 | This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points.(September 2024) |
David Barr III is an American writer and playwright [1] of African descent.
| | This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points.(September 2024) |
David Barr III is an American writer and playwright [1] of African descent.
As an actor, Barr received a Joseph Jefferson Citation for an Actor In A Principal Role for his portrayal of Philip Mbuso in the drama Victims at the Organic Theatre Greenhouse in 1992.
In 1994 he was a principal actor in the Chicago Theatre Company production of Pill Hill, which was the recipient of a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Ensemble. Additional acting accolades that David has received include the Best Actor Award from the Association Of Theatre Artists & Friends in 1989 for his portrayal of Creon in the Stage Left production of Antigone.
Barr's first full-length play was The Death of the Black Jesus, which premiered at the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, Mo. in January 1995. [2] (In the theater's pre-season booklet "21st Season of Plays," the title is given as Betrayal of the Black Jesus.) The success of this play led to an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship (1995) and the Black Theater Alliance Awards. [3] The play was the winner of the National Playwriting Award sponsored by the Unicorn Theatre, and the winner of the Mixed Blood Versus America National Playwriting Contest sponsored by the Mixed Blood Theatre.
His adaptation of the Walter Mosley novel A Red Death had its world premiere in September 1997. [4] It won the 1998 Edgar Allan Poe Award, sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America in the Best New Play category.
Barr's two-act drama, Black Caesar, was the winner of the 1997 Theodore Ward Contest for Playwriting, sponsored by Chicago's Columbia College. PerformInk, Chicago's entertainment tradepaper, published Black Caesar in October 1999.
In January 1999, Barr received his second Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Playwriting/Screenwriting. His play Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit, based on the life of Marian Anderson, was the winner of the 1999 Unicorn Theatre National Playwriting Award. It opened at the Unicorn Theatre in June 1999 and at Pegasus Players in November 2000. [5]
In September 1999, his full-length play The Face of Emmett Till (formerly The State of Mississippi vs Emmett Till) debuted at Pegasus Players. [6] The play was developed with Mrs. Mamie Till Mobley and is based on the life and tragic death of her son Emmett Till [7] and was revived in the fall of 2003, again at Pegasus Players.
Barr is a co-adapter of The Journal of Ordinary Thought, a stage adaptation of poems and monologues written by members of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance. The Journal of Ordinary Thought had its world premiere at the Chicago Theatre Company in September 1999. It was voted one of the best plays of 1999 by both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times.[ citation needed ] In March 2000 it was named winner of the Festival of Emerging American Theatre (FEAT) National Playwriting Competition, sponsored by Phoenix Theatre Company in Indianapolis, and played there in the spring of 2000.
In 2001, Barr received his third Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Playwriting/Screenwriting. His play Bronzeville opened at the Pegasus Players Theater, [8] but reviews were negative. [5] [9]
Barr's screen adaptation of the Zora Neale Hurston short story "The Gilded Six Bits" was selected for the 2008 International Black Harvest Film Festival. The film was aired on the Chicago and Gary, Indiana PBS affiliates WTTW and WYIN. The movie was screened at several 2006 and 2007 film festivals across the United States and was named Best Picture at the 2006 Twin Cities Film Festival. It was screened at the annual "Zora Fest" in Eatonville, Florida earlier that same year.
Barr's play The Upper Room was performed at Truman College in 2005. [10] http://www.btaawards.org/index.html His Civil Rights docudrama My Soul is a Witness, produced by The Jena Company, New York City toured nationally in 2005 and 2006 and a Pegasus Players production of the work was included in the Hindu MetroPlus Theatre Arts Festival in Chennai, India during the Summer of 2007. My Soul is a Witness subsequently played in the cities of Kolkata, New Delhi and Mumbai. His second engagement with The Jena Company was the biopic Jackie, Vi, and Lena which toured nationally during the Winter of 2007.
In the Spring 2006 he co-authored the vaudevillian production "Point Of Revue", a composite shot of African American through a collection of short plays and original songs, with several artists including Kia Corthron, Don Cheadle and Lynn Nottage.
Barr's screenplay Death of Innocence was co-written with Christopher Benson, Associate Professor of African American Studies, and Journalism at the University of Illinois, and with Oscar-winning director James Moll. It was adapted from a memoir co-written by Benson and the late, Civil Rights activist Mamie Till-Mobley. It was optioned for development by HBO Films in 2007.
Angelo Parra is an American playwright. He was born in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx, New York City. After graduating from Fordham University, his career included work as a reporter/photographer, public relations professional, politician, free-lance writer, and PR and journalism teacher at New York University before turning to theatre in 1986. His first produced play, Casino, was presented at T. Schreiber Studio, and won a 1989 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship in Playwriting and an Arts International grant.
Emmett Louis Till was an African American teenager who was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the acquittal of his killers drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement.
The State of Mississippi and the Face of Emmett Till is a 2003 play written by David Barr and Mamie Till Mobley. The show chronicles the life and brutal death of Emmett Till, and the circumstances that surrounded his murder.
Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley was an American educator and activist. She was the mother of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old teenager murdered in Mississippi on August 28, 1955, after accusations that he had whistled at a white grocery store cashier named Carolyn Bryant. For Emmett's funeral in Chicago, Mamie Till insisted that the coffin containing his body be left open, because, in her words, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby."
Argo Community High School is a public four-year high school located in Summit, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. The district draws students from the communities of Summit, Bedford Park, Bridgeview, Justice, Willow Springs, and a portion of Hickory Hills. The school was named for the area surrounding the large corn processing plant located near the school, which manufactured Argo corn starch and is currently owned by Ingredion. In 2014 and 2016, Argo was awarded a bronze medal by U.S. News & World Report for outstanding academic performance, the only school in the South Suburban Conference to receive such recognition.
Tarell Alvin McCraney is an American playwright. He is the chair of playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble.
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Sheri Wilner is an American playwright.
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Laura Jacqmin is a Los Angeles–based television writer, playwright, and video game writer from Shaker Heights, Ohio. She was the winner of the 2008 Wasserstein Prize, a $25,000 award given to recognize an emerging female playwright.
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Ifa Bayeza is a playwright, producer, and conceptual theater artist. She wrote the play The Ballad of Emmett Till, which earned her the Edgar Award for Best Play in 2009. She is the sister of Ntozake Shange, and directed Shange's A Photograph: Lovers in Motion, which was a part of the Negro Ensemble Company's 2015 Year of the Woman Play Reading Series in New York City.
Carlos Murillo is an American playwright, director, and professor of Puerto Rican and Colombian descent. Based in Chicago, Murillo is a professor and head of the Playwriting program at the Theatre School at DePaul University. He is best known for his play Dark Play or Stories for Boys.
Chinonye Chukwu is a Nigerian-American film director best known for the drama films Clemency and Till. She is the first African-American woman to win the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
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Women of the Movement is an American historical drama miniseries that premiered on ABC on January 6, 2022. Created by Marissa Jo Cerar, the series centers on Mamie Till-Mobley, played by Adrienne Warren, who devoted her life to seeking justice for her murdered son Emmett, played by Cedric Joe. Tonya Pinkins also co-stars as Alma Carthan, Emmett's grandmother.
Till is a 2022 biographical drama film directed by Chinonye Chukwu and written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp, and Chukwu, and produced by Beauchamp, Reilly, and Whoopi Goldberg. It is based on the true story of Mamie Till, an educator and activist who pursued justice after the murder of her 14-year-old son Emmett in August 1955. The film stars Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie and Jalyn Hall as Emmett. Kevin Carroll, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett, Jayme Lawson, Tosin Cole, Sean Patrick Thomas, John Douglas Thompson, Roger Guenveur Smith, and Goldberg also appear in supporting roles.
Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ is a Christian house of worship located in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. The church was the site of Emmett Till's open-casket funeral in 1955.
The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument is a United States national monument that honors Emmett Till, an African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 at the age of 14, and his mother, Mamie Till, who became an advocate in the Civil Rights Movement. The monument includes three sites, one in Illinois and two in Mississippi, with a total area of 5.7 acres (2.3 ha). The monument is managed by the National Park Service. It was established by President Joe Biden on July 25, 2023, what would have been Emmett Till's 82nd birthday.