Judyann Elder is an American actress, director, and writer. She played Nadine Waters on the FOX sitcom Martin. She also played Harriette Winslow on CBS' Family Matters for the remaining eight episodes of its ninth and final season, after the departure of Jo Marie Payton. Elder is also a veteran of the stage who has appeared in scores of theatrical productions throughout the United States and Europe.
Robert Hooks is an American actor, producer, and activist. Along with Douglas Turner Ward and Gerald S. Krone, he founded The Negro Ensemble Company. The Negro Ensemble Company is credited with the launch of the careers of many major black artists of all disciplines, while creating a body of performance literature over the last thirty years, providing the backbone of African-American theatrical classics. Additionally, Hooks is the sole founder of two significant black theatre companies: the D.C. Black Repertory Company, and New York's Group Theatre Workshop.
Denise Donna Nicholas is an American actress. Nicholas played high-school guidance counselor Liz McIntyre on the ABC comedy-drama series Room 222 and Councilwoman Harriet DeLong on the NBC/CBS drama series In the Heat of the Night.
Lonne Elder III was an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. Elder was one of the leading African-American figures who informed the New York theater world with social and political consciousness. He also wrote scripts for television and film. His best known play, Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, won him a Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. The play, which was about a Harlem barber and his family, was produced by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1969.
Horace Edward "Steve" Carter Jr. was an American playwright, best known for his plays involving Caribbean immigrants living in the United States.
A Soldier's Play is a play by American playwright Charles Fuller. Set on a US Army installation in the segregation-era South, the play is a loose adaptation of Herman Melville's novella Billy Budd, and follows the murder investigation of the Sergeant in an all-black unit. The play uses a murder mystery to explore the complicated feelings of anger and resentment that some African Americans have toward one another, and the ways in which many black Americans have absorbed white racist attitudes.
James Theodore Ward was a leftist political playwright and theatre educator during the first half of the 20th century and one of the earliest contributors to the Black Chicago Renaissance. Often referred to as the "dean of black dramatists," Ward was well known for tackling controversial topics related to African-American urban life during the Great Depression. His staged works were lauded for their innovative depiction of the black experience, most notably for doing away with the spiritual ballads and feverish dancing that dominated "Negro theatricals" of his time in favor of a more nuanced, naturalistic approach to plot and character.
The River Niger is a play by Joseph A. Walker, first performed by New York City's Negro Ensemble Company off-Broadway in 1972. The production made its Broadway debut with a transfer to the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on 27 March 1973 for a run of 162 performances. Titled after the West African river, The River Niger sits squarely with the African centered aspirations of the Black Arts Movement.
Samuel Arthur Williams was an American playwright and screenwriter, television producer, and an actor on stage, television and film.
Joseph Alexander Walker was an American playwright and screenwriter, theater director, actor and professor. He is best known for writing The River Niger, a three-act play that was originally produced Off-Broadway in 1972 by the Negro Ensemble Company, before being transferred to Broadway in 1973 and then adapted into a 1976 film of the same name starring James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson. In 1974, Walker became the first African-American writer to win a Tony Award, receiving the Tony Award for Best Play for The River Niger. The playwright previously won an Obie Award during that play's 1972 to 1973 Off-Broadway run.
Eden is a 1976 play by American playwright Steve Carter. Set in the 1920s, it is the first of Carter's Caribbean trilogy. Eden explores intra-racial conflicts between recent immigrants from the Caribbean and the African-American population. The West Coast premiere of this critically acclaimed play received five Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards.
Graham Brown was an American actor known for his work in theatre.
Nevis Mountain Dew is a 1978 play by American playwright steve carter. Set in the 1950s, it is the second of Carter's Caribbean trilogy. Nevis Mountain Dew explores the subject of euthanasia involving the patriarch of an affluent family who is confined to an iron lung.
Douglas Turner Ward was an American playwright, actor, director, and theatrical producer. He was noted for being a founder and artistic director of the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC). He was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 1974 for his role in The River Niger, which he also directed.
Bert Andrews was an American photographer, who chronicled black theatre in New York City. In a career that spanned over three decades he photographed many of the leading African American actors of the stage and screen including James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Diana Sands, Louis Gossett Jr., Billy Dee Williams, Morgan Freeman, Alfre Woodard, Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson.
Ceremonies in Dark Old Men is an American two-act play by Lonne Elder III that premiered Off Broadway in 1969 at St. Mark's Playhouse in a production by the Negro Ensemble Company. Later in the 1969 season, it was given a commercial production that was a long-running success. It was the runner-up for the 1969 Pulitzer Prize in drama and was adapted for a television movie in 1975.
Leslie Lee was an American playwright, director and professor of playwriting and screenwriting.
David Downing was an American stage, film, and television actor. He was one of the original members of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York City.
Charles Weldon was an American actor, director, educator, singer, and songwriter. He was the artistic director of the Negro Ensemble Company for thirteen years. He was the co-founder of the Alumni of this company, and directed many of their productions. During his career he worked with Denzel Washington, James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Alfre Woodard, Muhammad Ali, and Oscar Brown Jr.
Day of Absence is a play written by American playwright Douglas Turner Ward, which premiered off-off-Broadway in 1965. Telling the story of a Southern town where all of its Black residents suddenly disappear, Day of Absence is notable for most productions starring Black actors in whiteface in a reverse minstrel show style. Day of Absence explores themes of whiteness and discrimination against Black Americans through its insertion of Black actors into farcical situations inhabiting white bodies.
