theblackbottom

Source: Washington Post
Playwright Robert O’Hara lives in New York City but loves working in Washington because he sees it as a place of stark and outrageous contradictions: It is a city filled with black people surrounded by monuments named for dead white men. It is a beacon of democracy whose residents [...]

Zulu Sofola (1935 – 1995) was the first published female Nigerian playwright and dramatist.
Her parents were Igbo from Issele-Uku in Delta State. She studied at Virginia Union Baptist Seminary and The Catholic University of America and she obtained her PhD from University of Ibadan. Her plays often dealt with contemporary Nigerian life and Nigeria dealing [...]

Ellen Stewart, the founder, artistic director and de facto producer of La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, a multicultural hive of avant-garde drama and performance art in New York for almost half a century, died Thursday in Manhattan. She was 91.
Ms. Stewart had a history of heart trouble and died at Beth Israel [...]

OPERA SENSATION ANGELA BROWN’S NEW ALBUM “OPERA…FROM A SISTAH’S POINT OF VIEW” MAKES #1 DEBUT

Indianapolis, IN (December 16, 2010) – Receiving standing ovations on some of the most celebrated stages in the world, internationally known opera star Angela Brown has astonished opera lovers and critics alike with her powerful vocals, [...]

Marcus Gardley, poet-playwright was born and bread on the rolling hills, lively churches, and moody-blue streets of Oakland, California. He is a professor of Creative Writing at Columbia University and works extensively at middle schools and high schools in New York. He has received commissions from the Yale Repertory Theatre, Playwright’s Horizon, The Shotgun Players, [...]

Maya Angelou’s paper trail includes a rambling, typewritten letter from James Baldwin, dated Nov. 20, 1970, addressed to “Dear, dear Sister” discussing everything from his new book to his feelings about death.
And one from Malcolm X, written on Jan. 15, 1965, assuring her, “You can communicate because you have plenty of (soul) [...]

By J. Freedom du Lac Washington Post Staff Writer
The old Holleywood tavern at Ninth and U streets NW, one of just eight bars in Washington listed as open to blacks in 1949, is now the indie-rock bar, DC9. Where the Brass Rail restaurant once served blacks who were excluded from most downtown [...]

Carl Gordon, who four decades ago, nearing midlife and feeling trapped in a series of dispiriting jobs, heeded a surprising call and became a successful character actor on television and the stage, died on Tuesday at his home in Jetersville, Va. He was 78.
The cause was non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his family said.
To television [...]

Broadway Sees Benefits of Building Black Audience
By PATRICK HEALY

They thought it was about Elvis.
That’s what a focus group of a dozen African-American women concluded about the musical “Memphis” last summer when they were asked to assess the show’s tagline, “The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll.”
But after seeing artwork featuring Felicia, the [...]

I really appreciate these High Powered actors & actresses taking back the Broadway Stage.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis star in the Broadway revival of Fences, August Wilson’s masterpiece about race and family.
Vogue.com

Of the ten plays that make up the late August Wilson’s Century Cycle, which take us through the vicissitudes of African-American life in [...]