[NEohioPAL] Two Male Actors needed.

[fdsbc77 at aol.com]

Hello fellow artists.
I am immediately seeking two actors for the 18th Annual R. Joyce Whitley Annual Festival of Plays at Karamu House Inc. Friday May 7th.
The staged reading is called "The Kings"


Larson  45-55 (Male Caucasian)
Sammy 20-25 (Male Caucasian)


We will have two rehearsals Tue. May 4th and Wed May 5th 6pm. 
Please respond to this email 
Thanks!
Sharron McPherson-Foxx,
Director




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 its18th 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 Astrayby 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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