Lou Bellamy

Last updated
Lou Bellamy
Born (1944-03-10) March 10, 1944 (age 80)
Chicago, Illinois
Occupation(s)Actor, Educator, Founder, Artistic Director
Years active1976–present
Known for Penumbra Theatre Company founder
SpouseColleen Bellamy
Awards IVEY Lifetime Achievement Award, McKnight Foundation Distinguished Artist, Obie Award, Kay Sexton award

Lou Bellamy (born March 10, 1944) is an American stage director, actor, producer, entrepreneur, and educator. He is the founder and artistic director, Emeritus of Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul, Minnesota. He taught at the University of Minnesota from 1979 until his retirement as an associate professor in 2011.

Contents

Education

Bellamy received his B.A. in psychology and sociology at Minnesota State University, Mankato in 1967, and received his M.A. in theater arts at the University of Minnesota in 1978. [1]

Personal life

Louis Bellamy was born on March 10, 1944, in Chicago, Illinois, to ElVeeda Luckett Bellamy and James Kirk. In 1950, his mother married Maurice Leonidas (Tiny) Bellamy, who soon after adopted Lou. [2] Bellamy graduated from Saint Paul Central High School in 1962. Bellamy and his wife, Colleen Bellamy, are the parents of two adult children, Sarah and Lucas. [3]

Career

At the University of Minnesota he taught classes in acting, directing, and communication as well as specialized classes in Black theater. In 1976, the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center received a grant geared to cultural arts programming. The CETA funding enabled his appointment as the center's cultural arts director, where he launched the Penumbra Theatre Company. [4] At Penumbra his numerous productions included 23 world premieres. He had a particularly close relationship with playwright August Wilson, [5] and Penumbra produced more plays by Wilson than any other theater in the world. Bellamy's directing there has earned an Obie award. [6] In 2014 his daughter Sarah Bellamy succeeded him as leader of Penumbra. [7]

Bellamy has been quoted regarding Black theater as saying: "There's a little pressure now to widen my work, with agents and artistic directors asking if I want to do Chekhov. I can, but I don't want to. There are only a few people who get chances to be where I am in my career. I want to use it for putting the lens on Black people and showing them in all their beauty, their facets and warts. These are people who I care about and love and want to see in all their complexity on the stage."[ citation needed ]

Bellamy also directed plays at Arizona Theatre Company, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Signature Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Cleveland Play House, Indiana Repertory Theatre, The Guthrie Theater, The Kennedy Center, and Hartford Stage Company [3]

Recognition

In 2005 he was awarded IVEY Lifetime Achievement Award [8]

In 2006 he was named Distinguished Artist by the McKnight Foundation. [2]

In 2007 he won an Obie Award for directing a New York production of Wilson's Two Trains Running . [9]

In 2017 he won the Kay Sexton award for his career as a teacher, mentor, director and promoter of African American Literature. [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">August Wilson</span> American playwright (1945–2005)

August Wilson was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle, which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century. Plays in the series include Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990), both of which won Wilson the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988). In 2006, Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Austin Pendleton</span> American actor (born 1940)

Austin Campbell Pendleton is an American actor, playwright, theatre director, and instructor.

<i>Jitney</i> (play) 1982 play by American playwright August Wilson

Jitney is a play by American playwright August Wilson. The eighth in his "Pittsburgh Cycle", this play is set in a worn-down gypsy cab station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in early autumn 1977. The play premiered on Broadway in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lee Breuer</span> American theatre director (1937–2021)

Esser Leopold "Lee" Breuer was an Obie Award-winning and Pulitzer-, Grammy-, Emmy- and Tony-nominated American playwright, theater director, academic, educator, filmmaker, poet, and lyricist. Breuer taught and directed on six continents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marshall W. Mason</span> American theater director

Marshall W. Mason is an American theater director, educator, and writer. Mason founded the Circle Repertory Company in New York City and was artistic director of the company for 18 years (1969–1987). He received an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in 1983. In 2016, he received the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Soho Repertory Theatre</span> American Off-Broadway theater company

The Soho Repertory Theatre, known as Soho Rep, is an American Off-Broadway theater company based in New York City which is notable for producing avant-garde plays by contemporary writers. The company, described as a "cultural pillar", is currently located in a 65-seat theatre in the TriBeCa section of lower Manhattan. The company, and the projects it has produced, have won multiple prizes and earned critical acclaim, including numerous Obie Awards, Drama Desk Awards, Drama Critics' Circle Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. A recent highlight was winning the Drama Desk Award for Sustained Achievement for "nearly four decades of artistic distinction, innovative production, and provocative play selection."

Adrienne Kennedy is an American playwright. She is best known for Funnyhouse of a Negro, which premiered in 1964 and won an Obie Award. She won a lifetime Obie as well. In 2018 she was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Signature Theatre Company</span> American theatre in New York

Signature Theatre Company is an American theatre based in Manhattan, New York. It was founded in 1991 by James Houghton and is now led by Artistic Director Paige Evans. Signature is known for their season-long focus on one artist's work. It has been located in the Pershing Square Signature Center since 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penumbra Theatre Company</span> African-American theatre company in Saint Paul, Minnesota

The Penumbra Theatre Company, an African-American theatre company in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was founded by Lou Bellamy in 1976. The theater has been recognized for its artistic quality and its role in launching the careers of playwrights including two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson.

The Ivey Awards were an annual award show, celebrating Twin Cities professional theater. Established in 2004, the non-nomination based awards served to recognize outstanding achievements within the past theater season in direction, performance, design, etc. The awards were founded by Scott Mayer and administered by a panel of local theater professionals and theater patrons. The Iveys ceased in 2018 due to lack of funding.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Benson</span> British director

Sarah Benson is a British director of avant-garde theatre productions based in New York. As a Director of the Soho Rep, a lower Manhattan-based theatre company with an "audacious taste in plays", she is notable for her "commitment to adventurous new plays with an experimental bent". She has been at the company since 2007, and during her tenure, the company has won numerous Obie awards and Drama Desk nominations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rick Shiomi</span> Japanese-Canadian playwright, stage director, artistic director and taiko artist

Rick Shiomi is an internationally recognized, award-winning Japanese Canadian playwright, stage director, artistic director and taiko artist, and a major player in the Asian American/Canadian theatre movement. He is best known for his groundbreaking play Yellow Fever, which earned him the Bay Area Theater Circle Critics Award and “Bernie” Award. Over the last couple decades, Shiomi has also become a notable artistic and stage director. He directed the world premiere of the play Caught by Christopher Chen for which he received the Philadelphia Barrymore Award Nomination for Outstanding Direction. He is currently the Co-Artistic Director of Full Circle Theater Company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marion McClinton</span> American theatre director (1954–2019)

Marion Isaac McClinton was an American theatre director, playwright, and actor. He was nominated for the Tony Award for King Hedley II. He won the 2000 Vivian Robinson Audelco Black Theatre Awards, Director/Dramatic Production and the 1999–2000 Obie Awards, Direction, for Jitney, and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Les Waters</span> British theatre director

Les Waters is a British theatre director. Waters was the Artistic Director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville. He has directed plays Off-Broadway and also at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Actors Theatre.

George Michael Bartenieff was a German-born American stage and film actor. He was noted both for his character roles in commercial and non-commercial films and on television, and for his work in the avant-garde theatre and performance world of downtown Manhattan, New York City in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a co-founder of the Theatre for the New City, and of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.

Sam Gold is an American theater director and actor. Having studied at Cornell University and Juilliard School he became known for directing both musicals and plays, on Broadway and Off-Broadway. He has received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical, a Tony nomination for Best Director of a Play, and nominations for four Drama Desk Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurie Carlos</span> American dramatist (1949–2016)

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.

The Owl Answers is a one-act experimental play by Adrienne Kennedy. It premiered in 1965 at the White Barn Theatre in Westport, Connecticut one year after Kennedy's most well-known piece, the Obie Award-winning Funnyhouse of a Negro. Subsequent productions have been alongside another of Kennedy's one-acts, A Beast Story, as Cities in Bezique.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theatre in the Round Players</span>

Theatre in the Round Players (TRP) is a community theatre performing in the West Bank Theater District in Minneapolis. In existence since 1953, it is the longest-running theatre in Minneapolis, and the second-oldest (non-academic) theatre in the Twin Cities. Since 1969 it has performed in its own 287-seat arena stage in with the audience surrounds the stage. TRP continues its work of supporting the theatre community today, in ongoing partnerships with the University of Minnesota Theater and others, providing a training ground for theater professionals in training. In 2018, TRP's Jeeves in Bloom was its 550th mainstage production.

References

  1. ↑ Sampson, Heidi. "The Power in One Good Life: Lou Bellamy". Voices of Diversity. Minnesota State University, Mankato. Archived from the original on 8 October 2024. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
  2. 1 2 "2006 Distinguished Artist" (PDF). McKnight Foundation. Archived (PDF) from the original on 8 October 2024. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
  3. 1 2 "Lou Bellamy's Biography". The HistoryMakers. Retrieved 2020-06-29.
  4. ↑ "Board of Directors Meeting Minutes". Penumbra Theatre Company Archives.
  5. ↑ Kennedy, Lisa (September 13, 2012). ""Fences" director Lou Bellamy recalls teaming with playwright legend August Wilson". Denver Post. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
  6. ↑ "Theater legend Lou Bellamy to retire from University of Minnesota". Discover. University of Minnesota. February 8, 2011. Archived from the original on 25 February 2016. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
  7. ↑ Preston, Rohan (January 15, 2014). "Sarah Bellamy will take over at Penumbra Theatre". Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
  8. ↑ Awards, Ivey. "Awards Event 2005". www.iveyawards.com. Retrieved 2017-08-02.
  9. ↑ Papatola, Dominic R. (May 23, 2007). "Minnesota State Mankato grad Lou Bellamy wins Obie Award For 'Two Trains Running'". Pioneer Press. Minnesota State University, Mankato. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
  10. ↑ "Penumbra Theatre's Lou Bellamy wins 2017 Kay Sexton award". Twin Cities. 2017-02-26. Retrieved 2017-08-02.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.