Regina Taylor, along with legendary actresses Micki Grant and Carmen de Lavallade tell us about being “Astronauts” of their time.
In her play Post Black, Regina Taylor, along with legendary actresses Ruby Dee, Carmen de Lavallade, and Micki Grant, tells the story of Pearl; a 110-year old woman who is, among many other things, a cancer survivor. In this captivating one-woman play, Taylor uses Pearl to show us “Life is supreme, life is precious … life is something to be fought for with all of its complexities. There is nothing that we can’t move through.”
Taylor was one of five playwrights chosen to participate in the Signature Theatre’s new Residency Five initiatives as part of their expanded programming. This is a unique program that guarantees each playwright three world-premiere productions of new plays over the course of a five-year residency. Taylor will receive a significant cash award, full health benefits, a stipend to attend the theatre, access to Signature’s resources and staff, and like all of Signature’s playwrights, a place at the center of the artistic process. For her recognition, Taylor responded, “With an open heart, spirit, and mind I enter into this new experience as a student and strive to bring my full self to all the work presented.”
Regina Taylor
Actress, Director, Playwright, Activist. Golden Globe, NAACP Image, Tony, Peabody & Gracie, Hope Abelson, Helen Hayes, L.A. Dramalogue Award. First African-American woman to play Shakespeare’s Juliet in Broadway’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
A prolific playwright, Taylor penned and directed Crowns, the most performed musical in the country in 2007. The play pays homage to African-American matriarchs – and their beloved Sunday hats or “crowns” – by immersing audiences in the colorful richness of black Southern culture. Taylor has won numerous awards throughout her career and is a leading example of an artist-advocate whose work inspires humanity. Taylor is best- known for her role as Lilly Harper in the television series I’ll Fly Away. She starred in the CBS drama The Unit, in films such as The Negotiator, Courage Under Fire, A Family Thing, The Keeper, Clockers, Losing Isaiah, and Lean on Me. On stage in such plays as As You Like It, Macbeth, Machinal, The Illusion and Jar the Floor. An Artistic Associate with Goodman Theatre, her plays Magnolia and The Trinity River Plays have played there.
Micki Grant
A multi-talented actress, singer, author, composer-lyrist, playwright. Grammy Award Winner, Tony Award Nominee. CLIO Award Winner for commercial jingles. The first African-American cast member of a daytime soap opera.
Ms. Grant has appeared in numerous plays and musicals, on Broadway and in regional theatres, such as To Be Young, Gifted and Black, Brecht on Brecht, The Cradle Will Rock, Leonard Bernstein’s Theatre Songs, and Funnyhouse of a Negro among them. Of the multiple shows for which she has been both lyricist and composer, the most notable was, Your Arms Too Short To Box With God and Working which was adapted from Stud Terkel’s book of the same name. She has been the recipient of Grammy, Drama Desk, NAACP Image, Outer Critics’ Circle, and Obie awards. She performed throughout the country in the mid-1990s as Sadie Delaney in the stage play Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters’ First 100 Years. An enduring and remarkable talent, she additionally has historical significance, having been one of the first Black daytime contract players on network television with running performances on soap operas The Edge of Night, Guiding Light, and a seven-year run as attorney Peggy Nolan on NBC’s Another World.
Carmen de Lavallade
Legendary dancer, choreographer, professor, and stage and film actress. Awarded the Black History Month Lifetime Achievement Award, the Rosie, the Bessie, the Capezio Dance Award, and received her Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Juilliard.
de Lavallade began studying ballet at the age of 16. She studied painting, acting, music, set design and costuming, ballet, modern and ethnic dance. She made her Broadway debut in Truman Capote’s House of Flowers. Her television debut was in John Butler’s ballet Flight, and in 1957 she appeared in the television production of Duke Ellington’s A Drum is a Woman. She also appeared in several off-Broadway productions, including Othello and Death of a Salesman. An introduction to Twentieth Century Fox executives by Lena Horne lead to more acting roles between 1952 and 1955. She appeared in several films including Carmen Jones with Dorothy Dandridge and Odds Against Tomorrow with Harry Bellefonte.
She staged musicals, plays, and operas and became a professor and member of the Yale Repertory Theater. Choreographed Porgy and Bess and Die Meistersinger at the Metropolitan Opera. In 2010, she appeared in a one-night-only concert semi-staged reading of Evening Primrose by Stephen Sondheim.
Watch this incredible, once in a lifetime interview with these legendary trailblazing women.
