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Vernel Martin Bagneris (born July 31, 1949) is an American playwright, actor, director, singer, and dancer.
Bagneris was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. [1] He is the third child of Gloria Diaz Bagneris and Lawrence Bagneris, Sr. Bagneris's mother was a housewife and a deeply religious woman who "quietly outclassed most people," [2] and his father was a playful, creative man, a World War II veteran, and a lifelong postal clerk.
Bagneris grew up in the tightly knit, predominantly Creole Seventh Ward in a family of free people of color that had been in New Orleans since 1750. From the age of six, he had a knack for winning popular dance contests, and during christenings and jazz funerals, he learned more traditional music and dance.
By the mid-1960s the once-beautiful, tree-lined neighborhood in which he was raised fell victim to the U.S. government's program of urban renewal, known colloquially in the area as "Negro removal." A freeway overpass was constructed over a thriving neighborhood, inviting crime and eventually shuttering businesses and changing the community. The Bagneris family ultimately moved to Gentilly, along with many other residents of the Seventh Ward.
Bagneris was in the advanced placement track at St. Augustine High School. At fifteen, he and his compatriots were encouraged by the school leaders to quietly protest segregation at bowling alleys and drugstore counters citywide.
Bagneris graduated from high school in 1967. In fall of the same year, he headed directly to a seminary to study for the priesthood where he stayed for three days. [2]
Bagneris was admitted to Xavier University, a predominantly-black, Catholic university in New Orleans, at which his older siblings had also matriculated. Bagneris declared sociology as his major, but during his second year, his girlfriend persuaded him to audition for the university's theater program. To his surprise, Bagneris was cast as Gremio in The Taming of the Shrew. Based on his success in that production, Bagneris decided to pursue a career on the stage. Though he'd never even attended the theater before his first audition, by his junior year he was writing, directing, and producing his own plays.
The Free Southern Theater, which toured in rural, underprivileged areas of the South (and eventually based itself in New Orleans), performed two of Bagneris's plays while he was an undergraduate.
Bagneris became interested in avant-garde theater methods and, upon his graduation in 1972, traveled to Amsterdam to learn more about the Bread and Love experimental theater group. He later returned to New Orleans and worked day jobs. He had brought back experimental scripts from Europe and staged them in his hometown.
He produced and directed Samuel Beckett's Endgame on a double bill with Eugène Ionesco's The Lesson in a photo gallery, was awarded an artist-in-residence grant by the Arts Council of New Orleans, and made a foray into integrated theater company in the French Quarter called Gallery Circle. By 1972, he had won two Best Actor awards in New Orleans.
In 1976, Bagneris saw Will Holt's Me and Bessie, a one-woman show about the blues legend Bessie Smith, in New York City. After seeing the show, Bagneris determined to produce a show in a similar style that would feature the City of New Orleans as the main character. Bagneris spent a year creating the show, during which he conducted research, developed oral histories, and interviewed his own grandmother. At the same time he was also acting in independent movies and producing and starring in Edward Albee plays.
Then, for six months, Bagneris and his troupe prepared for a one-night-only production of One Mo' Time, a musical he had written based on Black Vaudeville performers in New Orleans. Their limited run show quickly turned into three nights a week at the Toulouse Theatre in the French Quarter, with James Carroll Booker III playing piano in the lobby before each show.A New York producer saw the show and promised to move it to the city. In October 1979 One Mo' Time went to the Village Gate in New York, where it played for three and a half years, spinning a host of internationally touring companies, including a royal command performance in Britain for Queen Elizabeth II. The show earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Cast Album in 1980 and was nominated for a Society of West End Theatre Award for Outstanding Achievement in a Musical, Best Musical, and Best Actress in a Musical in 1982. Through One Mo' Time, Bagneris met the dance masters Honi Coles and Charles "Cookie" Cook.
Bagneris has cited Pepsi Bethel of the Pepsi Bethel Authentic Jazz Dance Theater, who had worked in independent black films during the 1930s and 1940s, as his dance mentor. After they first met, Bethel choreographed every show Bagneris directed.
Bagneris's father, after seeing One Mo' Time, encouraged Bagneris to work on Creole themes.
After the success of One Mo' Time, Bagneris continued stage explorations with Staggerlee in 1985; Further Mo', the sequel to One Mo' Time, in 1990; and Cy Coleman's The Life on Broadway in 1998. In 1995, Bagneris received a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical [3] as well as an Obie Award [4] for Jelly Roll!, his portrait of jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton. It is a two person musical.Bagneris plays Morton, talking and singing, with the partner being the Norwegian jazz pianist Morten Gunnar Larsen playing the Morton music. A record of the musical was produced (GHB Records BCD400). Other notable performances included a 2004 revival of Bubbling Brown Sugar, in which Bagneris starred with Diahann Carroll.
During this time, he also worked in film, including French Quarter (1978), Pennies from Heaven (1981), Down by Law (1986), and Ray (2004), the award-winning film adaptation of Ray Charles's life. In this film, Bagneris worked as choreographer and played the character Dancin' Al. Bagneris also played opposite Ossie Davis in what was to be Davis's last film, the independent feature Proud (2004). One Mo' Time was revived on Broadway in 2002 and again in New Orleans in 2006. Bagneris acted as the voice of numerous jazz figures on Public Radio International's Riverwalk Jazz program in 1993, recreating the lives of Bunk Johnson, Danny Barker, Jelly Roll Morton, and others. In the program for a special performance in the new auditorium at the Library of Congress, Bagneris was proclaimed "a master of the American vernacular." [5]
In October 2005, just two months after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, Bagneris returned to live in New Orleans, ultimately settling in the French Quarter. [2]
Bagneris had a recurring role as Judge Bernard Williams on the first three seasons of the HBO series Treme (2010 to 2013).
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential characteristics when notated. His composition "Jelly Roll Blues", published in 1915, was one of the first published jazz compositions. He also claimed to have invented the genre.
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