The Shubert Organization, Inc., today announced that the 110-year-old Cort Theatre on 48th Street will become the James Earl Jones Theatre, in recognition of Mr. Jones’s lifetime of immense contributions to Broadway and the entire artistic community.
Jones, who is 91, began his Broadway career in 1957, and in 1958 Mr. Jones played his first role at the Cort Theatre in Sunrise at Campobello. Over the following six-and-a-half decades Jones rose to star in countless stage and screen productions (including twenty-one Broadway shows).
Jones’s Tony awards include Best Actor in a Play for The Great White Hope (1969) where he portrayed turn-of-the-century boxing champion Jack Johnson, and the original production of Fences (1987) by playwright August Wilson, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.
Jones has additionally won seven Drama Desk Awards and has been awarded the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honor.
“The Shubert Organization is so incredibly honored to put James—an icon in the theatre community, the Black community, and the American community—forever in Broadway’s lights,” said Robert E. Wankel, Shubert CEO and board chair. “That James deserves to have his name immortalized on Broadway is without question.”
James Earl Jones (via Schubert.nyc)
“For me standing in this very building sixty-four years ago at the start of my Broadway career, it would have been inconceivable that my name would be on the building today,” said Mr. Jones of Shubert’s decision to rename the Cort Theatre in his honor. “Let my journey from then to now be an inspiration for all aspiring actors.”
Most recently Jones portrayed Weller Martin across from Cicely Tyson’s Fonsia Dorsey in the 2015 Broadway revival of The Gin Game at Shubert’s John Golden Theatre.
The Cort Theatre opened in 1912, having been designed in the style of an Eighteenth-Century French palace by renowned theatre architect Thomas Lamb to house productions of theatre impresario John Cort. The building was sold to the Shubert brothers in 1927.
We talk about how African Americans invented rock and roll. We talk about the great musicians Scott Joplin and W.C. Handy, the giant of ragtime and the “Father of the Blues.” Before rock and roll was a gleam in Chuck Berry’s mother’s eye, Jazz was the great American music form, a creation of Black artists.
And of course, rap and R&B rule the Billboard charts in the 21st century. And a century before Lil Nas X reimagined country music, the genre was born with the help of the banjo, a descendent of the West African lute brought to America by Africans who were enslaved, and with inspiration from early forms of Black music, such as spirituals and “field tunes.”
But there’s one more great American musical tradition, one where the contributions of Black people is sometimes forgotten, often under-appreciated. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise us that African Americans are often ignored when the discussion turns to the history of the Broadwaymusical, when Broadway itself is known as the “Great White Way.”
Broadway has never been an easy world for an outsider to break in, even when that outsider is White, wealthy, and part of the New York establishment. Mounting a Broadway show costs a small fortune, and there’s no cheap or easy way to distribute it. It’s a medium for people with powerful connections or large assets.
But African-American artists have made a tremendous impact, primarily as writers and performers, but also as creators of source material for Broadway shows and music. I don’t profess to be a historian of Broadway or African-American music, but I will do my best to take you on a fan’s journey through the long, storied history of African Americans and Broadway.
Savion Glover in “Bring In ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk”
To limit the scope a bit, this playlist is focused on Broadway shows only, ignoring the contributions made to Hollywood musicals, Off-Broadway, regional theater and West End theater in London. And even though I could add another hundred amazing cuts (thanks to Hamilton, Dreamgirls, Jelly’s Last Jam, etc.), I’ve limited the playlist to one crucial number from each show… with two notable exceptions (and for good reason).
These liner notes contain a short intro for every cut, but you don’t need them to enjoy the music. So without further ado, curtains up on the historic African-American tradition on Broadway, aka the Great Black Way.
Personal note: This playlist is dedicated to Good Black News’ Lori Lakin Hutcherson (who suggested and inspired it, and who has always inspired me), and musicologist Chris Molanphy, whoseSlate columns on music and podcast Hit Parade feed the hungry amateur music historian in me.
“I’m Just Wild About Harry” (1921)
Even though Shuffle Along was not the first Broadway musical featuring a Black cast in a Broadway theater (that distinction belongs to In Dahomey in 1903), it was the first Broadway musical written, composed and performed entirely by Black artists. Previous to the opening of Shuffle Along, there hadn’t been a successful “Black musical” on Broadway in 12 years, which made it particularly hard to mount the production. (Not to mention the fact that just a couple of decades before, African-Americans were prohibited from performing for White audiences, unless in – believe it or not – blackface). But Black vaudevillians Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles teamed with Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle (who wrote the music and lyrics) and put every nickel they could find into creating this musical comedy. It paid off; Shuffle Along was a huge success. Shuffle Along deserves note for a few other reasons. It was the first production where a White audience witnessed two Black people on stage romancing and touching each other. It also helped launch the careers of two legends – Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker.
Ol’ Man River” (1927)
Six years before Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote Showboat, a musical about a Mississippi River showboat, Paul Robeson was making his powerful baritone heard in Shuffle Along. His star only grew from there, and Hammerstein and Kern specifically wrote the crucial Showboat role of Joe for Robeson. Sadly, he wasn’t available for the original production, but took over the role in the 1932 revival and the film adaptation. Because one can’t think of Ol’ Man River without thinking of Robeson, his is the version I’ve included on this playlist. When Hammerstein and Kern adapted the Edna Ferbernovel that among other things deals with prejudice in the South, they changed Broadway forever. It is generally considered the first successful musical to bring a serious topic to the genre, which was a revelation after years of vaudeville, revues, and musical comedies. It was also the first well-known racially integrated musical and the first musical to deal with the issue of interracial marriage. And it also has its share of controversy due to the stereotypical use of vernacular and its outdated stereotypes. But it was another milestone for African-Americans on Broadway.
“Summertime” (1935)
So much has been written aboutPorgy and Bessand its treatment of African-American characters, both bad and good. Porgy and Bess has its detractors and supporters. It is a troubling artifact of American culture’s history of the depiction of African Americans. But no one can deny the impact the show has had on American pop culture. In fact, “Summertime” is one of the most covered songs in history (over 25,000 times)! Which is why, instead of featuring the original version, I decided to include one of the most famous covers, by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. This is also to make the point that just as Broadway has used African-American artists, African-American artists have used Broadway music to great advantage. In fact, Louis Armstrong makes one more appearance on this playlist, in a similar historical role.
Lorraine Hansberry (photo via pbs.org) by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson) Lorraine Vivian Hansberry, born May 19, 1930, was an award-winning playwright and activist. Her best known work, A Raisin in the Sun, was inspired by her family’s battle against racial and housing segregation in Chicago. She would have been 88 today.
Hansberry was the youngest of four children of Carl Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker, and Nannie Louise Perry, a school teacher. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, violating a restrictive covenant and incurring the wrath of many neighbors. The latter’s legal efforts to force the Hansberrys out culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1940 decision in Hansberry v. Lee, holding the restrictive covenant in the case contestable, though not inherently invalid.
Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but left in 1950 to pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School. In 1951, she joined the staff of the black newspaper Freedom under the auspices of Paul Robeson, and worked with W. E. B. DuBois, whose office was in the same building. In 1953, she married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter and political activist. She later joined the Daughters of Bilitis and contributed two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, in 1957 under her initials “LHN” that addressed feminism and homophobia. She separated from her husband at this time, but they continued to work together.
In 1959, Raisin In The Sun debuted, becoming the first play written by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway. The 29-year-old author became the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. A Raisin in the Sun was revived on Broadway in 2004 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. The cast included Sean “P Diddy” Combs as Walter Lee Younger Jr., Phylicia Rashad (Tony Award-winner for Best Actress) and Audra McDonald (Tony Award-winner for Best Featured Actress). It was produced for television in 2008 with the same cast, garnering two NAACP Image Awards.
While many of her other writings were published in her lifetime – essays, articles, and the text for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) book The Movement, the only other play of Hansberry’s given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed on January 12, 1965, the night she died after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Hansberry’s funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Paul Robeson gave her eulogy. The presiding reverend, Eugene Callender, recited messages from James Baldwin and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. which read: “Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn.”
In January of this year, PBS aired an American Masters Documentary on Hansberry called “Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart.” Check out the trailer below and check your local listings for upcoming showings.
Lupita Nyong’o (Photo: Courtesy of Vogue) article by Erica Schwiegershausen via nymag.com
In the October issue of Vogue, three-time cover girl Lupita Nyong’o talks about growing up in Nairobi, and her desire to see more African narratives represented in Hollywood and beyond. “I want to create opportunities for other people of color because I’m fortunate enough to have a platform to do that,” she said.
Recently, Nyong’o starred in “Eclipsed” on Broadway, playing a 15-year-old girl held captive by a rebel officer in Liberia. In her latest film, “Queen of Katwe,” she plays the mother of a Ugandan girl who becomes an international chess master. (The film opens next week.) And she’s also working on the forthcoming film adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Americanah“— a love story that centers around two Nigerians.
“Being able to use my platform to expand and diversify the African voice … I feel very passionate about that. It feels intentional, meaningful,” Nyong’o said. She was drawn to “Queen of Katwe,” she said, because it was “based on a true story, an uplifting story out of Africa.” Nyong’o also reflected — not for the first time — on the significance of seeing darker-skinned women represented and celebrated as beautiful.
“Alek Wek changed how dark people saw themselves,” she said. “That I could do the same in a way for somebody somewhere is amazing.” She added, “The European sense of beauty affects us all. I came home from college in the early two-thousands and saw ads on TV with a girl who can’t get a job. She uses this product. She gets her skin lighter. She gets the job. The lording of lighter skin is a common thing growing up in Nairobi. Being called ‘black mamba.’ The slow burn of recognizing something else is better than you.”
Working on the set of “Queen of Katwe,” Nyong’o said a young Ugandan-British woman came up to her and said: “I’ve never had so many people call me beautiful until you showed up. I get called to auditions I never would have been called to before. I know it’s because you exist.” Source: Lupita Nyong’o Wants Opportunities for People of Color
When the third season of “Black-ish” arrives, the Johnson family will expand. Fresh from the Broadway smash “Hamilton,” Daveed Diggs will have a major Season 3 arc as Rainbow Johnson’s brother, Johan, Variety can exclusively reveal.
Bow (Tracee Ellis Ross) and Johan, whose mother is a very laid-back, hippie-ish soul, had very different childhoods than Dre, and that’s partly why Johan will be a frequent thorn in Dre’s side. Dre Johnson (Anthony Anderson) has always feared that his kids will grow up to be overly pampered, and it sounds like Johan is the personification of those fears.
“He’s sort of a hipster, entitled kid who gets on Dre’s nerves,” creator and showrunner Kenya Barris said. “He’s constantly on a search for the best conditioner for his hair. He’s probably gone to Penn or Wharton and could have gotten a great-paying job, but he’s trying to find himself. That attitude more than anything makes Dre want to strangle him.”
For Diggs, who won a Tony for playing Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette in “Hamilton,” there’s even a tiny link to French culture. Johan “has been to Paris twice and he’s like, ‘You Americans!’” Barris said. Johan, as it happens, doesn’t like his butter to be too cold and complains about Americans’ mania for refrigeration. “He’s like, ‘This butter’s making my croissant crumble,’” according to Barris. “Dre is constantly snatching food from him.”
The upside for Johan, who will have a “substantial” recurring arc in the third season, is that the Johnson kids think he’s extremely cool — except for Diane (Marsai Martin). “She’s not buying that sh*t,” Barris said.
Shortly after the news broke that “Hamilton” had landed 16 Tony Award nominations, the musical’s director, Thomas Kail, sent a text to choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and others on the show’s creative team. “I just woke up. What happened?” Kail asked facetiously.
What happened, as it turned out, was one for the Broadway record books.
“Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop musical about America’s founding fathers, wrote its own piece of history Tuesday morning. After selling out theaters and becoming a cultural sensation since it opened on Broadway last summer, the show has now broken the record of 15 Tony nominations previously held by “The Producers” (2001) and “Billy Elliot” (2009).
In the top category of best musical, “Hamilton” will compete, nominally, against Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “School of Rock,” the small-town charmer “Waitress,” the Appalachian bluegrass piece “Bright Star” and the race-themed meta-tale “Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed.”
But those other shows may consider it an honor just to be nominated. “Hamilton” is considered by nearly all experts to be a shoo-in to win for best musical, and it will aim for the record of 12 Tony wins (set by “The Producers”) when theater’s biggest night kicks off June 12 on CBS from New York’s Beacon Theatre.
“Hamilton” was boosted by multiple nominations in acting categories, including lead actor (Miranda and Leslie Odom Jr., the latter a front-runner) and featured actor (Daveed Diggs, Christopher Jackson and Jonathan Groff). “Hamilton” also will compete for score, choreography and direction of a musical, among others.
The nominations continue a magic-carpet ride that began with a Miranda performance of a “Hamilton Mixtape” at the White House in 2009, continued with an august run at downtown’s Public Theater in early 2015 and then a building juggernaut after opening at the Richard Rodgers in the summer.
The record set Tuesday is an industry capper of sorts on what had become the most unlikely of phenomena: a Broadway musical, often regarded as the narrowest of cultural niches, becoming a crossover hit and a gateway to a larger discussion about history and race.
“Someone asked me today if this is all old hat,” the newly minted Tony nominee Blankenbuehler recalled from the North Carolina set of “Dirty Dancing,” where, in part thanks to the success of “Hamilton” he is choreographing the new ABC reboot. “And I said, ‘Are you kidding? I’m still like a kid in a candy store.’ We all are.”
Miranda, at 36 already one of the theater world’s most influential creators, offered his own valedictory, noting in a statement that “for ‘Hamilton’ to receive a record-breaking number of nominations is an honor so humbling it’s so far been beyond my comprehension.” To read more, go to: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-tony-nominations-20160502-snap-story.html
“Hamilton” (photo via Variety.com) article by Gordon Cox, Brent Lang via Variety.com “Hamilton,” the Broadway smash that’s looked like an awards-season favorite from the moment it opened, has been awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Although it’s rare for a musical to the win the drama prize over plays, “Hamilton” had nonetheless looked like a lock for the Pulitzer, given its link to American history and the fresh, contemporary resonances it finds in the nation’s foundational moments. (The most recent musicals to nab the Pulitzer were the 2010 show “Next to Normal” and 1996’s “Rent.”)
The Pulitzer win could be the first of many victories for “Hamilton.” Much of the theater industry considers the show’s sweep of the Tony Awards as a foregone conclusion. “The Humans,” Stephen Karam’s subtly drawn portrait of one American family’s anxieties, was one of the few obvious titles that seemed likely to give “Hamilton” a little competition; that play was named a 2016 finalist, as was Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Gloria.” “Hamilton’s” victory came during the centennial year for the Pulitzers, which recognize excellence in the arts and in journalism.
The Associated Press won the gold medal in public service, considered by many to be the top Prize, for its probe into labor abuses in the seafood business.
“The Sympathizer,” debut novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen’s look at a Vietnamese spy, took the fiction prize, while “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS,” Joby Warrick’s look at the Islamic terrorist group, nabbed the non-fiction statue. T.J. Stiles won his second Pulitzer in the biography category for “Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America.”
The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum captured the criticism prize, one of two awards for the magazine. The other came in the feature writing category, where Kathryn Schulz was honored for her look at how the Cascadia fault line could lead to environmental disaster. Magazines have only been eligible for Pulitzers for a year. New Yorker staff writer William Finnegan was also honored in biography for his surfing memoir “Barbarian Days.” To read more, go to: http://variety.com/2016/legit/news/pulitzers-2016-hamilton-pulitzer-prize-drama-1201755578/
Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr in the musical “Hamilton” at the Richard Rodgers Theater. (Photo Credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
The hit musical “Hamilton” will be the subject of a documentary film scheduled to air on PBS this fall.
The public broadcasting network announced Monday that it would air “Hamilton’s America” as part of its Great Performances series this fall.
The documentary is being produced by RadicalMedia, which previously made a documentary about “In the Heights,” a musical composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also created “Hamilton.” The film company has a long relationship with Mr. Miranda and with Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer of “Hamilton.” RadicalMedia also previously filmed Freestyle Love Supreme, a hip-hop-improv group with which Mr. Miranda performs, as well as the final Broadway performance of “Rent,” a musical that was co-produced by Mr. Seller.
The filmmakers started shooting the documentary in 2013, two years before the show arrived on Broadway, and have footage of visits by the creative team to historic sites associated with Alexander Hamilton, whose life is the basis of the musical. The film will also feature scenes from the show, and a look at the life of Hamilton, according to Dave Sirulnick, one of RadicalMedia’s executives.
The making of “Hamilton” has been heavily chronicled in print and on television, and Mr. Miranda is now wrapping up a book about the show, but Mr. Sirulnick said that in the documentary “the storytelling is going to be very fresh” and will offer a close-up view of the creative team at work.
Audra McDonald as Billie Holiday in HBO’s “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” (photo via blogs.indiewire.com)
Audra McDonald brings her acclaimed portrayal of Billie Holiday in the Broadway smash “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” to HBO, with the exclusive presentation scheduled to debut Saturday, March 12, 2016.
Filmed before a live audience at Cafe Brasil in New Orleans, the special features McDonald in her history-making, tour de force performance as the jazz icon.
Originally written for off-Broadway by Lanie Roberston in 1987, the production tells Holiday’s life story through the songs that made her famous, including “God Bless the Child,”“What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” “Strange Fruit” and “Taint Nobody’s Biz-ness.”
McDonald made history and became Broadway’s most decorated performer when she won her sixth Tony Award, for “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill,” in 2014. In addition to setting the record for most competitive wins by an actor, she also became the first person to receive awards in all four acting categories. The show’s run at the Circle in the Square Theatre on Broadway was extended four times due to high demand.
“Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” is directed by Lonny Price, who also directed the Broadway production, and produced by Allen Newman and Two Hands Entertainment. It was originally produced on Broadway by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, Jessica Genick and Will Trice.
The special will also be available on HBO NOW and HBO GO.
The network has released a first teaser which is embedded below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llZRcLoV5Ag&w=560&h=315] article by Tambay A. Obenson via Shadow and Act
“Hamilton” star Anthony Ramos (Photo: Courtesy of Anthony Ramos)
With ticket prices upwards of $1,500 and advanced sales of $57 million last November, “Hamilton” is an official Broadway juggernaut. Helmed by certified geniusLin-Manuel Miranda, the musical mixes rap, R&B and pop to tell the story of Alexander Hamilton’s ascent from penniless orphan to chief architect of the American financial system. The twist, if you haven’t heard, is that a person of color plays nearly every major character—including Hamilton, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.
Miranda, who plays Alexander Hamilton, has said that “Hamilton” is “a story about America then, told by America now.” By casting people of color as the founders of our nation, “Hamilton” forces audiences to engage with bodies and voices that would have been categorically marginalized in colonial times.
“Hamilton” also sheds light on lesser-known figures of colonial America, including proto-abolitionist John Laurens. Laurens is played by Anthony Ramos, a 24-year-old Puerto Rican actor and singer from Brooklyn, New York. Ramos also plays Philip Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton’s eldest son. Here, in this edited and condensed interview, Ramos talks about making his Broadway debut in a blockbuster show and his journey from the tough Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick to The Great White Way. What’s the significance of having performers of color tell the story of the Founding Fathers?
You ever look at a painting like, “Wow, that’s so good, but I really can’t wrap my brain around why this thing that is so obscure feels so right?” “Hamilton” is that kind of painting. No one’s ever seen anything like it, and I think it’s one of the boldest pieces of art ever to hit. It’s also honest because “Hamilton“ looks like how we look like now. Can you explain more?
Lin could have written a show and had the Founding Fathers be all White men, but at the same time, the show’s about Alexander Hamilton. A lot of people didn’t know whether or not Hamilton, who grew up in the British West Indies, was half [Black]. They had no idea. So it’s only right to have the rest of the cast embody that. Daveed Diggs, who plays Thomas Jefferson, is half Jewish and half Black. Phillipa Soo,* who plays Hamilton’s wife, Eliza, is Irish and Chinese. Lin and I are Puerto Rican. Having men of color play the Founding Fathers shows that anyone could have done what they did. This is showing our public what it would have looked like if things were different.
