Barbara Molette

The Black Theatre Network has announced Black Theatre Week: A Virtual Event.

Today, influencer and talent manager ChiChi Anyanwu of the NYC Black Theater Network, Marcia Pendelton, President of Walk Tall Girl Productions/Black Theater Online, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Kevin Young, Director, Schomburg Center) announced BLACK PLAYWRIGHTS: THEY SPEAK. WHO LISTENS? A Black Theater Winter Preview: Broadway and Off-Broadway Edition. The event is scheduled at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (515 Malcolm X Blvd) on Monday, January 28, 2019 at 6:30 p.m. Four-time Tony Award-winning producer Ron Simons of SimonSays Entertainment (A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, Porgy & Bess, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Jitney) will host the program whose purpose is to bring attention to the unprecedented number of plays by black playwrights being produced on Broadway and Off-Broadway this season.

Today, influencer and talent manager ChiChi Anyanwu of the NYC Black Theater Network, Marcia Pendelton, President of Walk Tall Girl Productions/Black Theater Online, and the award-winning Vineyard Theatre (Douglas Aibel and Sarah Stern, Artistic Directors; Suzanne Appel, Managing Director) announced BLACK PLAYWRIGHTS: THEY SPEAK. WHO LISTENS? A Black Theater Fall Preview: Off Broadway Edition. The event is scheduled at Vineyard Theatre (108 E. 15th Street) on Monday, October 15, 2018 at 7:00 p.m. Four-time Tony Award-winning producer Ron Simons of SimonSays Entertainment (A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, Porgy & Bess, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Jitney) will host the program whose purpose is to bring attention to the unprecedented number of plays by black playwrights being produced Off-Broadway this season.

Today ChiChi Anyanwu of the NYC Black Theater Network, Marcia Pendelton, President of Walk Tall Girl Productions/Black Theater Online, and the award-winning Vineyard Theatre announced BLACK PLAYWRIGHTS: THEY SPEAK. WHO LISTENS? A Black Theater Fall Preview: Off Broadway Edition.

To launch its 50th anniversary season, The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) will revisit its very first production, 'Day of Absence' (1966) by Douglas Turner Ward, with an eight-performance run December 4-11 at Theatre 80 St. Marks, 80 St. Mark's Place.  The season will include three more productions at Theatre 80 St. Marks and one at La MaMa.

Afrocentric Theatre by Carlton W. Molette and Barbara J. Molette updates their ground-breaking Black Theatre: Premise and Presentation that has been required reading in Black theatre courses for over twenty-five years. Afrocentric Theatre describes the nature of a theatre with roots in Africa that embraces and disseminates African American culture and values. The Molettes contend Black theatre is a culture-based art form, not a race-based one. They further assert culture and values shape perceptions of such concepts as time, space, heroism, reality, truth, and beauty. They say the nature of theatre is an outgrowth of a culture and its values and that culture and values form the framework for understanding theatre and govern the way theatre, film, and video drama is perceived. They identify standards for evaluating and analyzing Afrocentric theatre and posit an appropriate perspective for interpreting and evaluating its individual works.