The CRAFT Institute And San Francisco's African-American Shakespeare Company Join Forces With Michele Shay For ECHOES OF US

The African Diasporic Network has finally announced plans for its first production, Echoes of Us, to be directed by none other than Michele Shay.

"Echoes of Us will consist of approximately 12-15 monologues that capture the essence and vitality of who we are as Black people," says Monica White Ndounou, Associate Professor of Theater at Dartmouth College and founding Executive Director of The CRAFT Institute. "This collection-centering on our healing and life lessons for thriving-is a powerful opportunity to dramatize our interconnections and embrace the spiral nature of time and our lived experiences across generations. An opportunity through the voices of Ancestors, family, community and those who have yet to be, to recollect and reimagine the possibilities of our existence across space and time, then, now and forever."

As such, submitting authors, playwrights, seers and storytellers are encouraged to contribute to a collective narrative that speaks to the joy, the hurt, the struggles, and the healing of Black cultures across time. The past, the present, and the future are all on the table. All accepted work will be published in a final collection also entitled Echoes of Us.

"We are thrilled to have Michele Shay on this project," says African-American Shakespeare Artistic Director L. Peter Callender . "As a Tony Award nominated performer, a critically acclaimed director and currently on faculty at USC's School of Dramatic Arts, her involvement takes the project to another level altogether."

Plans call for the cast of Echoes of Us to tour the country in the latter part of 2022. Local actors from each city on the tour will join the touring cast of those particular performances. "This project is finally coming together after the last two years of Covid," says African-American Shakespeare Company Founder and Executive Director Sherri Young. "We look forward to announcing the planned tour stops and casting in the coming months."

Submissions

• Submissions should consist of monologues that run from 3 to 5 minutes in length
• Published or unpublished, stand-alone monologues, excerpts from larger projects, such as plays, screenplays, novels, short stories, poems, and spoken word pieces by Black authors are all acceptable
• Digital submissions in word or pdf format can be submitted online via: https://forms.gle/ch9nMfqr9h9A3pcG6
• Questions regarding submission subject matter or direction can be done via e-mail by contacting info@AfricanDiasporicNetwork.com
• All authors whose work is accepted will be published in a collection of the monologues

The African Diasporic Network: Black Theatre Circuit, aspires to collaboratively create a vital ecosystem for Black theatre by implementing viable economic, creative, and educational models through a multi-city, national tour with an international stop commencing in Fall 2022. As tour producers, The CRAFT Institute and African-American Shakespeare Company will produce stories featuring truth, humor and strength of Black life.

Creatives and organizations interested in being a part of the African Diasporic Network: Black Theatre Circuit are encouraged to create profiles on CreateEnsemble.com, a nurturing and inspiring ethos-driven platform for emerging and established creatives of color and organizations to support one another by coming together to create artistic projects for the love of the craft and our communities.

The CRAFT Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to curating culturally inclusive ecosystems throughout the world of arts and entertainment by transforming training and industry practices while promoting equitable access. Through curriculum and pedagogy, creative content development and production, networking opportunities and events, CRAFT's consultation, coaching, collaborations, workshops and clearinghouse of resources amplify the work of people of the global majority and culturally specific institutions. more information at www.thecraftinstitute.org

The award-winning African-American Shakespeare Company (AASC) was established in 1994 by professional theater artists from The American Conservatory Theatre as an alternative answer to the "Color Blind Casting" initiative that began in the early 90s. While this initiative temporarily changed the diversity on stage, African-American Shakespeare Company noticed color blind casting was ignoring these artists' rich cultural heritage and not making the most of the dynamic, cultural vibrancy that actors of color could bring to classical works. Moreover, since mainstream classical theaters often lack the ability to attract truly diverse audiences, The African-American Shakespeare Company aspires to highlight the dynamic cultural vibrancy that artists of color bring to classical productions.

The African-American Shakespeare Company's received a Certificate of Honor in 2004 from then San Francisco Mayor and now California Governor Gavin Newsom, was named "Best Live Theatre" by San Francisco Magazine in 2018, received a Jefferson Award for Public Service (Silver Recipient) in 2018, The Paine Knickerbocker Award in 2014 for Outstanding Achievement for a Theater Company by the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, along with a Community Partner Award from University of San Francisco's Leo T. McCarthy Center for outstanding collaboration in providing a quality Service-Learning program.

The African-American Shakespeare Company is funded in part by Shakespeare for a New Generation, a national program of the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with Arts Midwest; San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, California Arts Council, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Theatre Communication Group, Black Seed Fund, Donner Family Foundation, Black Theatre Fund, and the RHE Foundation. More info at www.african-americanshakes.org

The Black Seed is a first-ever national strategic plan to create impact and thrivability for Black theater institutions, unprecedentedly conceptualized and led by the Black theater field. The Black Seed is a force for systemic change in the arts and culture world: a national Think Tank of Black theater institutional leaders; a fund seeded by a collective of funders; National Leadership Circle for major donors to invest in Black theater institutions across the nation; The Black Seed Cohort comprised of national networks and coalitions; and a national marketing campaign to tell the story of Black theater in America.

Michele Shay - actress, director, educator, and noted interpreter of the works of playwright August Wilson, is perhaps best known for her Tony Award-nominated performance as Louise in August Wilson's Seven Guitars. She is a veteran actress who has graced stages on and off-Broadway, television and film, and regional theatres across the country.

Shay has portrayed Aunt Ester in Wilson's Gem of the Ocean in productions directed by Kenny Leon, Phylicia Rashad and Ruben Santiago-Hudson; and Mame Wilks in the world premiere of Wilson's Radio Golf, directed by Timothy Douglas at Yale Rep. In 2008, she joined more than 30 actors in the Kennedy Center's August Wilson's 20th Century, where all 10 of Wilson's plays were performed in repertory order of their decade.

Other stage work includes Home (Negro Ensemble Company), for colored girls... by Ntozake Shange, Coriolanus with Morgan Freeman, Antony and Cleopatra (as "Cleopatra") and Blues for an Alabama Sky - directed by Israel Hicks. She earned an Obie Award for her work in Meetings by Mustapha Matura. She has appeared on television in The Cosby Show, ER and Another World; and on film, opposite Denzel Washington in He Got Game.

Shay has directed seven August Wilson productions, including Fences, Gem of the Ocean, Seven Guitars (with Rebecca Jones at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts), The Piano Lesson (California Institute of the Arts) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (with Tonya Pinkins, Montae Russell and Glynn Turman at CCAP at the Broad Theatre). She has directed a staged reading of King Hedley II. In 2013, she participated with a host of other longtime August Wilson collaborators in The Greene Space's reading and recording series of August Wilson's American Century Cycle. She directed a reading of Two Trains Running, featuring Anthony Chisholm and Tracie Thoms. Other directorial work includes the musical Ian Forrest; one-woman shows Fighting for the Title by Delores Burgess and Everyday Diva by Elisa Perry; and da kink in my hair, which ran in New York, Toronto and the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, NC.

A Carnegie Mellon University graduate, Shay is a Fox Grant recipient - researching the connection between the human energy system, healing and performance. She has taught courses at California Institute of the Arts, American Conservatory Theater, Actors Theater of Louisville, Denver Center, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and the New Studio on Broadway at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She is a member of the Actors Center Workshop Company, founded by J. Michael Miller in New York City. Shay has served on theatre panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, NY and NJ State Arts Councils, Board of TCG, National Alliance of Acting Teachers, and the game-changing funding organization for sustaining Black Theaters, the Black Seed. Currently, she serves as an Acting coach on the upcoming television series Swagger created by Reggie Bythewood for Apple TV.

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