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Vernel Martin Bagneris (born July 31, 1949) is an American playwright, theater director, and entertainer.
Bagneris was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, [1] the third child of Gloria Diaz Bagneris and Lawrence Bagneris, Sr. His mother was a deeply religious housewife, [2] and his father was a World War II veteran and postal clerk.
Bagneris grew up in the tight-knit, predominantly Creole Seventh Ward of New Orleans in a family of free people of color that had been in the city since 1750. He began dancing and playing music from early childhood.
In the mid-1960s, amid rapid changes in the character of the area, the Bagneris family moved to Gentilly, New Orleans, along with many other residents of the Seventh Ward. Bagneris was in the advanced placement track at St. Augustine High School. He graduated in 1967, and in the fall of the same year, he went to a seminary to study for the priesthood, though he stayed there only three days. [2]
Bagneris was admitted to Xavier University, a predominantly-black, Catholic university in New Orleans that his older siblings had also attended. He initially majored in sociology, but during his second year he auditioned for the university's theater program, and was cast as Gremio in The Taming of the Shrew . Based on this experience, Bagneris decided to follow a stage career, and by his junior year he was writing, directing, and producing plays himself. The Free Southern Theater, which toured in rural, underprivileged areas of the south, performed two of Bagneris's plays while he was an undergraduate.
Bagneris became interested in avant-garde theater methods and, after graduating in 1972, traveled to Amsterdam to learn more about the Bread and Love experimental theater group. He later returned to New Orleans and worked day jobs, while staging experimental scripts he brought back from Europe.
He produced and directed Samuel Beckett's Endgame on a double bill with Eugène Ionesco's The Lesson in a photo gallery, was awarded an artist-in-residence grant by the Arts Council of New Orleans, and began working with an integrated theater company in the French Quarter called Gallery Circle. By 1972, he had won two Best Actor awards in New Orleans.
In 1976, Bagneris saw Will Holt's Me and Bessie, a one-woman show about the blues legend Bessie Smith, in New York City. After seeing the show, he decided to produce a similar show with the City of New Orleans as the main character. He spent a year creating the show, during which he conducted research, developed oral histories, and interviewed his own grandmother. At the same time he was also acting in independent movies and producing and starring in Edward Albee plays.
For six months, Bagneris and his troupe prepared for a one-night-only production of One Mo' Time, a musical he had written based on Black Vaudeville performers in New Orleans. The limited-run show led to performances three nights a week at the Toulouse Theatre in the French Quarter, with James Booker playing piano in the lobby before each show. A New York producer saw the show, leading in October 1979 to One Mo' Time opening at the Village Gate in New York, where it played for three and a half years, spinning several internationally touring companies, including a royal command performance in Britain for Queen Elizabeth II. The show earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Cast Album in 1980 and was nominated for a Society of West End Theatre Award for Outstanding Achievement in a Musical, Best Musical, and Best Actress in a Musical in 1982. Through One Mo' Time, Bagneris met the dancers Honi Coles and Charles Cook.
Bagneris has cited Pepsi Bethel of the Pepsi Bethel Authentic Jazz Dance Theater as his dance mentor. After they first met, Bethel choreographed every show Bagneris directed.
After the success of One Mo' Time, Bagneris continued his stage career with Staggerlee in 1985; Further Mo', the sequel to One Mo' Time, in 1990; and Cy Coleman's The Life on Broadway in 1998. In 1995, Bagneris received a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical [3] as well as an Obie Award in 1995 for Jelly Roll!, his two-person stage portrait of jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton. [4] A record of the musical was produced and released on GHB Records. Other notable performances included a 2004 revival of Bubbling Brown Sugar , in which Bagneris starred with Diahann Carroll.
During this time, he also worked in film, including French Quarter (1978), Pennies from Heaven (1981), Down by Law (1986), and Ray (2004), in the latter of which he worked as choreographer and played the character Dancin' Al. Bagneris also played opposite Ossie Davis in Davis's last film, the independent feature Proud (2004). One Mo' Time was revived on Broadway in 2002 and again in New Orleans in 2006. Bagneris acted as the voice of numerous jazz figures on Public Radio International's Riverwalk Jazz program in 1993, recreating the lives of Bunk Johnson, Danny Barker, Jelly Roll Morton, and others. In the program for a special performance in the new auditorium at the Library of Congress, Bagneris was described as "a master of the American vernacular." [5]
In October 2005, shortly after the city was significantly damaged by Hurricane Katrina, Bagneris returned to live in New Orleans, settling in the French Quarter. [2]
Bagneris had a recurring role as Judge Bernard Williams on the first three seasons of the HBO series Treme (2010–2013).
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer of Louisiana Creole descent. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential characteristics when notated. His composition "Jelly Roll Blues", published in 1915, was one of the first published jazz compositions. He also claimed to have invented the genre.
Clarence Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher.
Jazz standards are musical compositions that are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive list of jazz standards, and the list of songs deemed to be standards changes over time. Songs included in major fake book publications and jazz reference works offer a rough guide to which songs are considered standards.
Savion Glover is an American tap dancer, actor, and choreographer.
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Luther Henderson was an American arranger, composer, orchestrator, and pianist best known for his contributions to Broadway musicals.
Morten Gunnar Larsen is a Norwegian jazz pianist and composer, well known for several stride piano recordings and collaborations.
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George Costello Wolfe is an American playwright and director of theater and film. He won a Tony Award in 1993 for directing Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and another Tony Award in 1996 for his direction of the musical Bring in 'da Noise/Bring in 'da Funk. He served as Artistic Director of The Public Theater from 1993 until 2004.
Alfred "Pepsi" Bethel was a jazz dancer, choreographer, and leader of his own dance troupe, the Pepsi Bethel Authentic Jazz Dance Theater, which he founded in 1960.
Thou Shalt Not is a musical based on Émile Zola's 1867 novel Thérèse Raquin with music and lyrics by Harry Connick Jr. and an adapted book by David Thompson. The musical deals with the consequences involved in the breaking of several Commandments, in particular the sixth and seventh. It ran on Broadway in 2001.
Jelly's Last Jam is a musical with a book by George C. Wolfe, lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, and music by Jelly Roll Morton and Luther Henderson. Based on the life and career of Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, known as Jelly Roll Morton and generally regarded as one of the primary driving forces behind the introduction of jazz to the American public in the early 20th century, it also serves as a social commentary on the African-American experience during the era. LaMothe was born into a Louisiana Creole family that was established and free before the Civil War.
Gus Giordano, born after August Thomas Giordano III, was an American jazz dancer, teacher, and choreographer. He performed on Broadway, in theater and on television. Giordano taught jazz dance to thousands around the world. He founded the Gus Giordano Dance School in 1953, Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago in 1963, created the First American Jazz Dance World Congress in 1990 and is the author of Anthology of American Jazz Dance (1975). He taught at institutions around the world including American Ballet Theatre, The American University of Paris, Duke University, Joffrey Ballet, and New York University. Giordano was one of the founders of theatrical or Broadway jazz dance styles, not to be confused with African American vernacular jazz styles that he drew upon.
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Terry Waldo is an American pianist, composer, and historian of early jazz, blues, and stride music, and is best known for his contribution to ragtime and his role in reviving interest in this form, starting in the 1970s. Says Wynton Marsalis in his introduction to Waldo's book: "He teaches Ragtime, he talks about Ragtime, he plays it, he embodies it, he lives it, and he keeps Ragtime alive." The book, This is Ragtime, published in 1976, grew out of the series of the same title that Waldo produced for NPR in 1974. Waldo is also a theatrical music director, producer, vocalist, and teacher. He is noted for his wit and humor in performance, as "a monologist in the dry, Middle Western tradition." Eubie Blake describes his first impression of Waldo's performance thus: "I died laughing...that's one of the hardest things to do—make people laugh. Terry's ability to do this, combined with his musicianship, actually reminds me of Fats Waller."
Eugene Louis Faccuito, known professionally as Luigi, was an American jazz dancer, choreographer, teacher, and innovator who created the jazz exercise technique. The Luigi Warm Up Technique is a training program that promotes body alignment, balance, core strength, and "feeling from the inside." It is also used for rehabilitation. This method became the world's first standard technique for teaching jazz and musical theater dance.
One Mo' Time is a musical revue conceived by Vernel Bagneris. It is an evening of 1920s African-American vaudeville, set in the Lyric Theatre of New Orleans in 1926.
French Quarter is a 1978 American drama film directed by Dennis Kane, and telling two parallel stories set in the red light area of New Orleans, one contemporary and one set at the turn of the century. The film has music composed by Dick Hyman.
Topsy Chapman (1947–2022) was a Jazz and Gospel musician from New Orleans, Louisiana.
New Orleans: the Storyville Musical is a musical by Toni Morrison, Donald McKayle and Dorothea Freitag, set in 1917 in New Orleans' Storyville district. Produced in workshop in 1982, it also received staged readings at New York Shakespeare Festival in 1984 but was never fully produced. It was Morrison's first venture in the medium of theatre.
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