields will direct the staged reading of Jacqueline Malcolm’s The Trade, the second entry in her SLAVE Trilogy, at The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park in New York at 7pm. Admission is free, please RSVP to jacquelinemalcolm@yahoo.co.uk.
Written and created by Jacqueline Malcolm, The Trade follows the story of Albert Shelton, a man born free, yet brought up as a slave. His identity is lost as he tries to find his way in a world where men are traded for beads and the color of the skin can mean death or life. Becoming a Trader himself, Albert’s journey takes him from middle-class Bristol, England to life with the Maroon Tribe of the Blue Mountains, Jamaica, until finally, his destiny and drive throws him into the chaos of pre-independent New York City.
Playwright Jacqueline Malcolm and André De Shields after the performance of Lonnie Carter's The Sovereign State of Boogedy Boogedy, at the Abingdon Theatre in New York on February 14, 2011. Photo by Lia Chang
Born in Northhampton, England, playwright Jacqueline Malcolm is a classically trained actress from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, New York and the London Center of Theatre Studies, London, who has had a passion for writing since a very early age. A published author of the children’s book, The Adventures of Lucy the Lamb (Author House Publishers, 2005), her other writing credits include: The Red Dress (short play, The Kings Head Theatre, London, 2004); Cornflakes (short play, The Kings Head Theatre, London, 2004), Twisted Magnolias (short play, Camden Theatre, London, 2006); Lost In the Moment (short play, 2009); A Child’s Wish (commissioned script for theatre in education project in NY, 2009). Ms. Malcolm has written theatre and movie reviews/articles for LA Splash Magazine, California, as well as a commissioned short story for publication, Stoner Story. She also has an ongoing professional career in administration and event management to an executive level.
Andre De Shields Photo by Lia Chang
In a career that has spanned four decades, De Shields is best known for his electrifying performances in the original Broadway productions of The Wiz in 1975 (title role), Ain’t Misbehavin’ in 1978 (Drama Desk nomination), Play On! in 1997 (Tony nomination) and The Full Monty in 2000, for which he received Tony, Drama Desk and Astaire Award nominations, in addition to both the Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Awards. His other Broadway credits include an autobiographical revue, Haarlem Nocturne, and the world premier of two new American plays: Mark Medoff’s Prymate (Drama Desk nomination) and Michael Jacob’s Impressionism, with Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen. He is the recipient of the 2009 National Black Theatre Festival’s Living Legend Award, the 2007 Village Voice OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance and the 2009 AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Performance in a Musical/Male. He won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Achievement for his performance in the 1982 NBC broadcast of Ain’t Misbehavin’. New York theatre audiences have seen De Shields in productions as varied as Cato at The Flea, as the farmer Old Banks opposite Charlayne Woodard, in the Red Bull Theater’s Off-Broadway production of The Witch of Edmonton at The Theatre at St. Clement’s, Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor at the Melting Pot Theatre, Let Me Sing at The George Street Playhouse, Lonnie Carter’s The Gulliver Trilogy at La MaMa e.t.c. and his solo work-in-progress Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory: From Douglass to Deliverance at The Abingdon Theatre about abolitionist Frederick Douglass. At the Classical Theatre of Harlem, he has been seen as Makak in Derek Walcott’s Dream On Monkey Mountain, in the title roles of Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe, CALIGULA and King Lear, directed by Alfred Preisser. Regional audiences have witnessed him as Henry Drummond in Inherit The Wind, Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman, Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came To Dinner, Scott Joplin in Tin Pan Alley Rag, Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, Jacob Strand in Ibsen’s Ghosts (starring Jane Alexander), and the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. He recently appeared as the title character of Charles Smith’s The Gospel According to James, directed by Chuck Smith at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater in Chicago.
From August 2-4, 2011, De Shields will reprise his critically acclaimed role as W.E.B. DuBois in Charles Smith’s Knock Me A Kiss, directed by Chuck Smith, at The National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, NC, a co-production of Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theatre and Legacy Creative Arts Company. Click here for tickets. He then jets off to Italy to be a teaching artist at the 1st Annual La MaMa Umbria International Master Acting Workshops. A triple Capricorn, he is the ninth of eleven children born and reared in Baltimore, Maryland. www.andredeshields.com.
As a photographer and videographer, Lia collaborates with artists, organizations and companies in establishing their documentary photo archive and social media presence. She has been documenting her colleagues and contemporaries in the arts, fashion and journalism since making her stage debut as Liat in the National Tour of South Pacific, with Robert Goulet and Barbara Eden. Lia currently plays Nurse Lia on “One Life to Live”. She has appeared in Wolf, New Jack City, A Kiss Before Dying, King of New York, Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, Taxman and “New York Undercover”.
Selections of Lia’s archive of Asian Pacific Americans in the arts, fashion, journalism, politics and space are now in the newly created LIA CHANG THEATER PHOTOGRAPHY PORTFOLIO in the ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN PERFORMING ARTS COLLECTION housed in the Library of Congress Asian Division’s Asian American Pacific Islander Collection.
André De Shields at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater in Chicago, where he is appearing in Charles Smith's The Gospel According to James through June 12, 2011. Photo by Lia Chang
André De Shields has been having a love affair with Chicago, the city where theatre as a way to life began for him, initially as a member of the Pottawattamie Tribe in Michael Butler’s 1969 production of Hair, The American Tribal-Love Rock Musical, directed by Tom O’Horgan at The Shubert Theatre.
Reflecting on his start in Chicago, De Shields shared, “After fifteen months of ‘beads, flowers, freedom, happiness,’ I assumed the role of Clorox in The Me Nobody Knows (Chicago’s Civic Theatre). Hot on the heels of that experience, Stuart Gordon invited me to become a member of The Organic Theatre Company, where, in 1971, I created the cult villain, Xander the Unconquerable, Ruler of the Sixth Dimension in Warp: The World’s First Science Fiction Epic Adventure Play In Serial Form. The Organic achieved this feat fully seventeen years before Star Wars. In 1973, I debuted on Broadway in Warp (Ambassador Theatre).” While in Chicago, he garnered two Jeff Awards (Victory Gardens, Goodman) and a Black Theatre Alliance Award (Goodman). He is the recipient of an Emmy, a Living Legend Award, an OBIE Award and multiple Tony Award nominations. www.andredeshields.com.
Linda Kimbrough as Marie and André De Shields as James in Charles Smith’s The Gospel According To James at Victory Gardens Theater. Photo by Liz Lauren
Through June 12, you can catch him at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Park, where he is currently starring as the title character in the Chicago Premiere of Charles Smith’s The Gospel According to James, directed by Chuck Smith. The cast also features Linda Kimbrough (Marie), Kelsey Brennan (Mary), Wardell Julius Clark (Tommy Shipp), Zach Kenney (Claude), Diane Kondrat (Bea Ball), Christopher Jon Martin (Hoot Ball), Anthony Peeples (Apples), Tyler Jacob Rollinson (Abe Smith) and Nick Vidal (Claude).
The Victory Gardens production of The Gospel According to James, follows the well-received world premiere, which was commissioned by Indiana Repertory Theatre and presented by Bingham McHale from March 22-April 10, 2011.
Anthony Peeples as Apples, Zach Kenney as Claude and Kelsey Brennan as Mary in Charles Smith’s The Gospel According To James at Victory Gardens Theater. Photo by Liz Lauren
The double lynching immortalized by the iconic Lawrence Beitler photograph served as playwright Charles Smith’s inspiration for The Gospel According to James. The play is set in 1930 in Marion, Indiana, where five young people are eager to break out of their small town. They need a car. They have a gun. The play creates a fictional meeting between James Cameron (De Shields) who survived the lynching and Mary Ball, the only woman with them that night. Years later, contradictory memories are all that’s left of their grand plans. As The Gospel According to James dramatizes the events leading up to the crime, it also explores how unreliable personal memory underlies what we believe to be an immutable public history.
Diane Kondrat as Bea Ball and Christopher Jon Martin as Hoot Ball in Charles Smith’s The Gospel According To James at Victory Gardens Theater. Photo by Liz Lauren
The production team for The Gospel According to James includes scenic design by Linda Buchanan, costume design by Rachel Healey, lighting design by Kathy Perkins, compositions and sound design by Ray Nardelli.
Victory Gardens Biograph Theater is located at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Park. Tickets are $20-$50.The Box Office is located at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago. Call 773.871.3000, online at victorygardens.org or email tickets@victorygardens.org.
As a photographer and videographer, Lia collaborates with artists, organizations and companies in establishing their documentary photo archive and social media presence. She has been documenting her colleagues and contemporaries in the arts, fashion and journalism since making her stage debut as Liat in the National Tour of South Pacific, with Robert Goulet and Barbara Eden. Lia currently plays Nurse Lia on “One Life to Live”. She has appeared in Wolf, New Jack City, A Kiss Before Dying, King of New York, Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, Taxman and “New York Undercover”.
Selections of Lia’s archive of Asian Pacific Americans in the arts, fashion, journalism, politics and space are in the newly created LIA CHANG THEATER PHOTOGRAPHY PORTFOLIO in the ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN PERFORMING ARTS COLLECTION housed in the Library of Congress Asian Division’s Asian American Pacific Islander Collection.
Two-time Tony nominee André De Shields plays the title character in the Chicago Premiere of Charles Smith’s The Gospel According to James directed by Chuck Smith. The Gospel According to James runs May 14-June 12, 2011 at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Park. Opening night is set for May 18, 2011.
Playwright Charles Smith, André De Shields and director Chuck Smith on the set of the New York production of "Knock Me A Kiss" after the opening night performance at the Abrons Arts Center on November 11, 2011. Photo by Lia Chang
Last November, the trio collaborated on Charles Smith’s critically acclaimed New York production of Knock Me A Kiss, directed by Chuck Smith, with De Shields as W.E.B. Du Bois, at the Abrons Arts Center, a co-production of Legacy Creative Arts Company and Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theatre.
The Victory Gardens production of The Gospel According to James, follows the well-received world premiere, which was commissioned by Indiana Repertory Theatre and presented by Bingham McHale from March 22-April 10, 2011.
The double lynching immortalized by the iconic Lawrence Beitler photograph served as playwright Charles Smith’s inspiration for The Gospel According to James. Set in 1930 in Marion, Indiana, five young people are eager to break out of their small town. They need a car. They have a gun. The play creates a fictional meeting between James Cameron (De Shields) who survived the lynching and Mary Ball, the only woman with them that night. Years later, contradictory memories are all that’s left of their grand plans. As The Gospel According to James dramatizes the events leading up to the crime, it also explores how unreliable personal memory underlies what we believe to be an immutable public history.
Helmed by Chuck Smith, the cast also features Kelsey Brennan (Mary), Wardell Julius Clark (Tommy Shipp), Zach Kenney (Claude), Linda Kimbrough (Marie), Diane Kondrat (Bea Ball), Christopher Jon Martin (Hoot Ball), Anthony Peeples (Apples), Tyler Jacob Rollinson (Abe Smith) and Nick Vidal (Claude).
The production team for The Gospel According to James includes scenic design by Linda Buchanan, costume design by Rachel Healey, lighting design by Kathy Perkins, compositions and sound design by Ray Nardelli.
Performance Schedule:
Tuesdays: 7:30 pm (except, no show on May 31)
Wednesdays: 2:00 pm (June 1 ONLY), 7:30 pm
Thursdays: 7:30 pm
Fridays: 7:30 pm (with 6pm Happy Hour on June 3)
Saturdays: 4:00 pm (except May 14), 7:30 pm
Sundays: 3:00 pm
Victory Gardens Biograph Theater is located at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Park. Tickets during previews are $20-$40, and $20-$50 during the regular run. The Box Office is located at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago. Call 773.871.3000, online at victorygardens.org or email tickets@victorygardens.org.
In a career that has spanned four decades, De Shields is best known for his electrifying performances in the original Broadway productions of The Wiz in 1975 (title role), Ain’t Misbehavin’ in 1978 (Drama Desk nomination), Play On! in 1997 (Tony nomination) and The Full Monty in 2000, for which he received Tony, Drama Desk and Astaire Award nominations, in addition to both the Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Awards. His other Broadway credits include an autobiographical revue, Haarlem Nocturne, and the world premier of two new American plays: Mark Medoff’s Prymate (Drama Desk nomination) and Michael Jacob’s Impressionism, with Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen. He is the recipient of the 2009 National Black Theatre Festival’s Living Legend Award, the 2007 Village Voice OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance and the 2009 AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Performance in a Musical/Male. He won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Achievement for his performance in the 1982 NBC broadcast of Ain’t Misbehavin’. New York theatre audiences have seen De Shields in productions as varied as Cato at The Flea, Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor at the Melting Pot Theatre, Let Me Sing at The George Street Playhouse, Lonnie Carter’s The Gulliver Trilogy at La MaMa e.t.c. and his solo work-in-progress Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory: From Douglass to Deliverance at The Abingdon Theatre about abolitionist Frederick Douglass. At the Classical Theatre of Harlem, he has been seen as Makak in Derek Walcott’s Dream On Monkey Mountain, in the title roles of Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe, CALIGULA and King Lear, directed by Alfred Preisser. Regional audiences have witnessed him as Henry Drummond in Inherit The Wind, Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman, Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came To Dinner, Scott Joplin in Tin Pan Alley Rag, Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, Jacob Strand in Ibsen’s Ghosts (starring Jane Alexander), and the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. He recently appeared as the farmer Old Banks opposite Charlayne Woodard, in the Red Bull Theater’s Off-Broadway production of The Witch of Edmonton, at the Theatre at St. Clement’s. In August, De Shields will be a teaching artist at the 1st Annual La MaMa Umbria International Master Acting Workshops. A triple Capricorn, he is the ninth of eleven children born and reared in Baltimore, Maryland. www.andredeshields.com.
Playwright Charles Smith is a member of the Playwrights Ensemble at the Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, alumni playwright of the Tony Award-winning New Dramatists in New York, and Head of the Professional Playwriting Program at Ohio University. His plays have been produced Off-Broadway and around the country by theaters such as Victory Gardens, The Acting Company, Indiana Repertory Theatre, People’s Light & Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, Penumbra, Ujima Theatre Company, St. Louis Black Rep, New Federal Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and Berkeley Repertory Theater. His work has also been produced for the HBO New Writers Project, the International Children’s Theater Festival in Seattle, and the North Carolina Black Arts Festival. His play Pudd’nhead Wilson enjoyed a 22 city national tour and his plays Takunda and City of Gold enjoyed tours of the west coast. His other plays include Free Man of Color, which recently premiered in Australia after being awarded a Joseph Jefferson Award and John W. Schmid Award, both for Outstanding New Work. He is also author of two Emmy Award-winning teleplays, “Fast Break to Glory” and “Pequito.” A graduate of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and recipient of the 2008 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, Smith has received commissions from Victory Gardens, The Goodman, Seattle Rep, Indiana Rep, The Acting Company, and Ohio University. The Gospel According to James is the result of a Joyce Award.
Director Chuck Smith has had 25 years of experience in African-American theater. He is resident director of the Goodman Theatre, where he has directed Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, A Christmas Carol, and Vivisections from the Blown Mind. Smith is a founding member of the Chicago Theatre Company, where he was artistic director for four seasons, staging plays including Sizwe Banzi is Dead, Fathers and Other Strangers, Suspenders, the Jeff-winning musical Po’, and The Meeting. He has also directed at Fleetwood-Jourdain, The New Regal, Kuumba, Pegasus Players, New Federal Theater, ETA Creative Arts, Columbia College, and Chicago Black Ensemble Theater. He is also artistic director of the Chicago Historical Society’s Voices in History program and an artist-in-residence at Columbia College Chicago, where he facilitates the Theodore Ward playwriting contest.
As a photographer and videographer, Lia collaborates with artists, organizations and companies in establishing their documentary photo archive and social media presence. She has been documenting her colleagues and contemporaries in the arts, fashion and journalism since making her stage debut as Liat in the National Tour of South Pacific, with Robert Goulet and Barbara Eden. Lia currently plays Nurse Lia on “One Life to Live”. She has appeared in Wolf, New Jack City, A Kiss Before Dying, King of New York, Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, Taxman and “New York Undercover”.
Selections of Lia’s archive of Asian Pacific Americans in the arts, fashion, journalism, politics and space are in the newly created LIA CHANG THEATER PHOTOGRAPHY PORTFOLIO in the ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN PERFORMING ARTS COLLECTION housed in the Library of Congress Asian Division’s Asian American Pacific Islander Collection.
Lia Chang
