Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on June 28

CLEVELAND – Jean E. Hawkins’ theatrical credits include work on an estimated 125 productions at Karamu House during an affiliation with the nationally recognized performing arts institution spanning more than 40 years.

Jean E. Hawkins

The veteran actor, singer and director is a member of the Karamu Hall of Fame induction class of 2008. She is the nominee in the Local Legend-Living category and will share the spotlight with fellow honorees during the induction ceremony on June 28.

Actor James Pickens of television’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and entertainer Kym Whitley will co-host the event at 20/20 in the Flats. Pickens and Whitley also hail from Cleveland and are Karamu alums.

Hawkins, fondly called “Granny” by many of her fans, was a familiar face at Karamu from 1962 until 1981, when she moved to Los Angeles. Long-time Karamu theatergoers may remember her tear-jerking performance as Minister Essie Bell Johnson in “Tambourines to Glory,” a production that broke box office records at Karamu during its 1972 theatrical run.

Prior to her taking the stage, Hawkins worked in Karamu’s box office and its marketing and public relations departments. She made her stage debut in 1962 in “Time of Your Life,” with Nolan Bell.

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Meet & Greet with the City Gym Boys at the Liberty, Unity, Strength Festival; Sunday, May 25, 2008 12 pm - 6pm Francis Field 2425 N St, NW Washington, DC

City Gym Boys is an elite team of natural bodybuilders from the inner city dedicated to mentoring young men and women on the lifelong benefits of fitness and exercise.

City Gym Boys was founded in 1997 by owner Charles La Salle to reach young men and women in the New York City area. "Our mission is to help eliminate the onset of obesity, particularly among African-Americans and Latino's in the inner city, by getting teens hooked on working out. If we can get 15 to 23 year olds to make fitness a habit, then we are on our way to reducing diabetes and heart disease", says La Salle, who is natural bodybuilder and personal trainer.

The City Gym Boys are proof of how dedication, patience and hard work can change one's body, mind and life. These positive role models are from different cultural backgrounds including: African-American, Barbadian, Cuban, Dominican, Ghanaian, Jamaican, Panamanian, Puerto Rican, Trinidadian and Venezuelan but they all share a commitment to increasing awareness among today's youth about the lifelong benefits of being fit.

The City Gym Boys have appeared on Rap City- Da Basement, 106 & Park and other BET programs. They have also appeared on Japanese T.V.- New York Style and other T.V. Networks. They have been on College Tours throughout the United States giving lectures and demonstrations. These athletes have also appeared in various magazines and newspapers such as: The New York Times, Vibe, Natural Bodybuilding, Honey, Men's Workout, Today's Black Woman, Young and Modern, Flex and the Atlanta Journal- Constitution.

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By Dominic Cavendish

Chris Rock is as dumbfounded as anyone by the phenomenal success that has come his way in the UK these past six months. On stage, when doing his stand-up, he's never at a loss for words but, when he's asked to reflect on how he got so popular here, so quickly, his slick, super-smart outpourings dwindle to a trickle of ums, ahs and who-knows.

The initial plan for Rock's debut shows in England were tentative - and you can see why.

Aside from a handful of Hollywood credits, he wasn't really a name here, let alone a face; he was best-known as a voice. You can hear him on Five narrating Everybody Hates Chris - the sweetly surreal sitcom that revisits his teenage days as a Brooklyn misfit in an all-white school.

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By Photojournalist, Ali Burafi

Last year, Buenos Aires hosted the first Queer Tango Festival, which drew about 500 people from around the world. Buenos Aires has become a very popular destination for gay travelers. According to Hector Aguilar, an architectural historian who gives lectures for Lugar Gay, "It now rivals Rio as the gay destination in South America."

Augusto Balisano (showing back) and Miguel, a gay couple, dance the tango at La Marshall. Known as "milongas," tango socials are a longstanding part of Argentine culture. La Marshall is the first in Buenos Aires to host a gay milonga. Photo: Ali Burafi

Augusto Balisano (left) tours internationally to teach gay tango. When he's in the capital city, he teaches at Lugar gay, a guesthouse exclusively for men. Photo: Ali Burafi

The story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who turned the Negro spiritual into a mainstream art form

By Mark Stryker

Detroit - It's midnight when the Fisk University Jubilee Singers arrive at the Memphis train station. It's 1871 and the former slaves are in the midst of an arduous tour to raise money to prevent their failing school from bankruptcy.

The choir finds the door locked, the station deserted. Suddenly, a mob materializes out of the darkness wielding torches, rifles and clubs. The singers shiver with terror.

George White, the white Northerner and Fisk treasurer who organized the tour, steps in front of the lynch mob.

He raises his hand and his students begin to literally sing for their lives:
In the morning when I rise/ Give me Jesus.

The song, a plaintive Negro spiritual, dissolves the evil in the air the way that the sun melts ice. The rioters retreat, their leader reduced to tears.

The scene, a turning point in the history of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and in the history of American music, stands at the center of "Sing Jubilee," a play by OyamO (Charles Gordon) that receives its world premiere this weekend by Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit. The play tells the remarkable story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers who, facing brutal social conditions and segregation, introduced white audiences to Negro spirituals, the religious folk songs of African-American slaves.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers were the first to transform the spiritual from a folk form into concert music, forging a tradition inherited in the 20th Century by black classical singers like Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson and continuing today with Jessye Norman, Denyce Graves, Detroit's Brazeal Dennard Chorale and others.

The first black idiom to cross over to mainstream America, spirituals would have a profound impact on the development of blues and jazz, and their influence can be heard in composers as diverse as Gershwin, Dvorak and Charles Mingus.

"The Fisk Jubilee Singers were the fountainhead of a continuing stream of musicians who trace their sources back to the praise and sorrow songs that Ella Sheppard and her schoolmates first shyly performed for their white mentor ... in the curtained dark of Fisk's decaying barracks," writes Andrew Ward in "Dark Midnight When I Rise," a now out of print history of the Jubilee Singers that was published in 2000.

By Misha Berson

There is a very visible, sharply dressed, hipster ghost hanging out in "Fathers and Sons," Michael Bradford's new play at ACT Theatre.

According to the program, his name is Benard. And he circles the periphery of the action, just as this heartfelt but diffuse and repetitive drama of broken kinship keeps circling around itself.

A world premiere from ACT's Hansberry Project, "Fathers and Sons" contains many pungent exchanges, and a meaningful subject: the estrangement of fathers and sons through several generations of African-American men and how it might be healed.

The omnipresent phantom Benard Goodwater (Wilbur Penn) is the bad daddy incarnate — a trumpet-toting, be-bopping ne'er-do-well, who serves as a jive Greek chorus.

He was clearly a lousy father to his haunted son Leon (William Hall Jr.). And Leon returned the disfavor to his own offspring Marcus (Reginald André Jackson), by becoming a coke-sniffing, child-neglecting womanizer himself.

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Dallas - Jubilee Theatre continues its successful 2007-2008 season with, Blue, a play by Charles Randolph-Wright with original music by pop composer, Nona Hendryx. Internationally renowned director, Akin Babatunde, will direct Jubilee Theatre’s production of Blue.

 

Blue previews May 16, 17, 18, and 22; the show opens May 23; and the show runs May 24 through June 15, 2008. Performances are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. -- www.jubileetheatre.org

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By Arifa Akbar

Britain's most talented black and ethnic minority actors, writers, producers and directors have been picked to meet the most powerful studio executives in the American film industry.

Kwame Kwei-Armah, the first black Briton to have a play staged in the West End and whose credits include the award-winning Elmina's Kitchen, was among 12 talents selected by a UK Film Council panel for his role as a writer and producer. The group also includes Noel Clarke, the writer of the cult film Kidulthood, and Florence Ayisi, the award-winning documentary writer.

The group will leave for America at the end of the month to attend a gala night in Los Angeles at which they will be showcased in front of an audience of American film executives who are hungry to discover new talent from across the Atlantic. It would take them weeks to secure such appointments if they were representing themselves individually.

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From The Baltimore Police Department to Local Stages, Actor Jefferson Russell Has Always Sought Where He Needs to Be

By John Barry

At 11 a.m., the New Wyman Park Restaurant at 25th and Howard streets is buzzing with the late breakfast/early lunch crowd. Line cooks fling hash and flip burgers, waitresses are hassled. A wiry, middle-aged line cook who identifies himself as Purnell gets asked if he knows Jefferson Russell. "Jefferson Russell--," he muses. "Oh, sure. He's been going here for years."

Did he know that Russell was an actor? "No, I didn't," he says. "Not until I saw his picture in The Sun. He works at . . . what is that place? Everyman Theatre."

The New Wyman isn't the first place a stage actor would go to get recognized. And that's perfect for Jefferson Russell. He's squeezed into the corner of a booth, negotiating a full-sized breakfast platter and skimming a book about August Wilson, author of Gem of the Ocean, in which Russell currently stars at the Everyman.

As Purnell notes, Russell's cover was blown last December when The Sun interviewed him for its "Five Things I Have to Have Now" series. In it, Russell revealed he was a local actor and an ex-cop. His list: a book of common prayer, a photo album, a Batman comic-book collection, a role in a blockbuster movie, and a new car.

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By Julie Riggott

A framed black-and-white photo of Paul Robeson dressed as Othello hangs on the wall in Bennet Guillory’s office at the New LATC.

The portrait, just to the left of his desk, serves as a reminder of the man for whom Guillory and film actor Danny Glover named their Robey Theatre Company. The company, which produces one or two plays a year while offering training for playwrights and educational outreach for at-risk youth, opens its 10th production, Thomas Gibbons’ A House With No Walls, on Friday, May 9.

Since the Robey Theatre Company’s focus is “the black experience,” Robeson is the perfect muse. In 1930, he became the first black man to play the tragic Moor in an otherwise all-white cast in London. When he finally performed the part with Uta Hagen in New York in 1943, that show became the longest running Shakespeare production in Broadway’s history.

Robeson also proved to be a history maker beyond the theater world. Guillory, the company’s artistic director, talked at length about the “Renaissance man of the 20th century,” whose accomplishments still seem to overwhelm him.

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The play draws on the 32-year-old performer's gift with characters.

By Diane Haithman

IN two recent one-woman shows at Westwood's Geffen Playhouse, Carrie Fisher and Joan Rivers seized the opportunity to turn the stage into a therapist's couch, spilling both the secret and not-so-secret details of their lives, loves, addictions and cosmetic surgeries.

Surrounded by a cross-section of humanity including a homeless man, a TV reporter, a female reality show host and a Southern grandmother, Beaty's show tells the story of two African American brothers, one straight and one gay, whose lives are thrown into turmoil when a slave ship rises out of the Hudson River in front of the Statue of Liberty.

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By: Lindsay Warner

Philadelphia - There's something alluring and a little bit mysterious about hip-hop dance, even performed informally on the street by a group of teenagers killing time. It's enough to give you pause for a minute or two to watch feet spinning in the air, sometimes supported by just one hand firmly planted on the ground, and other times casually airborne. For Abdur-Rahim Jackson, the appeal of street dancing was a tangible push toward his eventual career as an Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater member, performing this weekend at the Kimmel Center.

"When I first saw people doing hip-hop on the streets in West Philly where I grew up, I was like 'how can your move you feet in that way?' " Mr. Jackson said. "One of my friends taught me, and that feeling that took over was magical. It was a new way to move and express your body, and it was oxygen to me, just the pure innocence of the drive of wanting to dance."

Drawn to enroll in an after-school dance program at the age of 10 even though dancing wasn't considered "cool" for boys growing up in West Philadelphia, Mr. Jackson continued moving through the ranks of dance and theater training, enrolling next in the New Freedom Theatre's dance and drama program. The New Freedom Theatre, which has been the initial training ground for tens of thousands of budding artists, served Mr. Jackson's voracious dance appetite for two years, until his teacher sadly admitted there wasn't any more she could teach him, and suggested he apply to Philadanco, Philadelphia's premier modern company.

Training and diplomas at both Philadanco and Juilliard followed, spurred by videos Mr. Jackson's mother had taped for him of a company founded by a man named Alvin Ailey.

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A forum highlighting socio-political themes of Aurin Squire's new play.

Inside a sex-phobic U.S. society and within a sex-positive queer community, the individual who defines his or her own personal sexuality is a brave freedom fighter. Freedom Train Productions is proud to host this discussion around the socio-political themes within Aurin Squire's new work. MONDAY, MARCH 24TH @ 7PM

As is our custom, there will be an open and democratic discussion where experts and academics, sex-perts and sex-positives, and plain old folks who have something to say all will have a chance to do exactly that.

This is a part of Freedom Train Productions' Offstage Series. Aurin's new play will be featured at Fire! New Play Festival 2008 in August. We promote new political theatre written by up-and-coming Black playwrights.

All of our plays feature Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender (LGBT) hero and shero characters. Our playwrights have had work staged at Fresh Fruit Festival, BRIC Studio, Blue Heron Theatre, HERE Arts Center, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, WOW Cafe Theatre, and other NYC theaters.

For more info: visit: www.freedomtrainproductions.org.

The Audre Lorde Project
85 South Oxford Street
Fort Greene,
Brooklyn, NY

For Directions to ALP click here

Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a National Poetry Slam champion, Broadway veteran, featured artist on the past two seasons of Russell Simmons' Def Poetry on HBO and a recipient of 2002 and 2004 National Performance Network Creation commissions. He was also recently named a USA Rockefeller Fellow in Theater Arts.

Originally from New York City and currently living in Oakland, California, this acclaimed arts activist recently returned from Tokyo where he was presented during the 1st International Spoken Word Festival and Santiago de Cuba where he joined the legendary Katherine Dunham as a part of the CubaNola Collective.

Bamuthi entered the world of literary performance after crossing the sands of "traditional" theater, most notably on Broadway in the Tony Award winning "The Tap Dance Kid" and "Stand-Up Tragedy." His evening-length work "Word Becomes Flesh" represents the completion of his third play, having already staged "De/Cipher" (Theater Artaud and Yerba Buena Center, 2001) and "No Man's Land"(ODC, 2002). "Word Becomes Flesh" has found a home in the seasons of Seattle's On The Boards, Houston's Diverse Works, Washington, D.C.'s Dance Place and New York's Dance Theater Workshop among other national venues.

His work has been described as everything from "electrifying" (The Houston Chronicle), to "ever-elegant" (The Washington Post) and has compelled the Seattle Times to name him their "cutting edge performer of the year" for 2003. In their review of "Word Becomes Flesh," the New York Times declared his work to be "eloquent. . .seamless. . .and remarkable."

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Marc Bamuthi Joseph of The Living Word Project was at Iowa City's West High School presenting his unique blend of poetry, choreography, and story-telling last week.

 

 

By Judith Egerton

If jazz is the broom Africans jump over to become Americans, then what is hip-hop?

Playwright/poet, dancer/rapper and hip-hop historian Marc Bamuthi Joseph asks and answers that question in "the break/s," a dynamic display of facile wordplay, percussive music and phenomenal physical movement.

Joseph's new work, the fourth production to open in this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville, is a journey of self-discovery that Joseph juxtaposes with the birth, growth and diversification of hip-hop.

The 90-minute show begins with Joseph twisting and twirling his entire body on the Bingham Theatre stage as if he were an LP revolving on a turntable. It's capped with a breathtaking, faster-than-the-eye flurry of dance and vocal agility called beatboxing.

In between, Joseph takes the audience on a trip with him to Haiti, Japan, Senegal, Paris, Bosnia and even Wisconsin, where he teaches and performs hip-hop. "the break/s" allows the audience to experience hip-hop afresh and see how cultures around the globe have adopted and adapted this quintessential American urban music to express their own views.

Joseph commands the stage with his autobiographical poetry slam and, in doing so, gives this year's Humana Festival a kick of excitement.

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Submitted By John Keasler

Art of Pride is currently seeking fine artists for the 2008 San Diego (CA) Pride Festival. Festival is July 19-20, 2008. We are looking for painters, illustrators, photogs and some scultors for both space rental and juried show.

Art of Pride strives to encourage understanding among all people by providing a format for LGBT artists and their allies.

On July 21-22, 2007, many of us participated in the San Diego LGBT Pride weekend. Twenty-six diverse artists presented their works to the majority of the 40,000 people who walked into the Festival gates.

We hope our site provides a venue for a diversity of crafts, media and styles.

Find more information at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/artofpride/ or write artofpride@sbcglobal.net

Daryl Wilson Productions is seeking models for the up comming Andrew Christian Men's Underwear Fashion Show. The event will be held in Washington, DC on May 23rd.

Please contact Darly for more information: www.daryl202dc.com

 

Monday, March 3rd in Harlem

Invisible Life The Musical  is based on the NY Times Best selling novel by E. Lynn Harris.

Invisibale Life is an explosive story inspired by E. Lynn Harris'novel of the same title, showcasing the impact of family, love, friendship, sexual desire, religion and AIDS in the African-Americancommunity.

AUDITION DATE: Monday, March 3rd TIME: 11:30am – 4:00pm
SIGN UP BEGINS: 11 am
LOCATION: Nubian Heritage, 2037 5th Avenue, Harlem, NYC (between 125 and 126th Street)

Please Note: Singing is required. High quality voices that sing in a R&B/pop style of Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway and Whitney Houston.

Please bring a photo and resume and sheet music to sing. Accompanist provided.

Seeking:

• Raymond Jr: 20's African-American Male Lead. TENOR. Masculine, extremely handsome and athletic. An attorney from Alabama. He is a mixture of Southern charm, layered with an acquired NY edge. He's a true ladies' man, until a series of events causes him to deal with a latent desire. He experiences an emotional roller coaster when he discovers that life is not perfect. STRONG ACTOR/MUST SING

• Nicole: 20's African-American Female. Lead. Jazz sounding SOPRANO. A former Miss America runner-up, aspiring Broadway actress, singer and Raymond's love interest. She's sweet, vulnerable, vibrant and a breath of fresh air. MUST SING/DANCE. A triple threat.

• Kelvin: 20's African-American Male. Lead. BARITONE/BASS. A dashing, arrogant football player who uses his good looks and charm to get whoever he wants, whenever he wants. Kelvin is a ladies' man living a life on the "down low". He is in love with and engaged to Candance, but he also loves Raymond. Must have a great body and killer looks. Must Sing or Rap.
  

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HARRY Potter star Daniel Radcliffe was a little gobsmacked by a lingering man pash planted on him as he accepted a theatre award.

 

The good-humoured actor was accepting his Best Newcomer award at the Whatsonstage 2008 awards when the show's host, James Corden, ambushed him with a kiss.

Daniel doesn't even try to fight it and he just goes along with it, even putting his arm around the neck of the shameless host.

Harry Potter's Big Gay Kiss

 

 

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The world of classical ballet seems to be the last place you would find a young black man — but Andile Ndlovu is changing that.

From Johannesburg’s Ennerdale township, Ndlovu first came to national notice with his performance of Basilio in the South African Ballet Theatre’s production of Don Quixote.

He was the first black man to have played the role on a local stage.

“It is a physically demanding role — you have to be a real virtuoso dancer to do that,” says the ballet theatre’s Samantha Saevitzon, “but Andile brought the house down. ”

Ndlovu, 19, is among a fraction of black men performing in local ballet — but he is quickly becoming its fastest rising star.

This week, South African TV viewers will see him in a new Pop Idol-style TV show called Dance, Dance, Dance — while he is considering job offers from two of the US’s leading ballet companies: the Washington Ballet and the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Asked what he thinks has distinguished him from his mostly white fellow dancers, he says: “My background was very different. They didn’t have to compete in the townships — where you compete at everything.”

The incomprehension he has faced from his own community, over his chosen vacation, has drawn comparisons with Billy Elliot, the film about a boy from an English mining town who pursues ballet dancing to the amazement of family and friends.

But in South Africa there is the added dimension of race.

“Twenty years ago, someone like Ndlovu wouldn’t even have been allowed inside the theatre ,” says Saevitzon.

With the dismantling of apartheid, a few ballet outreach programmes were introduced in some townships and that was the only chance that Ndlovu needed.

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