Lorraine Hansberry News

The Huntington Theatre Company opens its 28th season - a season of American stories - with August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Fences, the sixth chapter of his groundbreaking ten-play cycle about the 20th century African-American experience. Kenny Leon (Radio Golf, Gem of the Ocean, A Raisin in the Sun), acclaimed director and Wilson's final collaborator before his death, returns to the Huntington to helm the production, which stars John Beasley (Two Trains Running, Jitney, 'Everwood').

This year, the prestigious National Black Theatre Festival? will honor Jubilee Theatre Artistic Director Ed Smith with the festival's first annual Lloyd Richards' Director's Award. Smith is receiving this award because of his significant contributions to black theatre and American theatre in general. The festival will be held from August 3 through 8, 2009 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The theme for this year's festival remains the same as the past ten festivals: An International Celebration and Reunion of Spirit. Mr. Smith will be presented with the award at the Opening Night Gala Awards Banquet, which will be held on Monday, August 3.

Casting is announced for 'That Championship Season' at Westport Country Playhouse, the first production to be directed by Mark Lamos since he was named artistic director in February 2009 at the historic theater in Westport, Connecticut. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award and New York Drama Critics Circle Award, 'That Championship Season' by Jason Miller will run August 25 through September 12.

The Theatre School at DePaul University (John Culbert, Dean) is pleased to announce upcoming productions for its 2009-2010 Season. Throughout its 80+ year history, the school has provided Chicago audiences with affordable and meaningful theatrical experiences.

TheatreWorks, the nationally acclaimed theatre of Silicon Valley, presents the ferociously funny, utterly unreliable memoir, Yellow Face, from the Tony Award-winning author of M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang. Part fact, part fiction, this revealing backstage comedy chronicles the playwright?s struggle to define racial identity in the mixed-up melting pot of contemporary America. Broadway and Off-Broadway star Francis Jue will reprise his Obie-Award winning role as the playwright?s father alongside New York-based actor Pun Bandhu and Bay Area theatre veterans Robert Ernst, Amy Resnick, and Howard Swain. Thomas Azar and Tina Chilip make their TheatreWorks debuts. Founding Artistic Director Robert Kelley will direct. Yellow Face plays August 26 through September 20 (press opening August 29), at TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. For tickets and information, the public may call 650-463-1960, or visit www.theatreworks.org.

Aurora Theatre Company has selected the directors for the company's fifth Global Age Project festival of new works: Margo Hall - an award winning actor/director/playwright, Hall most recently directed The Story, by Tracy Scott-Wilson, a SF Playhouse/Lorraine Hansberry Co-Production, and Sonny's Blues, a story by James Baldwin, for Word for Word.

Lincoln Center Theater (under the direction of Andre Bishop, Artistic Director, and Bernard Gersten, Executive Producer) has announced that Francois Battiste, Crystal A. Dickinson, Alano Miller and Wendell Pierce will be featured in its upcoming production of BROKE-OLOGY, a new play by Nathan Louis Jackson, directed by Thomas Kail.

Playwright Zakiyyah Alexander has been named ACT's 2009 New Play Award winner for her play Sweet Maladies. Two FREE staged readings will be presented by The Hansberry Project in ACT's Falls Theatre on June 6 at 7:30 p.m. and June 7 at 2:00 p.m. Each reading will be followed immediately by post-play discussions with the playwright and the director, Valerie Curtis-Newton. A special reception will be held following the June 7 presentation.

Theatre503 presents David Harewood as Martin Luther King in The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, directed by James Dacre.

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, on the verge of turning the big 3-0, is excited to announce the lineup of plays for the 30th Season (2009-10). Featured are a World Premiere by Danai Gurira (In the Continuum), exciting new works from Mike Daisey (If You See Something Say Something), Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo), and Bruce Norris (The Unmentionables), and a large-scale work by Charles L. Mee (Big Love). In addition, Woolly Mammoth?s favorite out-of-town troupe, The Neo-Futurists, returns to DC for an unprecedented fourth engagement of their hit show, Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind in December.

This month, the Lark Play Development Center will present a BareBones® production of THE MOUNTAINTOP by Katori Hall (Hoodoo Love). This workshop production comes as the next stage of development for the play, which was part of the Lark's 2007-08 Playwrights' Workshop program led by Lark Playwright Advisor Arthur Kopit.

To mark the occasion of AMERICAN THEATRE magazine's 25th anniversary, Theatre Communications Groups (TCG) will honor the publication by publishing The American Theatre Reader, a 620-page compilation of significant and insightful articles, essays and interviews from the magazine's first quarter century.

Children's Theatre Company (CTC) welcomes Ramona Quimby, the world's most lovable third-grader, to its stage in a fast-paced, funny and touching new production, directed by Clinton Turner Davis.

The Stephen and Christine Schwarzman Legacy Award for Excellence in Theater will be presented to Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel on Friday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Terrace Theater during the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), April 14 - 18, 2009. Each year, this award recognizes a distinguished artist for lifetime achievement in theater and unparalleled commitment to the future of the art form through teaching. A $10,000 scholarship in her name to the student of her choice accompanies the award which enables her to continue her commitment to emerging theater practitioners

The Stephen and Christine Schwarzman Legacy Award for Excellence in Theater will be presented to Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel on Friday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Terrace Theater during the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), April 14 - 18, 2009.

Children's Theatre Company (CTC) welcomes Ramona Quimby, the world's most lovable third-grader, to its stage in a fast-paced, funny and touching new production, directed by Clinton Turner Davis.

The Stephen and Christine Schwarzman Legacy Award for Excellence in Theater will be presented to Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel on Friday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Terrace Theater during the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), April 14 - 18, 2009.

The Stephen and Christine Schwarzman Legacy Award for Excellence in Theater will be presented to Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel on Friday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Terrace Theater during the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), April 14 - 18, 2009. Each year, this award recognizes a distinguished artist for lifetime achievement in theater and unparalleled commitment to the future of the art form through teaching. A $10,000 scholarship in her name to the student of her choice accompanies the award which enables her to continue her commitment to emerging theater practitioners

The Guthrie presents A Penumbra Theatre production of A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and directed by Lou Bellamy A recent widow, Lena Younger wants to use her husband's insurance money to buy a home for her family, freeing them from the cramped tenement in which she, her two children, daughter-in-law and grandson line.

This month, the Lark Play Development Center will present a BareBones® production of THE MOUNTAINTOP by Katori Hall (Hoodoo Love). This workshop production comes as the next stage of development for the play, which was part of the Lark's 2007-08 Playwrights' Workshop program led by Lark Playwright Advisor Arthur Kopit.