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Layon Gray | |
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| Born | January 26, 1969 Alexandria, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Playwright, film director |
Layon Gray (born January 26, 1969) is an American playwright and director known for works about the African-American experience. His best-known work is the off-Broadway play Black Angels Over Tuskegee, about the Tuskegee airmen.
A native of Louisiana, Gray writes, directs and develops stage plays and films. He focuses on creating conversational dialogue in his works, including traditional African-American theater. His play, Kings Of Harlem, depicts the New York Renaissance and was performed for the NBA Legends during All-Star week. This work has won several theater awards and is in development as a feature film. His work The Dahomey Warriors [1] about the Dahomey Amazons depicts an all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey, in the present-day Republic of Benin, which lasted until the end of the 19th century. This work was selected to perform at the 2017 National Black Theatre Festival and is in development as a television series. His play Cowboy [2] about marshal Bass Reeves premiered in 2019 at the National Black Theatre Festival and returned for a performance in August 2022. His two man play about Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor entitled Foxx/Pryor was to begin performances in June, 2021. [3]
Gray has also directed plays such as: A Raisin in the Sun , A Soldiers Play , The Crucible , Before It Hits Home, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow is Enuf , Miss Evers' Boys and De Moor. [4]
| Play | Year Premiered | Length | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meet Me At The Oak | 2003 | 120 Minutes | Meet Me At The Oak premiered at Whitmore Lindley Theatre Center, in North Hollywood, CA in 2003 under the direction of Layon Gray. It would win Best Director, Best Play, Best Writer, Best Supporting Actor, Best Ensemble. |
| Diary Of A Catholic School Dropout | 2005 | 80 Minutes | Diary Of A Catholic School Dropout premiered at the Avery Schreiber Theatre in North Hollywood. It was directed by Layon Gray. It would go on to win Best Play that year. It ran in Los Angeles for 5 Years. [5] |
| WEBEIME | 2006 | 90 Minutes | WEBEIME premiered at the Whitmore Lindley Theatre Center in North Hollywood in 2006. Additional performances were held at the Midtown International Theatre Festival in 2007, the National Black Theatre Festival in 2008, the Negro Ensemble Company in 2009, and Planet Connections Theatre Festivity in 2012. All performances under the direction of Layon Gray. The play would go on to win Best Director, Best Play, Best Ensemble, Best Production, Best Choreography. |
| Black Angels Over Tuskegee | 2009 - open run | 120 Minutes | Black Angels Over Tuskegee tells the story of the Tuskegee Airmen. The show premiered at the Whitmore Lindley Theatre Center in North Hollywood in 2009. Additional performances were held at the National Black Theatre Festival in 2009, St. Luke's Theatre in 2010, and The Actors' Temple in 2012. It has also been performed at the Smithsonian Institution, the NAACP, the National Urban League, The National WWII Museum, the United States Military Academy, the United States Army, the National Civil Rights Museum, Tuskegee University, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The play would win an NAACP Award for Best Play. It is in pre-production for a Broadway transfer. ' [6] |
| The Girls Of Summer | 2009 | 120 Minutes | The Girls Of Summer premiered off-Broadway at The Actors' Temple in 2010, under the direction of Layon Gray. It would go on to win an NAACP Award for Best Play. [7] |
| Searching For Willie Lynch | 2012 | 120 Minutes | Searching For Willie Lynch premiered at the National Black Theatre Festival in 2013. In 2015, it had a staged reading at the Signature Theatre Company in New York City produced by the Negro Ensemble Company. Under the direction of Layon Gray. |
| Kings Of Harlem | 2015 | 90 Minutes | Kings Of Harlem premiered at the National Black Theatre Festival in 2015. Additional performances were held at The Actors' Temple In New York in 2016 and the M Ensemble in Miami in 2018. The play would go on to win Best Play, Best Director, Best Ensemble, and Best Supporting Actor. Under the direction of Layon Gray. The play is in development as a feature film. [8] |
| CowBoy | 2019 | 85 Minutes | National Black Theatre Festival debuted Cowboy, the story of Bass Reeves, in August 2019 under the direction of Layon Gray. |
The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of African American military pilots and airmen who fought in World War II. They formed the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group (Medium) of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). The name also applies to the navigators, bombardiers, mechanics, instructors, crew chiefs, nurses, cooks, and other support personnel. The Tuskegee airmen received praise for their excellent combat record earned while protecting American bombers from enemy fighters. The group was awarded three Distinguished Unit Citations.
Laurence John Fishburne III is an American actor. He is a three time Emmy Award and Tony Award winning actor known for his roles on stage and screen. He has been hailed for his forceful, militant, and authoritative characters in his films. He is known for playing Morpheus in The Matrix series (1999–2003), Jason "Furious" Styles in the John Singleton drama film Boyz n the Hood (1991), Tyrone "Mr. Clean" Miller in Francis Ford Coppola's war film Apocalypse Now (1979), and "The Bowery King" in the John Wick film series (2017–present).
John Elroy Sanford, better known by his stage name Redd Foxx, was an American stand-up comedian and actor. Foxx gained success with his raunchy nightclub act before and during the civil rights movement. Known as the "King of the Party Records", he performed on more than 50 records in his lifetime. He portrayed Fred G. Sanford on the television show Sanford and Son and starred in The Redd Foxx Show and The Royal Family. His film projects included All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Norman... Is That You? (1976) and Harlem Nights (1989).
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most important stand-up comedians of all time. Pryor won a Primetime Emmy Award and five Grammy Awards. He received the first Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 1998. He won the Writers Guild of America Award in 1974. He was listed at number one on Comedy Central's list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians. In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked him first on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.
William Mercer Cook, better known as Will Marion Cook, was an American composer, violinist, and choral director. Cook was a student of Antonín Dvořák. In 1919 he took his New York Syncopated Orchestra to England for a command performance for King George V of the United Kingdom, and tour. Cook is probably best known for his popular songs and landmark Broadway musicals, featuring African-American creators, producers, and casts, such as Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cake Walk (1898) and In Dahomey (1903). The latter toured for four years, including in the United Kingdom and United States.
Brenda Buell Vaccaro is an American stage, television, and film actress. In a career spanning over half a century, she received one Academy Award nomination, three Golden Globe Award nominations, four Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and three Tony Award nominations.
Paul Gladney, better known by the stage name Paul Mooney, was an American comedian, writer, and actor. He collaborated with Redd Foxx, Eddie Murphy and Dave Chappelle, wrote for comedian Richard Pryor and the television series Sanford and Son, In Living Color and Chappelle's Show, as well as acting in The Buddy Holly Story (1978), the Spike Lee-directed satirical film Bamboozled (2000), and Chappelle's Show.
In Dahomey: A Negro Musical Comedy is a landmark 1903 American musical comedy described by theatre historian Gerald Bordman as "the first full-length musical written and played by blacks to be performed at a major Broadway house." It features music by Will Marion Cook, book by Jesse A. Shipp, and lyrics by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. It was written by Jesse A. Shipp as a satire on the American Colonization Society's back-to-Africa movement of the earlier nineteenth century.
Stephanie Janette Block is an American actress and singer, best known for her work on the Broadway stage.
Bass Reeves was a former slave who became an American lawman. He was the first African-American deputy U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi River. He worked mostly in the Indian Territory.
Christian Dominique Borle is an American actor and singer. He is a two-time Tony Award winner for his roles as Black Stache in Peter and the Starcatcher and as William Shakespeare in Something Rotten!. Borle also originated the roles of Prince Herbert, et al. in Spamalot, Emmett in Legally Blonde, and Joe in Some Like It Hot on Broadway. He starred as Marvin in the 2016 Broadway revival of Falsettos. He also starred as Tom Levitt on the NBC musical-drama television series Smash, and Vox in the adult animated musical animated series Hazbin Hotel.
Andrew Scott Rannells is an American actor. He is best known for originating the role of Elder Kevin Price in the 2011 Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical and won the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. He received his second Tony nomination in 2017 for his performance as Whizzer in the 2016 Broadway revival of Falsettos. Other Broadway credits include Hairspray (2005), Jersey Boys (2009), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2014), Hamilton (2015), The Boys in the Band (2018), and Gutenberg! The Musical! (2023).
John Patrick Page is an American actor, low bass singer, and playwright. He originated the roles of the Grinch in Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical (2006), Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (2011), and Hades in Hadestown (2019–2022), the later of which earned him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.
Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer is an American musical theatre actress and singer.
Matthew James Elwyn Thomas, also occasionally credited as Matthew Thomas, is a British actor who has made appearances in television, film, and theater. He is known for his television roles including the BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning, The Lost Prince, and the ITV drama-musical show, Britannia High. In the U.S., Thomas is best known for having played the title role in the 2013 Broadway revival of Pippin, which received a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. He was also a late addition to the U.S. national tour of Pippin in 2014. He had his Broadway debut in 2010 playing Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark directed by Julie Taymor, with music by U2's Bono and Edge.
Peabody Magnet High School is a public magnet high school located in the South Alexandria subdivision of Alexandria, Louisiana in the United States. Alexandria is the seat of Rapides Parish and the largest city in central Louisiana. The school is named for one of its benefactors, George Foster Peabody (1852–1938), whose charitable foundation provided a grant to create the school. It was founded in 1895 as a segregated black of school and was formerly known as Peabody High School, Peabody Training School, Peabody Industrial School, and Peabody Normal School.
Reeve Jefferson Carney is an American actor and singer-songwriter. He is best known for originating the role of Orpheus in the original Broadway cast of the Tony Award-winning musical Hadestown. He also played Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Dorian Gray in the Showtime series Penny Dreadful, and Riff Raff in the Fox musical television film The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again.
Jackie Burns is an American actress and singer best known for her work in musical theatre.
Hadestown is a sung-through musical with music, lyrics, and book by Anaïs Mitchell. It tells a version of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice, a young girl looking for something to eat, goes to work in a hellish industrial version of the Greek underworld to escape poverty and the cold, and her poor singer-songwriter lover Orpheus comes to attempt to rescue her.
Nell Benjamin is a lyricist, writer, and composer noted for her work in musical theatre. With her husband and frequent collaborator Laurence O'Keefe, she won the Laurence Olivier Award for writing Legally Blonde in 2011. And in 2007, she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Original Score for Legally Blonde, and then again in 2018 for her lyrics for Mean Girls.
