360° Viewfinder: Wedding Band

360° SERIES V I E W F I N D E R : FA C T S A N D P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T H E P L AY, P L AY W R I G H T, A N D P R O D U C T I O N

W W W . T FA N A . O R G

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 My Play, Wedding Band

by Alice Childress 4 Biography: Alice Childress

by Arminda Thomas 5

Notable Artists on Childress

6 Dialogues: Reflections on a Pioneer

by Arminda Thomas 8 Interview: Continuing the Legacy of a “Collision Artist” Awoye Timpo and Arminda Thomas

in conversation with Alisa Solomon 16 Dialogues: Alice Childress’s Radical Roots

by Soyica Diggs Colbert 19 Timeline of Events Leading to Wedding Band

by Arminda Thomas 21 "You Are Taxed to Show Them As You Are"

Alice Childress as Writer and Director of Wedding Band 25 Intimate and Elemental: The World of Wedding Band Jason Ardizzone-West, Awoye Timpo and Arminda Thomas 33

The Production: Cast and Creative Team

About Theatre For a New Audience 39

Leadership

40

Mission and Programs

41

Major Supporters

This issue is indebted to the research and curatorial work of Arminda Thomas and Awoye Timpo, especially for the primary and secondary sources excerpted in "My Play, Wedding Band," "Notable Artists on Childress," and "You Are Taxed To Show Them As They Are."

This Production is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Notes Front Cover: Art © Paul Davis. Reference photo of Alice Childress courtesy Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and the Tilden Foundations.

This Viewfinder will be periodically updated with additional information. Last updated May 8, 2022.

Credits Wedding Band 360° | Edited by Peter J. Cook.

Resident Dramaturg: Jonathan Kalb | Council of Scholars Chair: Tanya Pollard | Designed by: Milton Glaser, Inc. | Layout by Torrence Browne Publisher: Theatre for a New Audience, Jeffrey Horowitz, Founder and Artistic Director Wedding Band is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. www.concordtheatricals.com Wedding Band 360° Copyright 2022 by Theatre for a New Audience. All rights reserved.

With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this Viewfinder may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Some materials herein are written especially for our guide. Others are reprinted with permission of their authors or publishers.

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MY PLAY, WEDDING BAND ALICE CHILDRESS

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wrote my play Wedding Band as a remembrance of the intellectual poor. The poor, genteel, sensitive people who are seamstresses, coal carriers, candymakers, sharecroppers, bakers, baby caretakers, housewives, foot soldiers, penny-candy sellers, vegetable peelers, who are somehow able to sustain within themselves the poet’s heart, sensitivity and appreciation of pure emotion, the ability to freely spend tears and laughter without saving them up for a rainy day. I was raised by and among such people living on the poorest blocks in Harlem and have met many more on the boundary lines of the segregated life—the places where black, white, brown, yellow and red sometimes meet—in bus stations, train and plane waiting rooms, on lines where we pay gas, light, and telephone bills.

Wedding Band kept coming at me from hidden, unexpected places, the characters called on my mind while I was trying to write something else, demanding attention, getting together, coming into being. It was a play I did not want to write, about people few others wanted to hear from… I thought. It somehow seemed to be answering back all the stage and screen stories about rich, white landowners and their “octoroon” mistresses.

Such stories meant nothing in my life. I am a black woman of light complexion, have no white relatives except on the other side of slavery, and have experienced the sweetness, joy and bitterness of living almost entirely within the Harlem community. I really did not wish to beat the drum for an interracial couple and yet here they were in front of me, not giving a damn about public opinion of this or that past day. It was like being possessed by rebel spirits, ideas clinging, taking over and starting my day for me. Instead of a joyous experience, writing the play became a trial, a rough journey through reams of paper. Characters know; they won’t be fooled, not even by their medium, the writer. They allow you to write them, pushing you along until they’re satisfied that they’ve done their thing to the utmost of your ability.

From Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights,

edited by Kathleen Betsko & Rachel Koenig. New York: Beech Tree Books, 1987 Brittany Bradford (Julia Augustine) and Rosalyn Coleman (Lula Green) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Wedding Band, directed by Awoye Timpo. Photo by Hollis King.

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BIOGRAPHY ALICE CHILDRESS

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lice Childress was born October 12, 1916 in Charleston, S.C. to Alonzo Herndon, a sailor stationed at the Charleston Navy Yard, and Florence (nee White), a local seamstress. Before her first birthday, Childress’ father left to serve in World War I. Her mother soon remarried, and Childress was placed largely in the care of her maternal grandparents.

A series of losses marked Childress’ childhood, including the deaths of a teenaged aunt (from influenza), her maternal grandfather, and her stepfather. In 1925, Childress moved to Harlem, where she lived with her mother and grandmother, Eliza White, whom Childress would later credit as the inspiration for her own artistic ambitions and gifts as a storyteller.

Alice Childress, author. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. Permalink.

After the death of her mother in 1931, Childress dropped out of high school, taking on an assortment of jobs to support herself and her grandmother. She also began studying with Venzella Jones, director of the Federal Theatre Project’s Negro Youth Theatre. During that time, she met and married Jones’ colleague, actor Alvin Childress.

In 1941, Childress joined the American Negro Theatre (ANT), an organization whose members included Abram Hill, Fred O’Neal, Hilda Simms, Clarice Taylor, Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, and others. While she earned high praises as an actor, particularly in ANT’s Broadway production of Anna Lucasta, Childress found herself exasperated by the absence of redeeming plots or characters. The scarcity of fulfilling roles spurred Childress to turn her hand to playwriting. Her first play, Florence (1949), was one of the last produced by the American Negro Theatre.

In 1950, Childress (along with some other former ANT members) joined the Committee for the Negro in the Arts (CNA). Under CNA auspices, Childress and Clarice Taylor started a theater at Club Baron, a Harlem nightclub. Childress’ second play, Just a Little Simple (an adaptation of stories by Langston Hughes) was produced there, as was her 1952 piece, Gold Through the Trees, a dramatic revue highlighting Africans throughout the Diaspora in different eras.

In 1955, Childress had her first full-length production with Trouble in Mind, which appeared off-Broadway at the Greenwich Mews Theater. A success with critics and audiences, the play was set for a Broadway run, but that was short-circuited when Childress refused the many changes demanded by prospective producers.

That experience was repeated with Childress’ next play, Wedding Band. After an initial reading at New Dramatists in 1963, the play was optioned for Broadway, with a scheduled opening for the following fall, but didn’t appear in New York until 1972, when it was produced by Joseph Papp at the Public Theater. The play premiered in 1966 at the University of Michigan.

Along with her plays, Childress was a prolific writer of short stories and novels. She is perhaps best remembered for her young adult novel A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich (1973), which she later adapted into a film starring Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson. Her other plays include Wine in the Wilderness, Mojo, String, Sea Island Song (aka Gullah), and Moms.

Childress died in 1994 at Astoria General Hospital in Queens, N.Y. She was 77 years old.

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NOTABLE ARTISTS ON ALICE CHILDRESS “She opened me up to positive new ways of looking at myself and others, and she encouraged me to explore the history of black people (as opposed to ‘colored’ people). She was instrumental in my meeting and getting to know the remarkable Paul Robeson, and for that alone I shall always be grateful.”

- Sidney Poitier, This Life (1980) “Alice Childress is a splendid playwright, a veteran–indeed a pioneer. She has won awards, acclaim, and everything but consistent productions. It is difficult to think of a play by a white writer earning the reviews that Wedding Band earned in 1965 [sic] and then having to wait until 1973 to reach the New York stage.”

- Ruby Dee, Voices of the Black Theatre (1975) “...[S]eldom is it given to one person to penetrate into the very hearts and minds of a whole people, to be sensitive in the highest degree to their joys, their hopes, their humors and their sorrows… to catch their quiet laughter and their overwhelming outbursts of merriment, their happy smiles and bitter ones, their righteous anger and deep nobility.”

- Paul Robeson “Perhaps her greatest gift, along with her satiric bent and the thematic accent on struggle, is the leitmotif of love for people, particularly her own people. I have come away from most of her writing feeling mighty damn proud of the human race, especially the African aspect of it. Portraying it with great fidelity in all of its meanness, its pettiness, its prejudices, its superstitions, Childress captures most of all its capacity to overcome, to be better than it is, or ever could be, its monumental capacity for change.”

- John Oliver Killens, “The Literary Genius of Alice Childress” (1984) Brittany Bradford (Julia Augustine) and Brittany-Laurelle (Mattie). Photo by Hollis King.

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DIALOGUES REFLECTIONS ON A PIONEER ARMINDA THOMAS “There is a tragedy here that cannot be underestimated. Alice Childress is a splendid playwright, a veteran—indeed, a pioneer. She has won awards, acclaim, and everything but consistent productions… We may salute and savor the glory of the black theatrical pioneer, but in a land where materialism is all-important, the real salutes take longer.” (Ruby Dee, 1975)1

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nnouncing her death in 1994, the New York Times headline read, “Alice Childress, 77, a Novelist;” the obituary allowed that she wrote some plays, too. While Childress would likely have objected to that order, having devoted the bulk of her life to playwriting, the paper of record’s choice is understandable. As a playwright, Childress’ story is more difficult to measure: hers was a progressive voice too often hemmed in by nervous benighted producers, a mainstage talent shoehorned into black box realities.

The story began, promisingly enough, at a little Harlem theatre with a big mission, the American Negro Theatre (ANT)—a company so hardworking members called themselves the ANTs, and were expected to function as actors, directors, designers, and box office managers. "The American Negro Theatre Company," Childress recalled, "worked ten years without salary, four nights per week, keeping the same acting company together, until the boot-straps wore out.”2 When Childress expressed her discontent with the quality of the material in general and with the quality of roles for women past the ingénue stage in particular, her fellow ANT Sidney Poitier challenged her to write such a play overnight. She came in the next day with her first play, Florence—a gem of a piece centered around a character who would seldom be granted more than a line or two in most plays of that era. From the beginning, her work displayed her talent for marrying rich, layered characterization and sharp insight into the political forces shaping those characters.

1 Loften Mitchell, Voices of the Black Theatre (New Jersey, James T. White and Co., 1975), 222 2 Alice Childress, “But I Do My Thing,” New York Times, February 2, 1969 3 Alice Childress, “A Candle in a Gale Wind” in Mari Evans, Black Women Writers (New York, Harbor), 113

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After ANT disbanded (circa 1951), Childress along with several members joined forces with the Committee for the Negro in the Arts to keep providing opportunities for African American artists and audiences at Club Baron, a Harlem nightclub-turnedcommunity theatre. Her pieces written for this venue spoke to the struggle for freedom (in the US and in Africa), while incorporating song, dance, and live music—a combination that was popular both with the crowds and the few critics who made the trip uptown.

"Alice Childress seems to know more about language and drama than most people who write for theatre today," wrote Freedom magazine's reviewer Lorraine Hansberry in 1952.

“The Black writer explains pain to those who inflict it. Those who repress and exclude us also claim the right to instruct us on how best to react to repression. All too often we follow their advice.” (Childress, 1984)3 Then came the first big break—Trouble in Mind (1955), a full-length play at Greenwich Mews, a downtown theatre with a liberal cachet. Sure, deep into the rehearsal process the producers demanded that Childress craft a new ending, with a redemptive arc for the play's antagonist (a liberal, white director) and a hopeful resolution that she couldn’t quite believe in; still, the play was a hit, with sold-out audiences and effusive critics (though some did remark on the hokey ending). Even better, Broadway producers came knocking, and soon it was announced that Alice Childress would be the first African American woman to be produced on the Great White Way. That announcement, however, turned out to be premature. The new would-be producers had more conditions, demanded more rewrites, until Childress “couldn’t recognize the play one way or the other.”

After two years of concessions and more demands, Childress withdrew the play and restored her original ending for publication.

Wedding Band, Childress’s next full-length piece, also had auspicious beginnings. Though Childress

REFLECTIONS ON A PIONEER would later describe it as “a play I did not want to write, about people few wanted to hear from,” the first staged reading, at New Dramatists in 1963, led quickly to an option, and by January the New York Times was reporting that the play (“filled with Negro folk humor”) would open on Broadway the following October. This time, when the requests for changes began, Childress held firm; she wanted to write this play from a black perspective, and more specifically, from the perspective of a black everywoman—her protagonist, Julia Augustine. While willing to make revisions, she was not writing a play about Julia’s white partner, Herman, or through Herman’s eyes.

Eventually, her vision prevailed—not on Broadway, though it was optioned several times more; and not on a New York stage, for nearly a decade. Still, the enthusiasm that greeted Wedding Band eventually led it to an Off-Broadway production at the Public Theater in 1972, followed by a televised production that drew a national market (save for the eight local network affiliates which refused to broadcast the play).

If the years between Wedding Band’s completion and its New York unveiling had not diminished the play’s power, they had made it seem less timely. At the time of its first reading, and of its original production at the University of Michigan in 1966, anti-miscegenation laws were still in the books in 17 states (including South Carolina); by 1972, not only had the U.S. Supreme Court rendered those laws moot, but interracial couples had been featured on film (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) and television (“Star Trek”). Written in the wake of the March on Washington, in the thick of the battle for integration, the play landed well after civil rights marches had given way to assassinations, innercity riots, and anti-busing crusades. In African American cultural circles, the conversation had moved on from integration. Childress, too, had moved on.

“The time is over for asking or even demanding human rights, in or out of the theater. We no longer ask for manhood or womanhood or dignity; all we can do is express what we have to the degree that we have it.” (Childress, 1969)1 1 Childress, “But I Do My Thing” 2 Quoted in Childress, Selected Plays, xxviii

ARMINDA THOMAS The latter half of the 1960s saw a resurgence of Black theatres across the nation—at least five sprang up in New York City alone. In the years before Wedding Band found a New York home, Childress had three new plays produced: two at New Heritage Repertory Theatre (Wine in the Wilderness and Mojo), one at the Negro Ensemble Company (String). While still deeply personal, deeply political, and deeply committed to telling black women’s stories, Childress’s new works shifted these women away from the terrain of interracial relations to explore more fully the navigation of class, gender, and racism-related tensions within African American communities.

From the beginning of her career, Childress had advocated for “a Negro People’s Theatre…powerful enough to inspire, lift, and eventually create a complete desire for the liberation of all oppressed peoples,” and if her rhetoric tempered, her belief in the necessity of black theatres remained firm. Still, she was sometimes frustrated by the constraints of writing to fit into the venues in which those companies operated.

“I like writing full-length plays,” she confessed, “but I saw a need for short plays, because so many little theatres in black communities… need for many reasons, which we can understand, short plays. And also they kept writing me for something for their group of eight people to do or that they had forty minutes on a program or they had an hour.”2 It was, perhaps, this need to write as expansively as she craved, without having to compromise her vision, which led Childress take up novel writing. And while Childress never stopped writing or identifying as a playwright, it is nevertheless true that her second path garnered her the attention and acclaim she so richly deserved. • ARMINDA THOMAS is production dramaturg for Wedding Band and co-producer and resident dramaturg for CLASSIX. Selected dramaturgy credits include Black Picture Show (Artists Space); Mirrors (Next Door at New York Theatre Workshop); Jazz (Marin Theatre Company); Zora Neale Hurston (New Federal Theatre); and The First Noel (Classical Theatre of Harlem). She is also a resident dramaturg for New Perspectives Theatre’s On Her Shoulders series, and previously served as Associate Artistic Director for the Going to the River Festival and Writer’s Unit, and as archivist and dramaturg for Dee-Davis Enterprises, where she was an executive producer for the Grammy-awarded audiobook, With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together.

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INTERVIEW CONTINUING THE LEGACY OF A "COLLISION ARTIST" AWOYE TIMPO AND ARMINDA THOMAS IN CONVERSATION WITH ALISA SOLOMON

Brittany Bradford (Julia Augustine). Photo by Henry Grossman.

During a break in rehearsals, Alisa Solomon of TFANA’s Council of Scholars spoke with dramaturg Arminda Thomas and director Awoye Timpo about Alice Childress, Wedding Band, and their theatre collective, Classix.

ALISA SOLOMON Alice Childress is far from as well-

known as she should be, so it’s not a given that one would encounter her in an ordinary course of study or theatergoing. When did each of you first come across her work and what was your reaction?

ARMINDA THOMAS I discovered Childress in the

basement of Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee's home. I fell into a job in 1997 putting together their archives and going through their papers found that Ruby Dee was in the first four productions of Wedding Band—in Ann Arbor, Chicago, New York at the Public Theater, and on TV. I saw all the reviews, the programs, scripts, and so on. Just the sheer number of productions and a TV version of a play that I'd never heard of—that was a 8

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lot for me! And it was a performance Ruby Dee singled out in her book that she was particularly proud of. So, what was this piece that I hadn’t heard of? I mean, I'd heard of other plays she had major roles in Boesman and Lena and A Raising in the Sun. I had not heard of Alice Childress’s Wedding Band. I read one of the drafts and thought, Wow, this is intense, but it didn't really hit me it until 10 years later when I started working with Elizabeth Van Dyke on the Going to the River festival, and one of our productions was a staged reading of Wedding Band. When I heard it, when the words hit the air, I was just like, how, how, how is this not in a syllabus? How did I get all the way through BA in theater and an MFA in dramaturgy and into my professional years and not know this at all?

Shortly after that, I was asked to consult on a reading of Trouble in Mind and had the same reaction. Then I worked on Childress’s Wine in the Wilderness for New Perspectives Theatre, and the same thing. Then I ran

CONTINUING THE LEGACY OF A "COLLISION ARTIST" into Awoye and as we were walking across the street, she asked, “So, what are you into?” And I just spewed this gushing fan letter to Alice Childress and Awoye said, “Oh, come with me!”

ALISA SOLOMON How did you become familiar

with Childress’s work, Awoye?

AWOYE TIMPO I feel like so much of my Black

theater history came not from school but was passed down to me orally. I've been lucky that two of my teachers and mentors have been George Wolfe and Ruben Santiago Hudson, who are two of the greatest storytellers on planet Earth. And they are both also historians. So just being around them I have learned so much—from their suggestions about who to read or just from listening to them tell stories of seeing this play or that play. Around 2015 or 2016, as I was assisting Ruben on a bunch of shows, I started asking cast members: If there were any Black plays you could

see over again that you saw when you were first in New York or that you worked on, what play would it be? Alice Childress’s name kept coming up as I started amassing a list. And then, same as Arminda, I started reading her and—Where have you been all my life?

ALISA SOLOMON That’s an animating question

behind your formation of Classix five years ago, whose purpose—as your website says—is “to explode the classical canon through an exploration of Black performance history and dramatic works by Black writers.” How has it been evolving?

AWOYE TIMPO It really started off as a reading series

to say, “Let's look at these plays.” We did readings of four plays that gave a beautiful scope of, style, writing, character. And doing the readings raised so many questions. Why didn’t I learn this in school? How do you get more people to know about these incredible, incredible artists? Why are we doing the readings in

Veanne Cox (Herman's Mother), Elizabeth Van Dyke (Fanny Johnson) and Brittany Bradford (Julia Augistine). Photo by Hollis King.

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CONTINUING THE LEGACY OF A "COLLISION ARTIST"

Elizabeth Van Dyke (Fanny Johnson) and Brittany-Laurelle (Mattie). Photo by Henry Grossman.

the first place? Questions, questions, questions came up and they felt very deep, and they needed to be investigated and answered. Many artists have had the same experience and asked these questions and figured out ways to create anthologies and put things together to produce works in different theaters all around the country. Our work has been building upon that legacy and saying, okay, what is our part in this? How do we create a space where we can figure out how to integrate more of these plays into curriculum and repertoire?

And asking, how do we tell stories not just about the plays, but also about the artists and the communities that were part of their creation? And not only how do we celebrate these incredible works and learn more about them, but also how can we address some of the systemic things that keep the plays away from us?

ALISA SOLOMON Alice Childress wrote around 20

plays. What drew you to Wedding Band?

AWOYE TIMPO It is a masterpiece and so largely

unknown.

ARMINDA THOMAS And it's so visceral. How 10

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Childress layers the range of emotion, the depth, the experiences is so complex and so complete.

ALISA SOLOMON Childress wrote it just a couple

years before the Supreme Court issued its ruling on Loving v Virginia, but obviously that case was working its way up before that and was in the news. It feels like the currency of the issue of interracial marriage created an opportunity for Childress, but that isn't really the main subject.

AWOYE TIMPO Yes, exactly. She said that the play

that was not all about rooting for interracial marriage.

I keep saying that this play, that's masquerading as an interracial love story, is about so much more than that. One of the things that's so beautiful about it is the work that every character has to do, meaning everybody's striving toward something, everybody's seeking something, everybody is figuring out how to negotiate the territory that has been dictated for them and trying to figure out how to create new territory for themselves. I think that Alice Childress is also creating a space and a platform for us to really investigate the question of what community is: What do we mean to

CONTINUING THE LEGACY OF A "COLLISION ARTIST" each other? What's our responsibility to each other?

How do we earn trust for each other? How do we take care of each other? And she’s planted this incredible community of women in this backyard space and brings us there to investigate not just what they mean to each other but how they can change each other, as well. That's been the guiding force for how we're thinking about the production. And it's also about what are the forces that try to keep community from staying together, the forces from the outside that make a community actually have to stick together even more.

ARMINDA THOMAS Yes. And one of the things

I'm discovering in our process, is the way she shows us how early hostility is seeded. You have a child forced to learn a speech of Calhoun’s at age five.

You also have children kind of mindlessly spewing anti-Chinese speech that they don't even necessarily recognize that way, because it's seeded so early, that it's a game. You see how everyday bigotry implants itself young into these childish lyrics, and also things like the little minstrel show –how they happen on children, and how children are both idealized and used. Childress gives us moments of watching a white child and a Black child navigating—“call me ma'am,” “no, you're too little.” We can see the way the world impresses itself on children.

ALISA SOLOMON Yes. It’s striking how present

children are in this play though you could tell its story without them. Have you cast actual children for the reasons you were just discussing?

AWOYE TIMPO Yes. We have two children, six and

eight years old. Another beautiful thing about it is you see multiple generations of women represented in the play. So, you get to see a lifetime inside of just three days of the play’s action.

ARMINDA THOMAS You see the ways that the

culture, not just South Carolina in 1918, but also definitely in America 2022, trains people to see other people as other and not yours. And what happens when you try to live outside of what has drummed into you.

ALISA SOLOMON Which brings us to Herman and

Julia. While the play is not primarily a romance, the

relationship between them does ignite the action and Childress makes that relationship complex. How do you see it? And how is it coming to life in rehearsal?

ARMINDA THOMAS This is going to sound obvious,

but the difference between a romance and a marriage, which is, I think, something that you only appreciate the older you get. That's why it's not a romance. It’s about people trying to live out a relationship. We were going through the first scene with Herman and Julia in rehearsal and they started to revolve around each other and interact, and things that on the page felt like they could be clashes became just the little bumps that you have with your spouse or your old friend.

AWOYE TIMPO Alice Childress made these characters

so freaking honest and also honest in their pursuits.

Herman's love for Julia is like beside himself. It's not something he set out to do, but in spite of his own training, he has come to love this woman in a way that was not about investigating her Blackness in any kind of way. He encountered a person and he fell in love with her.

ARMINDA THOMAS There is a framework in which

their relationship is perfectly acceptable [in the world of the play—and beyond]. A few people make this observation in the play and it’s an important one. All Julia and Herman have to do is pretend that they're not committed to each other in this way. All they have to do is make it a monetary situation. All they have to do is hide over in a corner somewhere. She could be his mistress, and nobody would care. If he got himself married to Celestine, Julia could be over on the side, and people would just turn up their noses, but it would be fine if she could tell Mattie and Lula that she is taking him for his money. So, there is a structure in which this relationship could live, and it is the thing that people assume, but it would have no dignity, it would have no dignity.

ALISA SOLOMON I read in Kathy A. Perkins’s

Introduction to the volume of Childress plays she put together that Childress called herself a “liberation writer.” As you know, she was active on the left.

She was affiliated with the Communist Party and organizations like the Jefferson School and the WEDDING BAND

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CONTINUING THE LEGACY OF A "COLLISION ARTIST" Committee for the Negro in the Arts. She was working for the Marxist monthly, Masses & Mainstream and with the women’s anti-racist and feminist group Sojourners for Truth and Justice, and hanging out with Paul Robeson. The FBI followed her for five years! I'd love to hear your thoughts about that idea of liberation writing—what that meant in the 1940s and ‘50s and ‘60s for Childress, and what that means now.

ARMINDA THOMAS In a conversation Childress had

with Toni Morrison [for The Black Creation Annual in 1974] Childress has the closing quote, and she says, “all Black writers, whether they intended to or not have been writing about not being free. Always—from the beginning of America right up to now.” So, the subject of all her plays is freedom because we're not free and how do we get free? Sometimes it's by pushing against the system itself, so in Trouble in Mind there's a push against people who perhaps have more power to change the framing, to force them to acknowledge the frame. Then you have Wine in the Wilderness where Tommy interacts with a bunch of people who think that they know the way to freedom, so there's an internal look at, how do we bind ourselves? The Max Woertendyke (Bell Man). Photo by Hollis King.

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characters in Wedding Band don’t always see what forces in particular are binding them, but they know they’re not free. All the women—and Childress is very clear that she's 's writing about women and about all the women—are stuck.

AWOYE TIMPO I hadn't heard that she called herself

a liberation artist before. I call her a collision artist.

What I mean by that—and I see it in all her plays—is that the ideas collide with each other via the heart, the soul of the characters. I don't know another playwright who is able to do that in this way. And there are so many. We could count probably 200 collisions over the course of the single play.

ALISA SOLOMON For example?

AWOYE TIMPO Start right at the top of the play.

Everybody's sleeping. A little girl loses her quarter.

That interrupts everything. How do we restore order?

Fanny's got to collide with Mattie to get her child in order, stop making so much noise. Lula has to try to intercede to make sure that they can find the quarter so everything can go on. She's got other stuff to do.

They're colliding with her day. Then Julia wakes up,

CONTINUING THE LEGACY OF A "COLLISION ARTIST"

Phoenix Noelle (Teeta) and Sofie Nesanelis (Princess). Photo by Hollis King.

and Julia has to collide with them. They're trying to intervene in her space. It's like every single moment is a collision of people's desires, which makes the whole thing so active. It's vibrating throughout the entire piece.

ALISA SOLOMON That leads into something further

I wanted to ask about liberation writing: how it relates to form, if at all. Amid what’s widely been called a renaissance of Black playwriting today, it’s striking how experimental this new generation of work is, going far beyond breaking the fourth wall, to breaking the spectatorial givens with an audience through all kinds of formal disruptions. With Wedding Band, we have a very traditional style of play. Can you, in 2022, still be a liberation playwright in a naturalistic form?

AWOYE TIMPO A collision of ideas is always gonna

vibrate, no matter how realistic the framework. We have had lots of conversations about that in thinking about how to design the space. How do you create a space for the ideas without necessarily rooting it in

naturalism? But I also think that Childress was very deliberate in saying, this is the form in which I want to explore these characters. So, our job is to honor that.

We are breaking away from some of the naturalism of space, but it doesn't take away anything from the collision of the ideas.

ALISA SOLOMON Would you say more about your

approach to the design?

AWOYE TIMPO Arminda and our set designer, Jason

Ardizzone-West, and I went to Charleston, South Carolina [where the play is set and where Childress was born] in October and had an amazing trip. What really struck us was the breadth of the space and how there's so much that you can’t see from the streets and how you kind of want to peek into people's backyards.

We wanted to really capture the feeling of the earth, of that South Carolina sweet grass, that feeling of nature. And because the play really does take place essentially in the backyard, we were interested in the natural elements that we can create to embody the WEDDING BAND

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CONTINUING THE LEGACY OF A "COLLISION ARTIST" energy of the space without sitting too much inside of the realism. But sometimes what can you do? There's a bed. You can’t get away from that! It’s been fun to explore those things that feel like contradictions of form and figure out how to let them live.

There is also something for all playwrights, but particularly Black playwrights, in seeing the incredible craft of her writing. She is slowly, slowly pushing characters—particularly Julia, but everybody—into different dimensions of being, and that's the thing that is beyond realism, but still inside of the play. She's pulling on ancestral traditions that are beyond realism and naturalism. So, there's an illusion of a naturalism, but it's rooted in a world that is seen and unseen.

ALISA SOLOMON Which has always made me

wonder if August Wilson studied her work ARMINDA THOMAS It does have that feel to it

because you're in realistic space yet so much is struggling to push out of it. At some point, you get the piano that plays itself, or you're on this ship and she is talking to you and he is on this ship and they are on this journey and it's the incantation that makes it so.

AWOYE TIMPO The other thing is that Childress and

Wilson are pulling from Black traditions, which are in their own way, things that are working on us that we cannot see, but we have tools—Fanny reading the tea leaves—to understand the ways we can move forward.

So, they're both pulling from the same traditions that Toni Morrison is pulling from, too. They manifest differently in the work, but it's there because it's so rooted in how we move through the world, what the forces are that are shaping our existence.

ALISA SOLOMON The “N-word” appears a lot in

the script, within the community in the first act, and aggressively in the second act. There's so much controversy about allowing that word to be spoken anywhere, even in quotes, even by fictional characters.

I wonder what conversations you’ve had about that and what decisions you’ve made.

AWOYE TIMPO We're taking a lot of care around

the N-word in the rehearsal room, but we're very much thinking in terms of the way that word is really 14

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activated and weaponized inside the play. We’re not running away from the history of how people talk in this country. To be honest and true to the play, we're also being honest and true to the language and the sentiment of the time, and to do that, it's important to exercise the language and the ways that people have weaponized things over time and continue to weaponize things in our present day. So, there's no way we say, “Oh, that's a thing of the past, and we're not activating that today.” It feels important to honor the language of the time to activate the energy of the play, and also to understand the ways in which this play, that is—quote, unquote—a “thing of the past” is actually a thing of the present.

ALISA SOLOMON Childress’s work was firmly rooted

in the activist and artistic institutions she affiliated with. She had cultural homes and community and was part of a movement. It’s hard to imagine her producing all the work she created without them. What is your sense of the importance of such institutions? I think Classix is one itself.

ARMINDA THOMAS One of the things that we want

to do with Classix in terms of audience education and artist education—and one of the things that we are learning as we go back and explore ourselves—is to dispel the notion of exceptionalism. Alice Childress is a brilliant and exceptional playwright, but she didn't come out of nowhere. As we lift up Alice Childress, we have to lift up the American Negro Theater and where they came from. And there is a whole tradition of Black theater-making that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years and that built the ground for the next generation, which often knew about those people.

But somehow it falls away, it falls away, it falls away and we don't know about it. So, a lot of people say, “Well, this is the first …” No, no, no, it's not. And anyway, how tiring is that? There's nothing interesting about being the first. especially not in 2022. There's so much to learn from the rises and the falls and the workings-out and negotiations, the successes and failures of these communities that came before. And, yes, of the artists whose work endures.

AWOYE TIMPO That’s one of the ways that has

Classix has evolved. We started it thinking about

CONTINUING THE LEGACY OF A "COLLISION ARTIST" plays and how to get them into production. What has beautifully emerged is a much longer conversation about tradition, legacy, knowledge, and celebration. It’s vast. We’re learning all the time and getting to make beautiful discoveries and share them with other people.

To be able to do this and be able to share what we’re learning with a wide group of people is pretty amazing.

It's not that his death is necessary to release her. The conversation is necessary to release her. They come to a peace about what their life has meant and where it has failed and what it means. So, to come through, to come to clarity about a commitment, to renew that commitment and to see it through, then she's free.

She’s free. •

ALISA SOLOMON It’s always a little silly to think

This interview has been edited and condensed.

about fictional characters this way, but I think Childress leaves us to wonder: What do you think happens to Julia—if there were an Act 4? Or an Act 24?

ARMINDA THOMAS Oh my goodness. That is a

great question. I feel like Julia goes on to live her life.

I think that she finds a peace. I hope she feels free.

Because she gets to do the thing that she needs to do.

Which is, they get to live into their vows. They get to be who they say they are to one another, and they get to do that until the end. And then she's released.

ALISA SOLOMON is a teacher, writer and dramaturg living in New York City. She directs the Arts and Culture concentration in the MA program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her criticism, essays and political reporting have appeared in a wide range of magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Nation, Forward, Theater, and Village Voice (where she was on the staff for 21 years). Her book, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender (Routledge, 1997) won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. She is the co-editor (with Tony Kushner) of the anthology Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Grove, 2003). Her latest book is Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof from Metropolitan Books (Holt).

Brittany Bradford (Julia Augustine) and Thomas Sadoski (Herman). Photo by Henry Grossman.

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DIALOGUES ALICE CHILDRESS’S RADICAL ROOTS SOYICA DIGGS COLBERT

Photograph by Milton Meltzer of Hilda Haynes, James McMahon, Stephanie Elliot [?] and Charles Bettis in rehearsal for the 1955 off-Broadway premiere of Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind at the Greenwich Mews. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Permalink.

T

wice in her lifetime, Broadway producers optioned Alice Childress’s work, first in the 1950s and again in the 1960s. But it wasn’t until 2021 that her play Trouble in Mind made it to the Great White Way. As I wrote in “The Debut of ‘Trouble in Mind’ Reveals Progress—and Enduring Racism—On Broadway,” that 2021 Roundabout Theater production reflected contemporary racial struggles, speaking to the past and present and showing the prescient nature of Childress’s work. That it resonated in the midtwentieth century and continues to do so today marks Childress as one of those U.S. theatre artists whose vision is crucial, in the words of James Baldwin, to “mak[ing] America what America must become.”

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The resurgence of Childress’s theatrical oeuvre on New York stages—and the demonstration of its lasting salience—continues with Theatre for a New Audience’s production of Wedding Band: a Love/Hate Story in Black and White. A play that reflects the enduring impact of Childress’s personal history and her early education on the left on her art, Wedding Band brings lessons she began learning in the 1940s into a play first produced in 1966.

Childress, like Langston Hughes and Amiri Baraka, had the good fortune of a long career. Writing in the wake of World War II, in the midst of the Cold War, during the burgeoning and classical phases of the Civil Rights

ALICE CHILDRESS'S RADICAL ROOTS Movement and the Black Arts Movement, Childress’s work presents the political, social, and artistic challenges of being an intersectionalist, Black feminist artist well before third-wave feminism.

As a playwright, she benefited from working with the American Negro Theater (ANT) in the 1940s. Founded

by Frederick O’Neal and Abram Hill, the ANT began as a cooperative in the basement of the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library, now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. A people’s theatre rather than a commercial one, the young group of ambitious Black, leftist artists included Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, and Harry Belafonte, working together to create art that told the truth about Black people.

The emphasis of Childress’s plays shifted overtime, but throughout the 1950s and 1960s, her drama remained focused on providing Black women a stage to counter what institutions (Jim Crow, the American theatre, the family) demanded of them. La Vinia Delois Jennings’s biography Alice Childress argues Childress’s woman-centered theatre distinguishes her from her contemporaries. In the introduction to Childress’s selected plays, Kathy Perkins makes a similar point, saying, “Childress’s plays concentrate on the struggles and triumphs of the black poor and working classes. She called herself a ‘liberation writer’ and created strong, compassionate, often militant female characters who resisted socioeconomic conditions.”

Childress’s dramas of the 1950s—Florence (1949), Gold Through the Trees (1952) and Trouble in Mind (1955)— explore the possibilities and limitations of post-World War II American democracy. Untempered enthusiasm for American democracy and its propogation abroad was a difficult proposition for Childress, with her keen awareness of the uneven distribution of resources in the U.S. In The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s, Distinguished University Professor of Maryland, Emerita, Mary Helen Washington offers a corrective to interpretations of mid-twentiethcentury Black writers that do not account for their class politics and involvement with the Communist Party.

Washington makes the case that leftist organizations supported Childress’s drama and influenced her thought.

The settings of her plays draw attention to her characters

SOYICA DIGGS COLBERT as workers and their experience of the public sphere, divided along class, race and gender lines.

In addition to struggling with the limitations of a commercial theatre rooted in capitalism, Childress’s work also took up the contemporary social context of the Civil Rights Movement’s critique of American democracy.

Most historians bookend the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1966, following a march in Greenwood, Mississippi, Stokely Carmichael, the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), gave a speech that featured the term “Black power” and shifted the emphasis of SNCC from integration to self-determination.

Wedding Band, set in South Carolina against the backdrop of World War I and the 1918 influenza pandemic, follows protagonist Julia Augustine (played by Ruby Dee in the original 1966 and 1972 productions) on an ideological journey similar to the young activists of the 1960s. Always ahead of her time, Childress understood the necessity of self-determination from her training with ANT in the 1940s. Wedding Band mirrors the shift from the hope for interracial coalition during the Civil Rights Movement period to a new focus on defining and cultivating the Black community and family.

Wedding Band depicts a small community upended by the interracial relationship between Julia and a white man, Herman. The couple come together to celebrate their 10th anniversary but political, social, and cultural concerns invade the domestic sphere. The pressure of racism upends Julia’s relationship and tears at her neighbors. Columbia University Professor Brent Hayes Edwards describes how, as World War I came to a close, “the color line was all the more indispensable in the wake of a series of earthshaking events in the second decade of the century.” As elder statesman and one of the architects of the Harlem Renaissance W.E.B. Du Bois clarifies in “World War and the Color Line” (1914), “Many colored persons, and persons interested in them, may easily make the mistake of supposing that the present war is far removed from the color problem of America . . . This attitude is a mistake.” Du Bois saw the war as a global manifestation of race prejudice and a result of a history of imperialism. He argued, “The Negro problem in America WEDDING BAND

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ALICE CHILDRESS'S RADICAL ROOTS

SOYICA DIGGS COLBERT

Brittany Bradford (Julia Augustine) and Rosalyn Coleman (Lula Green). Photo by Henry Grossman.

is but a local phase of a world problem.” Wedding Band tells the story of the global manifesting a small Southern community.

The play references racial violence and the prospect of migration to the North. The threat of lynching and other forms of systematic violence often motivated African Americans to move north in the early part of the twentieth century to survive. But women often did not have the capacity to leave. Focusing on the ingenuity of women, the play provides communal possibilities for protection from racial violence.

Childress’s Wedding Band offers the distinct perspectives of four different Black women living in the same community. The play attends to the position of her characters in terms of gender, race, and class. It also highlights the many different forms family takes. The 18

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depiction of what we may now call chosen family also nods to Childress’s experiences with political organizers who functioned as surrogate kin. Her plays pull from her early experiences and anticipate contemporary contexts, including the still-present necessity of carving out space for Black women to speak a true word concerning themselves. In Childress’s drama, Black women take center stage. • SOYICA DIGGS COLBERT is the Idol Family Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts at Georgetown University. Colbert’s most recent book, Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry is described as "A devoted and deeply felt account of the development of an artist’s mind," according to Dave Itzkoff, New York Times Book Review. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Stanford University, Mellon Foundation, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University. Colbert’swriting has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Public Books, Metrograph and American Theatre. She is also an Associate Director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS LEADING TO WEDDING BAND ARMINDA THOMAS Events in bold refer to characters from Wedding Band.

1848

John C. Calhoun, Senator from South Carolina, gives speech in opposition to the Oregon Bill (which prohibited slavery in the territory), in which he refutes the Declaration of Independence to make the case for the expansion of slavery.

1851

Calhoun’s A Disquisition on Government is published posthumously.

1860

After Lincoln’s election, South Carolina is the first state to secede from the Union on December 20. It formally joins the CSA in February, 1861.

c1861 Herman’s Mother is born as the Civil War begins Union forces take control of the Sea Islands. Enslaved African-Americans flee to the area, especially to Edisto Island, where Union troops consider blacks to be free because they are the "contraband of war."

1862

Robert Smalls sails The Planter through Confederate lines and delivers it and its cargo to Union forces off the South Carolina coast. He volunteers to help the Union Navy guide its ships through the dangerous South Carolina coastal waters for the rest of the war.

1868

A convention of 48 whites and 76 blacks meet and write a very progressive constitution that includes representation based on population, a complete bill of rights, protection of a married woman's property rights, a homestead exemption, and a right to a public education.

State Senator and presidential elector B.F. Randolph is murdered by radical whites in Abbeville County.

c1868 Fanny is born.

1869

Joseph Rainey becomes the first African-American in South Carolina to become a U.S. Representative in Congress. He is followed by seven others before African-Americans are driven out of elected office: Robert C. DeLarge, Robert Brown Elliott, Richard H. Cain, Alonzo Ransier, Robert Smalls, Thomas E. Miller, and George W. Murray.

c1873 Lula is born 1877

South Carolina agrees to give its electoral votes to Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for agreement to end the Reconstruction and recognition of Wade Hampton as the duly elected governor of the State.

c1878 Herman is born.

1879

Back in power, SC Democratic legislature invalidates any marriages that may have occurred between “a white person and an Indian, Negro, mulatto, mestizo, or half-breed” and makes such marriages a misdemeanor, fined a minimum of $500, or imprisoned for not less than twelve months, or both.

In support of the Liberia Emigration Movement (1877-1878), the Rev. Richard H. Cain, a local and national AME leader and politician, sponsors a bill to pay passage for those who desire to return to the African continent. As a result, the ship, Azur, leaves from Charleston with 206 Black emigrants en route to Liberia, West Africa.

c1883 Julia is born; Herman wins $20 for memorizing Calhoun’s speech. Annabelle is born, sometime between 1883-1888.

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TIMELINE OF EVENTS LEADING TO WEDDING BAND 1886

ARMINDA THOMAS

Largest earthquake to hit the southeastern U.S. (est. 7.3) hits Charleston, killing 100+ and causing approximately $5 million in damages.

c1888 Bell Man is born. Mattie is born, sometime between 1888-1893 on Edisto Island.

1891

Rev. Daniel Jenkins establishes the Jenkins Colored Orphanage. Over the course of decades, Jenkins Orphanage Band builds an international reputation for musical excellence and its ability to raise funds for economic and social well-being of impoverished children.

c1893 Nelson is born, sometime between 1893-1898, and placed in Jenkins Colored Orphanage, where he is later adopted by Lula.

1895

South Carolina’s rewritten state constitution enshrines segregation in education, prohibits marriage between a white person and Negro (including anyone > 1/8th “Negro Blood”), and effectively disenfranchises its Black residents. Though 60% of the state population, they make up 5% of voters.

1897

Dr. Lucy Hughes Brown is the first African American female doctor licensed to practice in South Carolina, and the first woman doctor in Charleston. She co-founds the Cannon Street Hospital and Training School for Nurses in 1897.

1908

Julia and Herman begin a committed relationship.

1910

Suspected of murder and attempted assault, Flute Clark is lynched by a mob “of thousands” in Little Mountain (Newberry County), SC.

1914

Rosa Richardson (or Rose Carter) is dragged from an Elloree, SC and lynched for allegedly beating to death the young daughter of her white employers. She is one of nine known female victims of lynching in the state.

1915

Jules Smith is murdered by a mob on the courthouse steps in Winnsboro, SC. The sheriff and deputy sheriff escorting Smith to his trial are also murdered.

1917

Charleston chapter of the N.A.A.C.P established.

U.S. enters World War I. A draft is established to increase the number of soldiers.

The 371st Infantry Regiment, an all African-American unit composed of many South Carolinians, trains at Ft. Jackson. A year later it is attached to the famous "Red Hand Division" of the French army in Europe, earning the nicknames of "black devils" and "hell fighters" from their German adversaries. Almost half of all South Carolinians serving in the first World War are African-American.

1918

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In March, more than 100 soldiers at Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas become ill with flu. Within a week the number of flu cases quintuples. Sporadic flu activity spreads unevenly through the United States, Europe, and possibly Asia over the next six months.

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"YOU ARE TAXED TO SHOW THEM AS YOU ARE" ALICE CHILDRESS AS WRITER AND DIRECTOR OF WEDDING BAND From “A Woman Playwright Speaks Her Mind,” by Alice Childress. Freedomways, Vol. 6, Issue 1, Winter 1966.1 After the Emancipation, the white South was faced with a dilemma. How could it protect itself against the legal claims of slave­owners' half-black children? Some of them were the only offspring of a white master. Many black women had been purchased to fulfill the role of wives, but most were used as sexual outlets under degrading circumstances and none had the privileges of consent or refusal concerning the use of her body. She was forced to bear children and her offspring belonged legally not to her but to her owner­master.

There were many black men who were resentful of being named father to the white slaveowners' children and eager to escape the additional bondage of an enforced family set-up. There were also some cases of whites who wished to acknowledge their colored children and leave 1 This essay was adapted by Childress from her remarks at the "Negro Writer's Vision of America" conference held April 23-25, 1965 at New York's New School. An audio recording of those remarks can be streamed via the Pacifica Radio Archives, beginning at ~05:25..

property to them. Laws were passed, declaring what percentage of "black blood" made human beings allblack and thus no responsibility to their white parents.

To spare white men the responsibility of support claims, and to avoid black men challenging in court the paternity of some fair­complexioned child, the white South took action against the Negro woman.

State after state passed legislation declaring that all children born to black women during slavery shall be known as the legitimate children of their mothers only.

In the first generation of "freedom," the black woman was abandoned, not only by the white father-owner, but by any black man faced with acknowledging children bred by the slave-master, or by other black men, since women were mated by the owners with various men to bring forth various kinds of offspring—mated for strength, endurance, size, color, and even docility.

With one stroke of the pen, she was told that no man, black or white, owed her anything, and her children

Rebecca Haden (Annabelle), Thomas Sadoski (Herman), Veanne Cox (Herman's Mother) and Brittany Bradford (Julia Augistine). Photo by Hollis King.

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"YOU ARE TAXED TO SHOW THEM AS YOU ARE" were disinherited of all property rights. Her brothers, her father, male cousins, all family ties had been sold, resold, scattered, and so lost that she was, in the majority of cases, without family of any kind.

In so-called freedom, she could now seek a Negro husband. A man who, like herself, was jobless, without education, and doomed to petition for basic human rights and needs for the next century, and God knows how many more years past that century mark of 1963.

From “Why Talk About That?” by Alice Childress.

Originally published in Negro Digest, April 1967.

Wedding Band examines woman's position in society, her situation at this very moment. The story is set in 1918 and reveals, through the people of that time, how few of the wrongs which threaten family unity have been righted. In order to deal with the subject, a writer must find his way through a maze of confusion, and clear away the warped thinking caused by slavery and its after effects… the acid poisons of self-hatred and contempt caused by the mis-education of the people.

In order to deal effectively with the problems created by marriage laws, it was necessary to make sure that the play not be interpreted as one which advocates the inter-marriage of races. That kind of treatment would place the work almost in the same camp as the anti-people legislation. Therefore, no character could plead the cause of inter-marriage and none suggest the changing of law.

The other hurdle to overcome was the shadow cast by all the stories that have been told about the mint-julep Colonel and his almost-white sweetheart. For my leads I selected a black seamstress and a white baker and projected them into a situation in which there was no premeditated intention of exploitation on either side; and only the events that take place in their lives during the crisis of an influenza epidemic were used in shaping the progress of the play. Also, because some of us hope to be assimilated, absorbed and digested into the "mainstream" of American life, thus proving that we, in and of ourselves, are not American life, it was necessary, for my story, to have a black woman who did not seek this kind of solution in her personal act of integration.

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Where did such a woman meet a white man on at least an almost equal footing? The obvious place to find an unprotected young woman, living away from family and friends, is in domestic service on the kind of sleepin job which allows a monthly or bi-monthly visit home. The closest white equal in this case might be an unmarried tradesman operating a one­man business.

In this way, the seamstress and baker were set up to meet and unfold the story. The most crucial three days in the relationship take place 10 years after their first meeting and so the en­tire action is accomplished during this three-day period.

The missing factor in the inter­r acial tales usually found in fiction is the black man. The colonel's sweetheart never seemed to know any men of her own race, and those presented as background filler were usually slack-kneed objects of pity. This caused me to see an admirable black man in the center of the drama, one who could supply a counterpoint story with its own importance, a man whose every day existence is threatened with the possibility of a life and death struggle.

After the first or second draft of the script, there comes a time when all the earmarks of preachment must be searched out and removed, all that has been superimposed by the writer, all that the characters deny and refuse to accept, anything that smacks of pamphleteering on the subject. Out come some of your favorite bits and pieces—the idiom of speech never used by those characters who people your work.

You are taxed to show them as they are, beautiful in a way not yet merchandised by Madison Avenue.

From The Playwright's Art: Conversations with Contemporary American Dramatists, edited by Jackson R. Bryer. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

ROBERTA MAGUIRE In Wedding Band…. did you

know Herman was going to die?

ALICE CHILDRESS Some people saw that as his defeat.

I don't like to see birth or death as defeat. We live in a world where we say "under God this and this" and religions teach absolute faith in God, and yet we are terrified by the idea of death. We speak of but don't

"YOU ARE TAXED TO SHOW THEM AS YOU ARE" believe in the happy hereafter. When a lead character dies the play is considered "tragedy." I ask, "Are we going to our just rewards, or not?" However, I wasn't thinking of any rewards before or after death when I was writing Wedding Band. Even in his death throes, Herman had the strength of determination. He didn't "give up" and die.

I figure they are very strong people who try to live true to themselves up to the end. Herman had unfinished business to complete. Sometimes it's even hard for an actor to see that's why he came back to Julia's, to say: "I should have handled our lives another way." This is what he's saying: "I'll leave my deathbed to undo this." He is not saying, "I wish I had this to do over again"; he said, "I was wrong, I shouldn't have done that to you." We also have to understand his strength.

He'd be a pretty weak man to walk out on his mother and sister—they had no way to make a livelihood. For him to walk off and say, "I'm in love, too bad about you, but I borrowed your money and you don't have any left." As he told Julia, "I owe them something.

I used their money." He was talking at a time when commitment really meant something; one didn't walk out on a mother and sister-and leave them penniless.

And where was he going? To a relationship outside of the law—the illegal relationship with Julia.

I thought Herman was a strong person. Julia thought so, too, at the end when she gave him a peaceful scene.

She made him forget about dying. She said, "Look at the friendly people on the shore, they're waving goodbye, and they ask us to 'Come back,' but we're going, going, we're going." She meant we're going to be free of heartache and stress. She made a happy death for him. We're used to people who just drop their heads to one side and say, "Carry on, dear" or something. But Julia and Herman kept fighting to the end. He wasn't quite dead when the curtain came down. She said, "Yes, yes, at last we're living for ourselves." When she closed the door against others and said, "No one comes in my house. Go away, win the war, represent the race, go to the police. Do what you have to do," she's giving them their freedom, not hers. Herman and Julia were arguing all through the play and loving each other, but they were arguing about their condition of life—their helplessness.

ROBERTA MAGUIRE Julia, by getting back to her

beginnings, her heritage, is able to overcome that helplessness.

ALICE CHILDRESS Yes. ROBERTA MAGUIRE : Herman's acknowledging his

own heritage also enables Julia and Herman to forge an honest relationship.

ALICE CHILDRESS Look at Herman's mother at the

end—at the very end. She says, I’ve tried but I can't understand it." That's about as honest as she could get.

"You see me standing here before you." In that line she means she's defeated. "I stand here and just tell you—I don't know what this is about": because she sees it was a huge thing with Herman. Julia wasn't just his little fun-girl. That was common, having a woman on the side—whatever color she was. Men would "sow their wild oats," but he was making it a life-and-­death issue.

There's always been good response to the play, even though there's been this trouble about how it ought to end. Producers want things solved. That's safer ground. As phony as it would be, I think they'd prefer the mother or Annabelle to come in and take Julia in, as if to say, ''We've been wrong.'' Even kindly white supremacy is made of "sterner stuff."

From a letter written by Alice Childress to Ruby Dee, July 25, 1966. Dee played the role of Julia in the world premiere of Wedding Band at the University of Michigan in 1966, and again in the New York premiere at the Public Theater in 1972. This except published with the kind permission of SevenGrands LLC. Ruby, you have touched the pulse-beat of Julia… “The love that over-rides or goes counter-point to the cliché… that doesn’t think itself or doesn’t try to be funny…but just is.” The first beat with the neighbors is not played for comedy… but it is funny, ridiculous and tragic.

Certainly it is not funny to lose your last quarter… to owe rent… to be frightened and alone in a new and seemingly hostile environment and to feel under attack from what seems an organized, harsh community. It is not funny to call a little girl “A no-count, dumb-ass”… or to threaten to throw her out in the street. It is not funny to have the Bell-man assume a superior attitude, WEDDING BAND

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"YOU ARE TAXED TO SHOW THEM AS YOU ARE" assault a woman’s dignity and vulgarize a new home which is her last refuge from a hostile world. It is not funny to turn down Nelson (“Your own kind”) while living in the shadow of a self-conscious love relationship with a man whose skin color forever identifies him with the ever-present oppressor of an angry, bewildered, exploited, poor and underprivileged people. But between the lines we see Mattie’s deep and abiding true love for her husband and child… Lula’s seeking for spiritual substance… Fanny coveting and gathering material things to prove her worth….

In the beginning of act three Julia sees herself as a race-woman… dedicated to “my people” … trying to find and discover black… all black… savoring the beauty of blackness… of belonging… But by the end of act three… she knows with certainty that she is a whole, complete, adjusted, worthy human being… she has no need to rant and rave with Herman's Mother…

The dialogue is over. She no longer fears the dark… or dreams… she is no longer superstitious or timid, or arrogant or brash… or anything but sure of a human's worth. She (A whole race of people) rises higher than the sin and dirt around her and gives Herman the one thing she never had… Protection and the assurance that he is wanted needed and loved. She is triumphant in the sure knowledge that she knows the dignity described in act one… that it rises above the ugliness Ruby Dee, Alice Childress and director Marcella Cisney discuss Wedding Band, from an article in Ann Arbor News, November 17, 1966. Ann Arbor District Library. Permalink.

ALICE CHILDRESS

even while firmly dealing with it. The impact or this on the audience should be even harder to bear than the spectacle of the act two ending. Finally we feel that no human being should be required to be bigger, better, grander, stronger and more dignified than the society in which she lives. Instead of Julia being the keeper of the flame… society should be protecting her.

From “I Remember Alice Childress” by Peggy Holiday.

Southern Quarterly, Spring 1987. Holliday played Annabelle in the 1972 Public Theater production.

The rehearsals at the Public Theater were very hard work, for the play was emotionally exhausting for everyone. It had extremely volatile language at the time—nothing obscene or gratuitous but very true and hard-hitting. A lot of rewriting went on and the thing that impressed me about Alice was that unless she was dealing with a point or a line about which she was absolutely unmoveable, she was completely accepting of suggestions and entirely without ego in her judgment of such suggestions. I have a vivid picture of her listening intently to actors' problems or suggestions about lines, then going off into a corner and writing with great intensity and concentration while we took a break. In a very short time she would bring us the speech or line rewritten to incorporate any suggestion she agreed with. And the writing always enhanced the suggestion. The rewriting was always done with artistry, incorporating all her knowledge of form, rhythm and picturesque speech. She was, to my mind, a complete professional.

The situation with Wedding Band grew tense toward opening. During previews Alice was dismissed as director and Joseph Papp took over. In spite of this, when the show opened to good reviews much of Alice's original direction remained. Through it all, Alice remained professional—supporting the actors and doing further rewrites. The play was very moving to both audiences and actors, and Alice's words provided a wonderful showcase for a cast of rising actors which included Ruby Dee, Albert Hall and the late James Broderick….

I know Alice Childress to be an extremely intelligent woman, a true lady and a human being of great heart. •

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INTERVIEW INTIMATE AND ELEMENTAL: THE WORLD OF WEDDING BAND JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST, AWOYE TIMPO AND ARMINDA THOMAS IN CONVERSATION

Awoye Timpo and Arminda Thomas in Charleston, South Carolina. Photo by Jason Ardizzone-West.

During a break from rehearsals for Wedding Band, TFANA Artistic Associate Peter Cook convened a Zoom conversation with Scenic Designer Jason Ardizzone-West, dramaturg Arminda Thomas, and director Awoye Timpo to discuss the design process, which began with an October 2021 research trip to Charleston, SC.

ARMINDA THOMAS It was humid in October, which

AWOYE TIMPO We really started the design process

architecturally helped us figure out what the design would be. But also, we were like, oh, that's the energy that we want to integrate.

in Charleston. Jason, we probably chatted a bit before [that trip], just talking through the play. I can't remember where we had those conversations. Probably early-morning, 8:00 AM Zooms, like we like to do.

JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST Yes, while I was walking

the dog, probably.

AWOYE TIMPO But we knew that we wanted to go

to Charleston. That was the catalyst for our design conversations: “Let's go and walk around Charleston and see what it feels like, what's the energy of the place.”

is great. For some of us. [Laughter] And just the architecture... Charleston really doesn't look like most cities at all. It has a whole different feel to it, which I had not accounted for.

AWOYE TIMPO Some of [the photos Jason took]

ARMINDA THOMAS I don't even know how Jason

saw anything before he started downloading from his camera, because all he did was snap, snap, snap. But we discovered—should we even say that? I shouldn't say that.

AWOYE TIMPO Yeah, we should.

ARMINDA THOMAS We discovered the benefits of

bringing a Jason along on a trip, because Jason would WEDDING BAND

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INTIMATE AND ELEMENTAL: THE WORLD OF WEDDING BAND just heedlessly be like, "Okay. I'm gonna go walk around this backyard." And Awoye and I are like, "We are gonna not get shot. We're just gonna stay right here."

AWOYE TIMPO The benefits of travelling with a tall

and handsome white man, yes. [Laughter] Walking around Charleston now, [it’s] a very gentrified city. And I think that you can feel the ghosts and the spirits of what was there before. The energies of the people who occupied this space are still very present, as you're moving through the streets.

The people who were brought; the people who have since been displaced; you feel the energy of all of that as you're walking around. So, I feel like a lot of our task has also been reactivating the energy of these kind of spirits from the past. You can still feel the energy of them in the air.

ARMINDA THOMAS [We were looking for]

Freedman’s cottages, which would be the kind of cottage that Fanny had.

AWOYE TIMPO I'm looking at Arminda's hand over

her head. That was most of our trip, actually, just stopping at houses and being like, "Huh, look at that.

Oh, that's interesting." The cool thing about finding these Freedman’s cottages was that there's only, I think, 18 or something of them left in Charleston. Once we found out about them, on the first day as we were doing [library] research, it was great to go on the hunt.

JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST There's some misunderstanding about the history of the Freedman’s cottage. For a while it was thought that it was the first freed slave architecture. And that turns out not to be entirely true. It was, though, a working-class, vernacular, residential structure that was ubiquitous in [1918, when Wedding Band is set], and is typified by the fact that it's either a one- or two-room, very simple structure, always with this side porch. Sometimes with a third room, but usually one or two.

Very, very simple, compact houses where [both Black and white] working-class people lived. This is the type of structure that's not normally written about in history books, or recorded in architectural history books. It's unusual to have a good record of that type of structure. It just typically isn't recorded.

A restored Freedman's cottage in Charleston. Photo by Jason Ardizzone-West.

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INTIMATE AND ELEMENTAL: THE WORLD OF WEDDING BAND Then that informs what is called the Charleston cottage, which is sort of an expanded version of the Freedman’s cottage, a two-story version that's much more ubiquitous. There's tons of these throughout the whole city. Some of them are getting restored, renovated, and resold. But that very basic structure really informed the entire residential texture of Charleston in a pretty major way.

ARMINDA THOMAS I really covet those porches. I

cannot lie. I cannot lie.

AWOYE TIMPO Really our trip was house hunting for

Arminda, for the perfect front porch.

Charleston was this architecture of a front door that leads onto a front porch, an outdoor front porch. It was so beautiful. Then we came to find out that that's a staple of architecture in Barbados that came over to Charleston. So beautiful. It's just stunning.

JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST A lot of these [cottages] are in disrepair. Some of them are being knocked down, or renovated. Some of them are simply rotting into the ground, and there's something about the earth sort of taking back over time, reclaiming the architecture as the vines grow up into the roof and the green stuff takes over. [We kept noticing] the intersection between the natural environment of the ground, the growing things, and human-made architecture.

JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST They are so specific

ARMINDA THOMAS We wanted to go down Line

AWOYE TIMPO [One] thing we came to love about

to the climate. Aside from being visually interesting, [the porches] are essentially a natural air-conditioning system to capture the breeze and let it circulate as much as possible, pre-air conditioning.

Street because that was where Childress lived with her grandparents when she was a young child.

AWOYE TIMPO It's important to say that one of the

ways that we learn many of the things that we learn is

A Freedman's cottage on Line Street in Charleston. Photo by Jason Ardizzone-West.

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INTIMATE AND ELEMENTAL: THE WORLD OF WEDDING BAND Arminda has projects that she calls “Arminda stalking the dead.” [Laughter] That's how she discovered the address that Alice Childress’s grandmother lived on, [on] Line Street.

left are literally being picked up and moved out of the way as these large residential buildings are springing up.

This was just a very kind of palpable, dramatic example of the layers of history continuing to peel away.

Also, there are a couple of streets that are referenced in the play, a couple of locations. So we knew that, on our walking journey, we wanted to visit those places as well. One thing that was surprising about Charleston is that—at least the kind of downtown area—it's not huge. We were able to walk around most of the downtown area in the couple of days that we were there. It gave us a bit of a sense of both the secret, tucked-away places, but also the intimacy of the city itself. Like, what it means for the Bellman to roam the streets. How far are Annabelle and Herman's mother traveling in order to get between locations?

We were realizing, getting glimpses into it, [Charleston has] this complex layer of spaces that range from public, that are right next to the sidewalk, to kind of semi-private, these porches that have a front door on them, but they're wide open, people on the sidewalk can see in.

JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST Awoye mentioned gentrification and that's huge. Line Street, [where] Alice Childress's grandmother’s house was… there's very few of [those houses] left, and the ones that are

And then there's this space behind the house that you can only get a glimpse of, that feels much more private, and you can't exactly see what's back there, but you get a little glimpse of it. That really relates to a lot of the conceptual ideas that we [developed], of concentric layers of nested privacy and [the] boundaries that the characters are negotiating in the play.

We kept talking about Russian dolls in terms of the nesting levels of privacy that are, at least to us, written into the script. You know, Julia's bed, her bedroom;

"That little sliver of an invitation to the world beyond." Photo by Jason Ardizzone-West.

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INTIMATE AND ELEMENTAL: THE WORLD OF WEDDING BAND the porch; the yard; the fence; the sidewalk; the city; the state; et cetera, et cetera.

ARMINDA THOMAS That feeling of an entrance

into a place that you can't really know. You know, that there's a world going on back there, and it's just beyond our gaze.

AWOYE TIMPO As Arminda is saying, [it’s] that

little sliver of an invitation into a world beyond. It's exciting. What's the history of those two buildings being put next to each other like that? They're not quite connected, and yet there they are, slammed against each other with nature growing in between them. There's nature growing in the cracks and on top of them, and it feels like this very complex interweaving. What's been lost? What's been lost on one side and what remains?

So much of what we came away with is elemental.

Even those Freedman’s cottages, right? You're like, okay, this is the earth of this place, and this is what people have built upon it. And that felt really, really

beautiful. But that natural element, that natural energy that we saw both in Charleston, being surrounded by the sea, and also on the islands was really beautiful.

And we wanted to capture that energy in the space.

JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST We took this incredible

bus tour of Charleston, then also to the islands, and on the way there we passed through this sort of marshy, brackish, sweetgrass wetlands area. Sweetgrass is just everywhere in this area. [The] former slave plantations that we drove past, [with] beautiful Spanish moss blowing in the breeze was definitely one of those haunted places. [And] the Angel tree that we visited.

That really was palpable.

ARMINDA THOMAS The one on the island? That

huge tree.

JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST Yeah, the huge, huge,

huge tree. Which was really beautiful. They described it as this place where people get married and stuff. But you walk around this tree and you just feel all of this stuff that has happened there.

Angel tree outside of Charleston. Photo by Jason Ardizzone-West.

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INTIMATE AND ELEMENTAL: THE WORLD OF WEDDING BAND ARMINDA THOMAS Mm-hmm. Yep. AWOYE TIMPO The souls. I mean, it's the souls.

ARMINDA THOMAS It's Julia, when she says that you

can feel the spirits, that they're just buried underneath a layer, and still [have] the power to wrap around your own bones. There's something palpable about the history of Charleston.

[After Arminda and Awoye returned to rehearsal, the conversation with Jason continued.]

JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST There is an author that Awoye and I both love, Ben Okri, and I found this quote listening to an interview talking about literature. This is in the context of literature and the notion of naturalism.

[Okri] says, "Naturalism did not speak about certain aspects of the world I grew up in. Naturalism only speaks about the world that you can see and implies that everything that happens to us as human beings has a cause and effect that is visible. But the tradition that I Mold on a wall in Charleston. Photo by Jason Ardizzone-West.

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grew up in also has that element—that part of the world that you see, the most important part of it is the world that you don't see, and that's not in naturalism. So, if you're going to tell a story about the part of the world that I come from, you have to break the box, basically."

That really resonated with us because we felt like it wasn't going to serve this play, now, in this space, to try to interpret these architectural research photos into any kind of literal recreation of a house or a yard. This play really felt much more elemental, for lack of a better word, and wanted a more open place in which to be told.

We were also really inspired by this movie called Daughters of the Dust [1991, dir. Julie Dash], which is just a beautiful movie - and it is set on these islands outside of Charleston, and does a really beautiful job of juxtaposing very simple human-made objects with the natural landscape.

So, that's why we started with, “Can we create a place in which to tell the story that is made with something

INTIMATE AND ELEMENTAL: THE WORLD OF WEDDING BAND more elemental, like water and grass and dirt and raw wood?” And these ideas of concentric, nested zones of privacy, of private-to-public, and the desire to incorporate the whole room, the whole theater space, in a three-dimensional way…. Before I started designing anything, [those] were the things that were swirling around in my brain.

in a space to share a story, and for the actors to take on these personas and then to shed them at the end.

[And] within the script there's, I think, a ritualistic transformation that happens to Julia where she decides to expand her definition of love and family to include her community, that she's been sort of guarding herself against throughout most of the play.

Sweetgrass is a natural type of marshy grass that likes the saltwater. Charleston floods very often, which is part of why sweetgrass is so ubiquitous. It's traditionally the source of a local art form of weaving and crafting, which now is a tourist thing. You can buy a sweetgrass basket. We were drawn to it because of its connection to the water and the ground. [It’s] this kind of timeless, elemental, natural growing thing that is rooted to these layers of history embedded into the ground and in the water. [It’s a reminder] of the connection of the city to the water and the slave trade and the plantations, and how all of that is still in the earth.

That ritualistic transformation feels like it needs something very elemental to support it, and that's where the water comes in. The water will appear at the very end as part of this transformative ritual that is both within the script and also beyond the script, that extends into, hopefully, a ritualistic transformation of everyone who's in the space.

The way that we want to use water is for a ritual. We think that it is a ritual to have people coming together

Awoye, and I have been talking a lot with Stacey [Derosier, Lighting Designer] and Rena [Anakwe, Sound Designer] about how sound and light can work together with space to shift the boundaries or level of intimacy of the space. There's this very mutable, fuzzy line between what is the yard and what is Julia's space. That boundary shifts throughout the play based

Marshland with sweetgrass outside of Charleston. Photo by Jason Ardizzone-West.

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INTIMATE AND ELEMENTAL: THE WORLD OF WEDDING BAND on how Julia is taking control of her space or not throughout the story.

It took us a while to get here, to feeling like we didn't have to create a naturalistic room, but we could create a space where Julia's bedroom could just be the bed, plus this suggestion of a boundary that's made with grass.

Obviously, it can be supported by the use of lighting, carving out space with light, and supported by a shift in the quality of sound that feels more interior than exterior. So we're going to be playing a lot with that scale of private to public in terms of boundary, using light and sound and scenery and human bodies in space.

Awoye and I share the desire to always take into to account the room that we're in, the theater space, as part of the design, thinking holistically about the space that we're occupying. And [the Scripps Mainstage] has, as part of its architecture, these surrounding balcony levels with staircases that you can see that are expressed very similarly to the Freedman’s cottage porches. It was interesting to discover that the vernacular architecture

of Charleston shared this fundamental structural geometry to the theater space, and we're going to use the whole room—not having just the stage be the place for actors, but letting that world expand to the outer walls, these surrounding and upper levels of the architecture of the theater, and beyond.

Another thing that Awoye and I talk about a lot is, when are we? In my mind, there's this kind of simultaneous time scale. It's the time period that the play is set in, 1918; it's the time when Alice Childress wrote, in the '60s; and then the present moment, in that we are gathering now in a room to share it. Those are all very different time periods, and they're all connected and disconnected, happening simultaneously and in different planes. And so, I think there's something about stripping this space down to the elements that makes it easier to live in those different times together and let them speak to each other a little bit more easily. • This interview has been edited and condensed.

The balcony porches of a Charleston Cottage. Photo by Jason Ardizzone-West.

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THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

BRIT TANY BRADFORD (Julia Augustine). TFANA: Fefu and Her Friends. Broadway: Bernhardt/Hamlet (Roundabout).

Off-Broadway: Merrily We Roll Along (Roundabout/Fiasco Theater). New York: Mac Beth (Hunter Theater Project), Black Picture Show (Classix/Artists Space). TV/Film: Julia (HBOMax), New Amsterdam, Fear the Walking Dead, The Same Storm. Regional credits include Westport Country Playhouse, The Muny, Mixed Blood and the O’Neill. Co-founder of HomeBase Theatre Collective, and a producing member of Classix. Graduate of The Juilliard School.

ROSALYN COLMAND (Lula Green). Broadway: To Kill a Mockingbird, Travesties, The Mountaintop, Radio Golf, Seven

Guitars, The Piano Lesson, Mule Bone. Film: Miss Virginia, The Immortal Jellyfish, Frankie and Alice, Brooklyn’s Finest, Our Song, Brown Sugar, Music of the Heart. TV: “Bull,” “Jessica Jones,” “Blue Bloods,” “Madam Secretary,” “Law & Order.”

Off-Broadway: The Woman’s Party, Native Son, Breakfast With Mugabe. Solo play: The Master’s Tools at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Next feature film: Weapon for Peace, director. Proud mom and wife. Love you. @irozapp VEANNE COX (Herman’s Mother). Broadway: An American in Paris; Caroline, or Change; A Free Man of Color; La

Cage aux Folles; The Dinner Party; Company; and Smile. She has received Tony and Emmy nominations and Obie and Drama Desk Awards. TV/film: “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Bull,” “NCIS: New Orleans,” “New Amsterdam,” “Louie,” “Smash,” “Pan Am,” Erin Brockovich, Big Eden, You’ve Got Mail, Cinderella, “Seinfeld,” two comedy web series “Indoor Boys” and “Cady Did.” Soon: Summoning Sylvia.

REBECCA HADEN (Annabelle) is thrilled to be making her TFANA debut! Currently: “The Gilded Age” (HBO).

Other TV: “Madam Secretary” (CBS); “NCIS: New Orleans” (CBS). Regional: Pride & Prejudice (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis); various plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville and Clarence Brown Theatre. Commercials: Lincoln, Samsung, Always, Kohl’s. MFA: NYU Graduate Acting. Thank you to Troy, Erin, Mallory, Melissa, 2017MFU2, my family and Jess; love to Grayson. @rebecca.haden Phoenix Noelle (Teeta), Sofie Nesanelis (Princess) and Elizabeth Van Dyke (Fanny Johnson). Photo by Hollis King.

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THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM BRIT TANY-LAURELLE (Mattie) is a storyteller and poet from Harlem, NY. She is thrilled to be making her TFANA

debut. Brittany-Laurelle was most recently seen in The Bluest Eye (The Huntington) and The Legend of Georgia McBride (Seven Angels Theatre). Her theatrical study with LaGuardia High School for Performing Arts and Adelphi University helped lead her to moments like this. Sending big love to all the Black girls across the world; may we never stop believing.

SOFIE NESANELIS (Princess) is happy to be part of Wedding Band at TFANA. National tour: How the Grinch Stole

Christmas (Cindy Lou). Regional theatre: The Sound of Music (Gretl) and Annie (Molly). Thanks to my team: Leorah Haberfield at Bohemia Group, Bonnie Shumofsky Bloom at Stewart Talent, Amelia Demayo, Ethan Haberfield, Kelli Gautreau. Love to my family! @sofienesanelis PHOENIX NOELLE (Teeta) is an 8-yearold actor from Queens, NY. She is grateful and excited to make her

professional theatre debut as Teeta. Her TV and film credits include “The Last O.G.,” “Hunters,” “Sesame Street,” The Photograph, and The Perfect Find. So thankful to TFANA, Barry Kolker, Jason Bercy, and casting for this amazing opportunity. Thank you to my family, friends and Miss Rashell for believing in me. @phoenixnoelle13 RENRICK PALMER (Nelson Green) was born on the island of Jamaica, where he lived for 13 years before migrating to New

York City. He is a U.S Air Force veteran turned actor affiliated with Public Works Theater Military Resilience Foundation, where he studies Shakespeare and is a graduate of Long Island University and New York Film Academy. He’s known for playing Jackie Robinson on A&E History Channel and Hassim in the short film Hold Up, among other projects.

THOMAS SADOSKI (Herman). Broadway: reasons to be pretty (Tony, Drama Desk, OCC, Drama League

nominations), Other Desert Cities (Lortel, Obie Awards), House of Blue Leaves, Reckless. Off-Broadway: White Noise (The Public); The Way We Get By, Becky Shaw (Lortel nomination), This Is Our Youth (Second Stage); Sam Mendes’ 2010 Bridge Project: As You Like It/The Tempest (BAM, The Old Vic), etc. Film: the upcoming Devotion and Lilly, Wild, John Wick 1 and 2, etc. Television: “Life in Pieces,” “The Newsroom,” etc.

Thomas Sadoski (Herman) and Veanne Cox (Herman's Mother). Photo by Henry Grossman.

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T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM ELIZABETH VAN DYKE (Fanny Johnson). Award-winning director, actress, producing artistic director of New Federal

Theatre. Originated Fannie Mae Dove in Flyin’ West; Annie Talbert in A Dance on Widows Row. Roles include Peggy Clark in Blue, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Antigone in Gospel at Colonus, Sister Margaret in Amen Corner, Berniece in The Piano Lesson, Molly Cunningham in Joe Turner’s Come & Gone, Mrs. Dickson in Intimate Apparel. AUDELCO Award for Best Actress for Zora….

MAX WOERTENDYKE (Bell Man). Broadway: A View From the Bridge. Off-Broadway: A Bright Room Called Day,

Illyria and Romeo & Juliet (all at The Public). Television credits include “Succession” (HBO), “Longmire” (Netflix) and “Wu-Tang: An American Saga” (Hulu). Brightwood (Max’s first feature film as a producer/actor) will be released in 2023. Other theatre credits include Invisible Hand (CPH), Frankenstein (Denver Center) and Oslo (Pioneer).

Education/training: McGill University, Juilliard.

AWOYE TIMPO (Director). Off-Broadway: In Old Age (New York Theatre Workshop), The Loophole (The Public

Theater), Carnaval (National Black Theatre), Good Grief (Vineyard Theatre and Audible) and The Homecoming Queen (Atlantic Theater Company). Regional: The Bluest Eye (Huntington), Pipeline (Studio Theatre), Paradise Blue (Long Wharf ), Everybody Black (Actors Theatre of Louisville), School Girls (Berkeley Rep), Jazz (Marin Theatre Company). Other: Black Picture Show (Artists Space/Metrograph), Bluebird Memories (Audible). Founding producer of CLASSIX, theclassix.org.

JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST (Scenic Designer) is an Emmy Award-winning set and production designer whose work

spans the genres of live theatre, TV/film, concert design and architecture. Jason has collaborated with creative teams and theatres across the country including Actors Theatre of Louisville, Geffen, The Old Globe, Miami City Ballet, 5th Thomas Sadoski (Herman) and Brittany Bradford (Julia Augustine). Photo by Hollis King.

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THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM Avenue Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Huntington, Berkeley Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Cleveland Play House, Vineyard Theatre, The Public Theater and more. ardizzonewest.com QWEEN JEAN (Costume Designer). Thank you Awoye for your brilliance and support. This ritual has allowed our

ancestors to transcend. Recent theatre: On Sugarland, Black No More, I Need Space, Macbeth in Stride, Semblance, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, Siblings Play, Amen Corner, Rags Parkland, Good Grief, Othello and the acclaimed What to Send Up, When it Goes Down. MFA from NYU Tisch. Black Trans Lives Matter!

STACEY DEROSIER (Lighting Designer). Credits: This Beautiful Future (TheaterLab), The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life

in the Universe (The Shed), The Last of the Love Letters (Atlantic Theater Company), Stew (Page 73), for all the women who thought they were Mad (Soho Rep), White Noise conceived by Daniel Fish (NYU Skirball), Playing Hot! (Pipeline Theater Company), Lewiston/Clarkston (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater) and 2018 Lilly Award Daryl Roth Prize recipient.

RENA ANAWKE (Sound Designer) is an interdisciplinary artist, performer and healer working primarily with

sound, visuals and scent. Exploring intersections between traditional healing practices, spirituality and performance, she creates works focused on sensory-based, experiential interactions using creative technology. Most recently, she was awarded with a 2021-2022 MacDowell Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Arts and a 2022 Jack Nusbaum Artist Residency at BAM. She is based in Brooklyn, by way of Nigeria and Canada. aspaceforsound.com ALPHONSO HORNE (Composer). Juilliard graduate and multi Grammy Award nominee Alphonso Horne thrills

audiences with his soulful sound and dramatic sensibility. The true embodiment of class and eclecticism, Alphonso has collaborated with artists from all genres and disciplines including Wynton Marsalis, Patti LaBelle and Rihanna.

Alphonso can also be seen on CBS’ “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and in the Hollywood jazz film Bolden.

NEHEMIAH LUCKET T (Music Director) has been composing, accompanying and music directing for more than 25

years. Originally from Jackson, Mississippi, and currently a resident of New York City, from an early age Nehemiah connected his deep love of music to the transformative power of building community through breathing and singing with family and friends. Upcoming projects include Sistas, A Burning Church and Triple Threats.

CHERIE CORINNE RICE (Dialect Coach). Lobby Hero (Capital Rep); Three Musketeers (Cleveland Play House); The

Bluest Eye, Our Daughters, Like Pillars, Skeleton Crew (Huntington); I Am My Own Wife (Long Wharf ); Breath and Imagination (Lyric Stage Co.); House of Joy (Cal Shakes); Song of the Northwoods, Rapture Season, Bernarda’s Daughters, Evil Eye (Audible). MFA, Brown University/Trinity Rep; BA in theatre and performance, UC Berkeley. Head of voice and speech, Waterwell Drama; assoc. professor, NYU MFA acting program.

NIKIYA MATHIS (Hair, Wig & Makeup Designer) is a multi-hyphenate actress and hair/wig designer. She is the

recipient of the Henry Hewes Design Award and The Antonio Award, and is a Drama Desk nominee. New York credits include Broadway: Circle in the Square Theatre, MCC Theater (The New Group), Soho Rep, Ars Nova, Page 73, Classical Theatre of Harlem, National Black Theatre. Regional credits include Huntington Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, Ford’s Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre of D.C., Long Wharf Theatre, Berkshire Theatre.

ANDREW WADE (Voice Director). TFANA: resident voice and text director. Broadway: Harry Potter and the Cursed

Child (U.S. head of voice and dialect), A Christmas Carol (with Matthew Warchus) and tour (voice and dialect director), King Lear with Glenda Jackson (voice coach), Matilda the Musical (director of voice) and national tour. West End: Lord of the Rings. The Public Theater: director of voice. Royal Shakespeare Company: head of voice. The Acting Company and Guthrie Theater: Julius Caesar. NYTW: Othello with Daniel Craig. Teaching: Juilliard, Stella Adler, NYU, BADA in Oxford. Film: Shakespeare in Love. Fellow: Rose Bruford College. Workshops and lectures: worldwide.

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T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM RENÉE ROBINSON MATHIS (Movement Director) is a

lecturer at Yale University where she teaches a course she developed entitled “Embodying Story.” She is guest faculty at The Juilliard School and was the first to receive The Irene Dowd Teaching Fellowship. Ms. Robinson is also faculty at The Ailey School and master teaching artist with Ailey Arts in Education. Ms. Robinson is overjoyed and filled with gratitude to be a part of Wedding Band.

JON KNUST (Properties Supervisor). Selected credits include

A Doll’s House, The Father, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Winter’s Tale, About Alice, Gnit and The Merchant of Venice (TFANA); Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (Broadway); Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek, Big Love and Appropriate (Signature); and Peter and the Starcatcher (tour). Jon got his start in props at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and graduated from Eastern Connecticut State University.

UNKLEDAVE'S FIGHT-HOUSE (Fight Direction).

Broadway: Girl From the North Country; Escape to Margaritaville; The Great Society; Tuck Everlasting; An American in Paris; Disgraced. Off-Broadway: On in Paris; Disgraced. Off-Broadway: On Sugarland (NYTW); Kimberly Akimbo (Atlantic); Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven (Atlantic Theater, Drama Desk nomination); Oedipus El Rey (The Public Theater, Drama Desk nomination). Film/TV: Poor Behavior, Emoticon, “Annie Live!”

JONATHAN KALB (Resident Dramaturg) is professor of

theatre at Hunter College, CUNY and is TFANA’s resident dramaturg. The author of five books on theatre, he has worked for more than three decades as a theatre scholar, critic, journalist and dramaturg. He has twice won The George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism and has also won the George Freedley Award for an outstanding theatre book from the Theatre Library Association. He often writes about theatre on his TheaterMatters blog at jonathankalb.com.

ARMINDA THOMAS (Dramaturg). Selected dramaturgy

credits include Black Picture Show (Artists Space), Mirrors (Next Door at NYTW); A Harlem Triptych of Eulalie Spence, Wine in the Wilderness and Soul Struggle: The Works of Georgia Douglass Johnson (New Perspectives); Black History Museum…According to the United States of America Top: Thomas Sadoski (Herman) and Rebecca Haden (Annabelle).

(HERE Arts Center); Jazz (Marin Theatre Company); Zora Bottom: Renrick Palmer (Nelson Green).

Neale Hurston (New Federal Theatre); and The First Noel Photos by Henry Grossman.

(Classical Theatre of Harlem).

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THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM MAGGIE MANZANO (Stage Manager) is stoked to be working with TFANA for the first time. Originally from San Francisco, Maggie received their BFA in stage management from SFSU. Select credits include A Christmas Carol (St. Louis Rep), The Chinese Lady (Ma-Yi/The Public), Men on Boats (American Conservatory Theater), Rhinoceros (American Conservatory Theater) and Brownsville Song (Shotgun Players). Make All Art Free.

KAT MEISTER they/them (Assistant Stage Manager). Off-Broadway: The Chinese Lady, Socrates (The Public); The

Blueprint Specials (Waterwell). Selected credits: Mother of Us All (MetLive Arts/Juilliard); Hyena (Edinburgh Fringe, La Mama); Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Fest). TV work: “Dr. Death,” “Law & Order: Organized Crime.” In their spare time they write and direct their own short films and enjoy discovering new methods of storytelling through technology. mxkatmeister.com JACK DOULIN (Resident Casting Director) is the resident casting director at TFANA where recent productions

include Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, Fefu and Her Friends, Julius Caesar, The Winter’s Tale, He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box and An Octoroon.

VICTOR VAZQUEZ, CSA he/him (Casting Director) is the founder and lead casting director of X Casting

(xcastingnyc.com) and sits on the national board of the Casting Society of America. He has cast projects for Broadway, Off-Broadway, London’s West End and film. He is the proud son of Mexican immigrants.

BLAKE ZIDELL & ASSOCIATES (Press Representative) is a Brooklyn-based public relations firm representing arts

organizations and cultural institutions. Clients include St. Ann’s Warehouse, Playwrights Horizons, Signature Theatre, Soho Rep, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Kitchen, Performance Space New York, PEN America, StoryCorps, Symphony Space, the Fisher Center at Bard, Peak Performances, Irish Arts Center, the Merce Cunningham Trust, the Onassis Foundation, Taylor Mac, The Playwrights Realm, PlayCo. and more.

STAFF FOR WEDDING BAND

Technical Director............................................ Eric Dyer Water Effects Specialist....................................Ben Hagen Production Assistants........................... Amanda Santiago,

Margarita Herrera, Bea Perez Young Cast Coordinators....Ashley Burton, Vanessa Ortiz Assistant Scenic Designer..........................Teresa Williams Assistant Costume Designer......................Amelia Camilo Wig/Hair Associate............................ Shereese Cromartie Assistant Lighting Designer.........................Steven Zhang Associate Sound Designer...........................Brandon Bulls Associate Properties Supervisor.................... Teshale Nuer Assistant Production Manager............Hannah Rubenstein Covid-10 Safety Managers....Alyssa Lundberg, Carson Ferguson Costume Supervisor..................................... Emily White Wardrobe Supervisor......................................... Kt Harris Stage Carpenter................................ Michael Neil Nelson Head Properties..................................... Suzanne Soliman Light Board Programmer and Operator.......Paul Kennedy Sound Board Operator......................................Amy Liou Production Electrician..................................... Sam Short Audio Supervisor............................................. Jeff Rowell Electricians.......Max Carlson, Brando Kress, Kyle Lefeber, Tony Mulanix, Hailey O’Leary, Abi Walls, Dajane Wilson 38

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

Lead Carpenter..................................................Leon Axt Lead Rigger..................................................... Joe Galan Asst. Lead Rigger.....................................Cory Asinofsky Load In Crew..........................Cory Asinofsky, Leon Axt, Victoria Bausch, Max Carlson, Matthew Covey, Joe Galan, Nicolis Hall, Najiyah Jones, Michael Nelson, Maria-Rey Ossino, Dan Sullivan, Eduardo Tobon Truck Drivers.....Max Carlson, Matt Covey, Jessica Smith Scenery provided by Daedalus Design and Production, Inc. Production audio services provided by Five OHM Productions. Additional lighting equipment provided by PRG. Special effects equipment provided by J&M Special Effects. Wedding Band was rehearsed at Open Jar Studios and the New 42nd Street Studio.

SPECIAL THANKS Lawryn LaCroix; Carmelita Becnel; Aaisha Haykal, Avery Research Center – Charleston, SC; Al Miller, Sights and Insights Tours – Charleston, SC; Jane Frances Cox; Frank Hentschker, Segal Center; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Kathy Perkins; Cleary, Gotlieb, Steen and Hamilton: Jonathan Blackman, Brendan Cohen, Richard Goldring, Lindsay Harris and Katherine C. Hughes; Nelle Nugent; The Estate of Alice Childress and Sarah Douglas.

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

LEADERSHIP

JEFFREY HOROWITZ (Founding Artistic Director) began his career in theatre as an actor and

appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in regional theatre. In 1979, he founded Theatre for a New Audience. Horowitz has served on the panel of the New York State Council on the Arts, on the board of directors of Theatre Communications Group, the advisory board of the Shakespeare Society and the artistic directorate of London’s Globe Theatre. Awards: 2003 John Houseman Award from The Acting Company; 2004 Gaudium Award from Breukelein Institute; 2019 Obie Lifetime Achievement and TFANA's 2020 Samuel H. Scripps.

DOROTHY RYAN (Managing Director) joined Theatre for a New Audience in 2003 after a ten-year

fundraising career with the 92nd Street Y and Brooklyn Museum. Ryan began her career in classical music artist management and also served as company manager and managing leader for several regional opera companies. She is a Brooklyn Women of Distinction honoree and serves as treasurer of the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance.

Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo © David Sundberg/Esto.

Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage. Photo by Francis Dzikowski/OTTO.

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ABOUT THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE About Theatre for a New Audience Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, the mission of Theatre for a New Audience is to develop and vitalize the performance and study of Shakespeare and classic drama. Theatre for a New Audience produces for audiences Off-Broadway and has also toured nationally, internationally and to Broadway. We are guided in our work by five core values: a reverence for language, a spirit of adventure, a commitment to diversity, a dedication to learning, and a spirit of service. These values inform what we do with artists, how we interact with audiences, and how we manage our organization.

Theatre for a New Audience Education Programs

S TA F F

Founding Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz Managing Director Dorothy Ryan General Manager Mott/Fischer Productions Director of Institutional Advancement James J. Lynes Finance Director Mary Sormeley Education Director Lindsay Tanner Capital Campaign Director George Brennan Director of Marketing & Communications Edward Carlson Facilities Director Rashawn Caldwell Company Manager Molly Burdick Theatre Manager Steven Gaultney Production Manager Brett Anders Box Office Manager Allison Byrum Marketing Manager Angela Renzi Institutional & Individual Support Manager Sara Billeaux Membership & Special Events Coordinator Nöel Dudley Artistic Associate Peter J. Cook Finance Associate Harmony Fiori Development Associate Jake Larimer Development Associate Olivia Laskin Education Associate Dylan Gurrera Facilities Associate Rafael Hurtado House Managers Jonatan Amaya, Nancy Gill Sanchez, Nyala Hall Press Representative Blake Zidell & Associates Resident Director Arin Arbus Resident Casting Director Jack Doulin Resident Dramaturg Jonathan Kalb Resident Distinguished Artist John Douglas Thompson Resident Voice and Text Director Andrew Wade

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Theatre for a New Audience is an award-winning company recognized for artistic excellence. Our education programs introduce students to Shakespeare and other classics with the same artistic integrity that we apply to our productions. Through our unique and exciting methodology, students engage in hands-on learning that involves all aspects of literacy set in the context of theatre education.

Our residencies are structured to address City and State Learning Standards both in English Language Arts and the Arts, the New York City DOE’s Curriculum Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Theater, and the New York State Common Core Learning Standards for English Language Arts. Begun in 1984, our programs have served more than 135,000 students, ages 9 through 18, in New York City Public Schools city-wide.

A Home in Brooklyn: Polonsky Shakespeare Center Theatre for a New Audience’s home, Polonsky Shakespeare Center, is a centerpiece of the Brooklyn Cultural District.

Designed by celebrated architect Hugh Hardy, Polonsky Shakespeare Center is the first theatre in New York designed and built expressly for classic drama since Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont in the 1960s.

The 27,500 square-foot facility is a unique performance space in New York. The 299-seat Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage, inspired by the Cottesloe at London’s National Theatre, combines an Elizabethan courtyard theatre with modern theatre technology that allows the stage and seating to be arranged in seven configurations. The facility also includes the Theodore C. Rogers Studio (a 50-seat rehearsal/ performance studio), and theatrical support spaces. The City of New York-developed Arts Plaza, designed by landscape architect Ken Smith, creates a natural gathering place around the building. In addition, Polonsky Shakespeare Center is also one of the few sustainable (green) theatre in the country, with LEED-NC Silver rating from the United States Green Building Council.

Now with a home of its own, Theatre for a New Audience is contributing to the continued renaissance of Downtown Brooklyn. In addition to its season of plays, the Theatre has expanded its Humanities offerings to include lectures, seminars, workshops, and other activities for artists, scholars, and the general public. When not in use by the Theatre, its new facility is available for rental, bringing much needed affordable performing and rehearsal space to the community.

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Board Chair Robert E. Buckholz Vice Chair Kathleen C. Walsh President Jeffrey Horowitz Founding Artistic Director Vice President and Secretary Dorothy Ryan Managing Director Executive Committee Robert E. Buckholz Constance Christensen Jeffrey Horowitz Seymour H. Lesser Larry M. Loeb Audrey Heffernan Meyer Philip R. Rotner Kathleen C. Walsh Josh Weisberg Members F. Murray Abraham* Arin Arbus* Alan Beller John Berendt* Bianca Vivion Brooks* Ben Campbell Robert Caro* Sharon Dunn* Riccardo Hernandez* Kathryn Hunter* Dana Ivey* Tom Kirdahy* Harry J. Lennix* Catherine Maciariello* Marc Polonsky Joseph Samulski* Daryl D. Smith Susan Stockel Michael Stranahan John Douglas Thompson* John Turturro* Frederick Wiseman* *Artistic Council

Emeritus Francine Ballan Sally Brody William H. Burgess III Dr. Charlotte K. Frank Caroline Niemczyk Janet C. Olshansky Theodore C. Rogers Mark Rylance* Monica G.S. Wambold Jane Wells

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

MA JOR SUPPORTERS

Even with capacity audiences, ticket sales account for a small portion of our operating costs. The Theatre expresses its deepest thanks to the following Foundations, Corporations, Government Agencies and Individuals for their generous support of the Theatre’s Humanities, Education, and Outreach programs.

The 360° Series: Viewfinders has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Viewfinder, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

A Challenge Grant from the NEH established a Humanities endowment fund at Theatre for a New Audience to support these programs in perpetuity. Leading matching gifts to the NEH grant were provided by Joan and Robert Arnow, Norman and Elaine Brodsky, The Durst Organization, Perry and Marty Granoff, Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, John J. Kerr & Nora Wren Kerr, Litowitz Foundation, Inc., Robert and Wendy MacDonald, Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder, The Prospect Hill Foundation, Inc., Theodore C. Rogers, and from purchasers in the Theatre’s Seat for Shakespeare Campaign, 2013 – 2015.

Theatre for a New Audience’s Humanities, Education, and Outreach programs are supported, in part, by The Elayne P. Bernstein Education Fund.

For more information on naming a seat or making a gift to the Humanities endowments, please contact James Lynes, Director of Institutional Advancement, at 212-229-2819 x29, or by email at jlynes@tfana.org.

Deloitte and Bloomberg Philanthropies are the 2021-2022 Season Sponsors.

Theatre for a New Audience’s productions and education programs are made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the National Endowment for the Arts; Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Additional funding is provided by the generosity of the following Foundations and Corporations through either general operating support or direct support of the Theatre’s arts in education programs: PRINCIPAL BENEFACTORS

($100,000 and up) JL Greene Arts Access Fund in the New York Community Trust The Hearst Foundations New York Community Trust The SHS Foundation The Shubert Foundation, Inc. The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc. U.S. Small Business Administration LEADING BENEFACTORS

($50,000 and up) The Arnow Family Fund Bloomberg Philanthropies Charina Endowment Fund Deloitte & Touche LLP The Howard Gilman Foundation The Polonsky Foundation MAJOR BENEFACTORS

($20,000 and up) The Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation Booth Ferris Foundation

The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation The Hearst Corporation The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP Latham & Watkins LLP The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation The Stockel Family Foundation The White Cedar Fund Whiting Foundation SUSTAINING BENEFACTORS

($10,000 and up) Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP The Howard Bayne Fund Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. Debevoise & Plimpton LLP The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Sidney E. Frank Foundation

The Claire Friedlander Family Foundation Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP Ingram Yuzek Gainen Carroll & Bertolotti, LLP The J.M. Kaplan Fund McDermott Will & Emery Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison May and Samuel Rudin Foundation Inc. Select Equity Group, Inc. Sidley Austin LLP The Speyer Family Foundation The Starry Night Fund Michael Tuch Foundation, Inc. PRODUCERS CIRCLE— ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S SOCIETY

($5,000 and up) Axe-Houghton Foundation Geen Family Foundation JKW Foundation King & Spalding LLP Litowitz Foundation, Inc.

Lucille Lortel Foundation Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College Richenthal Foundation PRODUCERS CIRCLE—EXECUTIVE

($2,500 and up) Elizabeth and Russell Abbott Foley Hoag LLP Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP Irving Harris Foundation Kirkland & Ellis LLP Marta Heflin Foundation Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP The Randolph Foundation Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund The Venable Foundation

PRODUCERS CIRCLE—ASSOCIATE

($1,000 and up) Actors’ Equity Association The Grace R. and Alan D. Marcus Foundation International Business Machines Stacy Schiff and Marc de la Bruyere

WEDDING BAND

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W W W . T FA N A . O R G