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Ifa Bayeza | |
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Born | Wanda Williams Trenton, New Jersey, United States |
Occupation(s) | Plawright, author, producer, stage director |
Years active | 2000–present |
Relatives | Ntozake Shange (sister) Bisa Williams (sister) |
Awards |
|
Ifa Bayeza (born Wanda Williams) is a playwright, producer, and conceptual theater artist. [1] She wrote the play The Ballad of Emmett Till, which earned her the Edgar Award for Best Play in 2009. [2] 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. [3]
Bayeza was born Wanda Williams, into an upper middle-class African-American family in Trenton, New Jersey. She changed her name to Ifa Bayeza;[ when? ] she has stated that the name change was a way of claiming her heritage and described it as a rite of passage. Bayeza claimed that she was "embracing an Africanness that I didn't know, but I felt. But I still keep the essence of Wanda." [4] She was raised by her parents, Paul T. Williams, a physician and fervent advocate for the underprivileged,[ clarification needed ] and Eloise Williams, an educator and psychiatric social worker.
Bayeza grew up in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey [4] and graduated from Lawrence High School and Harvard University [5]
Bayeza's family has a deep history of social justice work. [4] Her siblings are: Ntozake Shange, a feminist playwright and poet; Paul Williams Jr., the first African American chief executive officer of the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York; [4] and Bisa Williams (born Andrea Williams), a career foreign service officer who served as U.S. Ambassador to Niger from 2010 to 2013.[ citation needed ] All four siblings attended and graduated from Ivy League schools (Barnard, Harvard and Yale), and earned advanced degrees focusing respectively on foreign diplomacy, playwriting, poetry and law. Bayeza's parents shared an interest in the arts and encouraged her artistic education. Her family hosted prominent figures, musicians and artists in their homes in Trenton and Lawrenceville, including W.E.B. DuBois, Muhammad Ali, Dizzy Gillespie, Chico Hamilton and Sonny Till.[ citation needed ]
Bayeza and Shange co-wrote Some Sing, Some Cry, a 600-page novel about seven generations of black women and their personal identities. [6] Her works for the stage include Amistad Voices, Club Harlem, Kid Zero, Homer G & the Rhapsodies, and The Ballad of Emmett Till. [7]
The Ballad of Emmett Till is about a 14-year-old boy who was tortured and killed in rural Mississippi because he whistled at a white woman. This play led to Bayeza getting an artist-in-residence fellowship from Brown University's Rites and Reason Theater and Providence Black Repertory Theater. Amistad Voices is set in 1839, and is about 53 Africans who revolted on a Spanish slave ship, battling over the legality of slavery. Bayeza went to Ethiopia to work on a personal project, creating images of ancient religious sites along the Nile. She was the original set designer and original dramaturg for Shange's production of For Colored Girls at New Federal Theatre and The Public Theater. [1]
Steve Oxman reviewed Bayeza's work on Variety.com, complimenting her work and her portrayal of Emmett Till by describing it as, "extremely detailed and, while it maybe feels a touch idealized, it's also down to earth. She perfectly sets the stage for his whistle at a white woman as an act of innocence." However, Oxman wasn't a fan of journalist Jimmy Hicks, claiming that it felt like, "a dramatic cliche." [8] In 2010, this play was performed in Los Angeles's Fountain Theatre. The original director, Ben Bradley, was suddenly murdered, and the production was picked up by Shirley Jo Finney. In Kathleen Foley's review of the play, along with praising Finney's direction, she opined that Bayeza's account made Till's fate even more harrowing, stating that, "In that she succeeds, brilliantly. Make no mistake: You will be devastated." [9]
The play was performed in San Diego's Ion Theatre in 2017. The performance was co-directed by Yolanda Franklin and Claudio Raygoza, and featured a six-character ensemble. In his review, David L. Coddon stated that, "The last half-hour of this 95-minute production is the most gut-wrenching for an audience." He continued by saying that the play ends on a hopeful note that creates optimism for a new world. [10]
Lawrenceville is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) and a major commercial hub within Lawrence Township in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The community is situated roughly halfway between Princeton and Trenton, although Lawrenceville constitutes part of the New York metropolitan area, the CDP actually is located approximately 15 miles closer to Philadelphia than to New York City; and as with the remainder of Mercer County, lies within the Federal Communications Commission's Philadelphia Designated Market Area. As of the 2020 United States census, the CDP's population was 3,751, a decrease of 136 (−3.5%) from the 3,887 recorded at the 2010 census, which in turn had reflected a decrease of 194 (−4.8%) from the 4,081 counted in the 2000 census.
Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn is an American playwright, writer, poet, and multimedia performance artist.
Ntozake Shange was an American playwright and poet. As a Black feminist, she addressed issues relating to race and Black power in much of her work. She is best known for her Obie Award-winning play, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf (1975). She also penned novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), Liliane (1994), and Betsey Brown (1985), about an African-American girl run away from home.
Emily Betsy Mann is an American director, playwright and screenwriter. She served as the artistic director and resident playwright of the McCarter Theatre Center from 1990 to 2020.
for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf is a 1976 work by Ntozake Shange. It consists of a series of poetic monologues to be accompanied by dance movements and music, a form which Shange coined the word choreopoem to describe. It tells the stories of seven women who have suffered oppression in a racist and sexist society.
Woodie King Jr. is an American director and producer of stage and screen, as well as the founding director of the New Federal Theatre in New York City.
The Fountain Theatre is a theatre in Los Angeles. Along with its programming of live theatre, it's also the foremost producer of flamenco on the West Coast.
Katori Hall is an American playwright, screenwriter, producer, actress, and director from Memphis, Tennessee. Hall's best known works include the hit television series P-Valley, the Tony-nominated Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and plays such as Hurt Village, Our Lady of Kibeho, Children of Killers, The Mountaintop, and The Hot Wing King, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Kitty Mei-Mei Chen is a playwright and actress and the author of five full-length plays and numerous short plays and children's stories. She received the 1992–93 NEA Fellowship in Playwriting.
A choreopoem is a form of dramatic expression that combines poetry, dance, music, and song. The term was first coined in 1975 by American writer Ntozake Shange in a description of her work, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. Shange's attempt to depart from traditional western poetry and storytelling resulted in a new art form that doesn't contain specific plot elements or characters, but instead focuses on creating an emotional response from the audience. In Shange's work, nontraditional spelling and African American Vernacular English are aspects of this genre that differ from traditional American literature. She emphasizes the importance of movement and nonverbal communication throughout the choreopoem so that it is able to function as a theatrical piece rather than being limited to poetry or dance.
Bisa Williams is an American diplomat. She is the former Ambassador from the United States of America to the Republic of Niger in Niamey. She assumed the post on October 29, 2010. She left her post in September 13, 2013.
Thulani Davis is an American playwright, journalist, librettist, novelist, poet, and screenwriter. She is a graduate of Barnard College and attended graduate school at both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.
spell #7, or spell #7: geechee jibara quik magic trance manual for technologically stressed third world people, is a choreopoem written for the stage by Ntozake Shange and first performed in 1979.
Terrie Williams is an American public relations speaker, author, therapist, and philanthropist.
Dianne McIntyre is an American dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Her notable works include Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Dance Adventure in Southern Blues , an adaptation of Zora Neal Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, as well as productions of why i had to dance,spell #7, and for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, with text by Ntozake Shange. She has won numerous honors for her work including an Emmy nomination, three Bessie Awards, and a Helen Hayes Award. She is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and the Dramatists Guild of America.
David Barr III is an American writer and playwright of African descent.
Laurie Dorothea Carlos was an American actress and avant-garde performance artist, playwright and theater director. She was also known for her work mentoring emerging artists in the theater.
Billie Allen was an American actress, theater director, dancer and entertainer. Allen was one of the first black actors and performers to appear on television and stage in the United States, at a time when those venues were largely closed to African Americans. During the 1950s, Allen became one of the first black entertainers to have a recurring role on network television when she was cast as a WAC on staff on the CBS army base comedy The Phil Silvers Show, from 1955 to 1959. She was one of the first African Americans to appear on television commercials in the U.S. She was also one of the earliest African American actors on daytime soap operas as she appeared in the mid-1950s as the character Ada Chandler on the popular daytime soap opera The Edge of Night. Allen was also known for her work on Broadway and off Broadway.
The New Federal Theatre is a theatre company named after the African-American branch of the Federal Theatre Project, which was created in the United States during the Great Depression to provide resources for theatre and other artistic programs. The company has operated out of a few different locations on Henry Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Since 1970 The New Federal Theatre has provided its community with a stage and collection of talented performers to express the voices of numerous African-America playwrights. New Federal Theatre boasts nationally known playwrights such as Ron Milner (Checkmates), Ed Bullins, and Ntozake Shange as well as actors including Jackée Harry, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Debbie Allen, Phylicia Rashad, Dick Anthony Williams, Glynn Turman, Taurean Blacque, Samuel L. Jackson, and Laurence Fishburne.
Janine Nabers is an American playwright and television writer.
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