[NEohioPAL] Karamu's 18th R. Joyce Whitley Festival

[Vivian Wilson]

CLEVELAND - April 22, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Vivian Wilson, 

Resource Development & Marketing Director 

216.795.7070

 

                        R. Joyce Whitley 18th Annual Festival of Plays

Features Six Promising Playwrights

 

Beginning Thursday, May 6, 2010, the Performing Arts Theatre of Karamu
House, Inc. proudly presents six staged readings of works by local and out
of state playwrights through its 18th Annual R. Joyce Whitley Festival of
Plays.  The readings will take place   Thursday, Friday and Saturday May 6
through May 8, 2010.  Two scripts will be read nightly, beginning at 6:30
p.m.

 

Selection Process

Named for the late R. Joyce Whitley, a nationally respected urban planner
and arts patron, ArenaFest invites emerging and established playwrights to
submit new works, focusing on African-American and multi-cultural
experiences, for staged readings and critiques.   Scripts were solicited
through general and targeted press releases to news and theatre trade papers
and organizations.  Selected scripts provide playwrights an opportunity to
hear their works read in a theatre setting, followed by brief discussions
with the audience.

 

Read, reviewed and ranked by a highly credible committee of theatre and
literary academics and professionals, this year's selections range in scope
from realism to the abstract, focusing on current social issues including
cancer survivors, cross-cultural and religious conflicts, falsely accused
prisoners, child abduction, mixed-racial and same-sex marriage, and the
struggles and perils of life in low income communities.  The selections are:
Gone Astray by Jennie Staniloff-Redling of Suffern, New York; Even The Blind
Can See by Vickie L. Williams of Cleveland, Ohio; The Kings by Brian Walker
of Louisville, Kentucky; A Boys Deliverance by Jonathan Jackson of
Cleveland, Ohio; Roses In The Water by La'Chris Jordan of Kingston,
Washington, and The Bald Headed Divas by Sharon Jefferson of Cleveland,
Ohio.   A synopsis and reading schedule of each follows.

 

2010 Selection Committee

When invited by Karamu Artistic Director Terrence Spivey to head up the 2010
Whitley ArenaFest, Mittie Imani Jordan came full circle with her
professional relationship with Karamu.  Ms. Jordan, President of Restoration
Source, Inc. which owns and operates Deuteronomy 8:3 Cafe Books & Music,
established "readers theatre" in 1980 while serving as Performing Arts
Assistant to the Artistic Director, the late Mike Malone.  After receiving
requests for summer internships from two undergraduates majoring in theatre
at Dillard University and Smith College, Mittie tossed the concept of
"readers theatre" as an intern coordinated project to Mr. Malone and then
Executive Director, Lois McGuire.  Ironically, she obtained housing for one
of the students with her cousin-in-law, R. Joyce Whitley.  In fact, it was
Ms. Jordan who introduced Joyce to the Brown University Rites and Reasons
Program where she subsequently wrote Dreams of Callahan while serving as a
Rockefeller Fellow in Humanities.  

 

Choosing to expand the review process to include area readers from the
academic and professional theatre community, Ms. Jordan assembled an
impressive selection committee beginning with Karamu's former executive
director, Lois McGuire, a former Associate Professor in the Department of
Humanities at Central State University.  Ms. McGuire was joined on the
committee by: Charles Smith, Ohio University Presidential Research Scholar
in Arts & Humanities, and the Head of Professional Playwriting Program at
the  College of Fine Arts; Marilyn Sanders Mobley, PhD, Case Western Reserve
University Vice President for Inclusion, Diversity & Equal Opportunity, and
Professor of English; Norman Jordan, MFA, President of the African Heritage
Family Tree Museum (WV), Affrilachian Poet/Playwright and former Karamu
playwright-in-residence; Gillian Johns, PhD, Oberlin College Associate
Professor in the Department of English; and Michael Oatman, current
playwright-in-residence at Karamu.  To keep the readings and selections
"blind" (void of playwright information), Ms. Jordan and Mr. Spivey deferred
from script rankings. 

 

R. Joyce Whitley

Karamu Friend and former Board of Trustee member, Rosara Joyce Whitley was
Vice President and Principal in Charge of Programming, Planning and Space
Utilization Studies with Whitley, Whitley, Inc. Architects and Planners, a
Cleveland-based firm established by her brothers William and James.   Highly
regarded in her field, Joyce taught urban planning at the University of
Chicago, served the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during
the Carter administration, and was a State Department delegate to
International Conferences in Iran and South Africa.   

 

The daughter of Moses and Beatrice Whitley, a community theatre group
director and radio personality, Joyce was surrounded by theatre growing up
in Rochester, New York.  As a child, she wrote and rehearsed plays with
neighborhood children on her parent's back porch.  As a young adult, she was
greatly influenced by her sister Gloria, a regular at Karamu who performed
with a world tour of Porgy & Bess.  As a theatre novice, Joyce brought
energy and enthusiasm to all projects with which she was associated.  She
was an active participant in Karamu's new playwright workshop, and was
preparing a submission for the first annual festival just prior to her
passing in 1992.  Karamu honored her generous contributions in time, talent
and funds with naming the festival of plays in her memory.

 

The 18th Annual R. Joyce Whitley ArenaFest is free and open to the public.
Doors open at 6:15 p.m.  Seating is limited.  Donations are accepted.  For
additional information call the box office at 216.795.7077.  

 

Celebrating a 95 year rich history of cultural and fine arts education,
exhibition and performance, Karamu House is located at 2335 East 89 Street
at Quincy Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44106.  

 

*********************

 

Karamu House, Inc.

18th Annual R. Joyce Whitley ArenaFest 

Script Synopsis & Reading Schedule

 

Thursday, May 6, 2010

 

6:30 p.m. Roses In The Water by LaChris Jordan, directed by Adrienne
Gosselin

Life in new Orleans' Desire Housing Projects isn't easy for Clarice, a young
African-American woman soon to be married.  The dead-end job, the drive by
shootings, and the constant struggle to pay the rent have all take their
toll on her family, and she wants out.  When the family is hit by a
financial crisis that further impact their living conditions, Clarice
enlists in the United States Navy, seeing no other viable options for a
resolve.  But will life in the military be any safer than life in the
projects?  And will her engagement to the man she left behind, hold up under
the stress.

 

8:30 p.m. Even The Blind Can See by Vickie L. Williams, directed by Kenny
Parker

A young African-American man wrongfully accused of raping and robbing a
white cancer patient is sentenced to thirteen years in the state
penitentiary.  Eight years into his sentence, he could have been released
into a sexual offenders program.  Not wanting to be labeled for the rest of
his life, he opts to stay in prison until the state recognizes his
innocence.  This script was read in the 15th Annual Whitley ArenaFest.  The
playwright re-worked the script based on reader, director and audience
critiques.

 

Friday, May 7, 2010

 

6:30 p.m. The Bald Headed Divas by Sharon Jefferson, directed by Laticia
Wilson

Three breast cancer patients of different ages and social backgrounds meet
while undergoing chemo-therapy.  They form an informal support group called
The Bald-Headed Divas.  During their time together, they share their hopes
and dreams, suffer each others setbacks, and stand by one another as they
weave through all the facets of their lives effected while living on C.P -
Cancer Patient - time.   

 

8:30 p.m. The Kings by Brian Walker directed by Sharron Foxx

The Kings are your not-so-average, mid-western, inter-racial, multi-cultural
Christian evangelical family trying to make sense of the world around them.
It's Thanksgiving, and the family anxiously awaits the arrival of an
estranged son who comes home to tell his parents that he's fallen in love
and plans to marry after graduating college.  His mother can not wait to see
her son, but given a previous holiday family blowup, his father looks
forward to the visit with skepticism.  The racially mixed-marriage couple
who met while active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 50's are not
prepared to handle the bombshell their son drops on them during his visit.

 

Saturday, May 8, 2010

 

6:30 p.m. A Boys Deliverance written and directed by Jonathan Jackson

The story follows Mike, a 19 year old African-American man living in the
Glenville area of Cleveland, Ohio.  He is trying to find himself in life
while stumbling along "the road less traveled" with a lot of twists, turns
and distractions.  Plagued by tragedy and motivated by money, he has to
choose between continuing following the path of everything he's ever know,
or leaving it to follow a path of which he knows nothing about.  

 

8:15 p.m. Gone Astray by Jennie Staniloff-Redding, directed by Mittie Imani
Jordan

A white mother steeped in Roman Catholic rituals has for nine years insisted
that her abducted child is still alive.  Since her daughter's disappearance,
she has frozen herself, her husband and their mentally handicapped son in a
changeless state.  Now, with the missing girl's 20th birthday approaching, a
supposed psychic, a young woman of Native and African American origins
appears at the family's doorstep, and is persuaded to recover the lost
child.  Soon, racial and cultural beliefs clash as questions are raised
about God, ghosts and the rituals we hope will protect us.

 

All readings are free and open to the public.  For additional information
call the box office at 216.795-7077

 

 

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