 | |
| Formation | 1975 |
|---|---|
| Type | Theatre group |
| Purpose | African American repertory |
| Location | |
Artistic director(s) | Vernell A. Lillie |
| Website | https://web.archive.org/web/20131208220613/http://www.kuntu.org/ |
Kuntu Repertory Theatre was a primarily student-based, African-American repertory theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
A repertory theatre can be a Western theatre or opera production in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation. In the British system, however, it used to be that even quite small towns would support a rep, and the resident company would present a different play every week, either a revival from the full range of classics or, if given the chance, a new play, once the rights had been released after a West End or Broadway run. However, the companies were not known for trying out untried new work. The methods, now seldom seen, would also be used in the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern, Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
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Dr. Vernell A. Lillie founded it in 1974 at the University of Pittsburgh as a way of showcasing the playwright Rob Penny. The next year Penny's friend, August Wilson, brought his play Homecoming to Kuntu; it was his first play to be produced by a resident company. The theater group remained part of the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Africana Studies through the 2010-2011 season when Lillie retired as a professor at Pitt. [1]
The University of Pittsburgh is a state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was founded as the Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on the edge of the American frontier. It developed and was renamed as Western University of Pennsylvania by a change to its charter in 1819. After surviving two devastating fires and various relocations within the area, the school moved to its current location in the Oakland neighborhood of the city; it was renamed as the University of Pittsburgh in 1908. Pitt was a private institution until 1966 when it became part of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education.
Robert Lee "Rob" Penny was an African-American playwright, poet, social activist, and professor. Penny wrote more than 30 plays and 300 poems.
August Wilson was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Each work in the series is set in a different decade, and depicts comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience in the 20th century.
Wilson, Penny, and poet Maisha Baton also started the Kuntu Writers Workshop to bring African-American writers together in discussion and to assist them in publication and production.
The Kuntu Repertory Theatre has won multiple awards, including several Onyx and People's Choice awards from the African American Council of Theatre [2] [3] The company has also participated in the Pittsburgh New Works Festival. [4]
Pittsburgh New Works Festival is an annual festival where participating Pittsburgh-area theatre companies each produce an original one-act play. Established in 1990 by Donna Rae, the Festival features four weeks of productions of new plays as well as two weeks of LabWorks. The Festival has taken place in numerous locations, originally having performances at City Theatre's Lester Hamburg Studio, Open Stage, the Father Ryan Arts Center in McKees Rocks, and currently Carnegie Stage in Carnegie.
Kuntu's primary venues when based at the University of Pittsburgh were the Stephen Foster Memorial, and later, through the 2010-11 season, the seventh-floor auditorium of the university's Alumni Hall. In 2011 Kuntu moved to a new home at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's Homewood branch. [5] [6] Due to funding difficulties, the Kuntu Repertory Theatre announced it was closing after the 2012-2013 season. [7]
The Stephen Collins Foster Memorial is a performing arts center and museum which houses the Stephen Foster Archives at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. It is dedicated to the life and works of American songwriter Stephen Foster.
Alumni Hall at the University of Pittsburgh is a Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmark that was formerly known as the Masonic Temple in Pittsburgh. Constructed in 1914-1915, it was designed by renowned architect Benno Janssen of Janssen & Abbot Architects. Other buildings in Pittsburgh's Oakland Cultural District designed by Janssen include the Pittsburgh Athletic Association, Mellon Institute, and Pitt's Eberly Hall.
The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is the public library system in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Its main branch is located in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and it has 19 branch locations throughout the city. Like hundreds of other Carnegie libraries, the construction of the main library, which opened in 1895, and several neighborhood branches, was funded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie. The Pittsburgh area holds the distinction of housing the first branches in the United States.
