JACKMON, MARVIN E. See X, MARVIN (MARVIN E. JACKMON).
JACKSON, CLARENCE BERNARD (1927–96). Born in Brooklyn, Jackson was a composer, playwright, and community activist. He graduated from the High School of Music and Arts (arts major), earned a B.A. and M.A. from Brooklyn College, and was musical director at the Dance Center in Los Angeles (1954–56). Approximately 10 years later, in the midst of the 1965 Watts riot, he set the groundwork for the Inner-City Cultural Center. For the next 30 years, he ran the center with the notion of bringing art that was multicultural to Southern California. Jackson theorized art was the only tool left to save the world from self-destruction.
As a playwright, Jackson was known primarily for Fly Blackbird (1960), a musical in two acts he coauthored with James V. Hatch. A satire set during the sit-in movement of the 1960s, it was about a group of blacks in the Deep South who were trying to decide the most effective methods of securing their civil rights. Producers expanded Blackbird to a full-length play for its production at the Shoebox Theatre in Los Angeles (fall 1960) with student performers, many of whom went on to professional stage and film careers, such as Micki Grant and Thelma Oliver. The show was produced off Broadway in a revised and expanded version, with additional material by the director, Jerome Eskow, at the Mayfair Theatre for 127 performances (February 1962). Avon Long assumed the leading role. Blackbird earned the authors an Obie Award (1961–62). It was produced at the Institute in Black Repertory Theatre, housed at the University of California at Santa Barbara (summer 1968). Jackson also wrote his own musicals, Earthquake (1973) and an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello called Iago (1996). Other musicals followed.
Jackson was the recipient of numerous honors and awards. Among them were the Obie Award for best musical (1961–62); Unity Award, Los Angeles (1960); John Hay Whitney fellowship (1963–64); special commendation from the Los Angeles City Council (1969, 1978); three Dramalogue Awards (one each for writing, production, and direction) for Iago (1979) Los Angeles Weekly Award for best play, Iago (1980); Drama Logue Award for directing Piano Bar (1980); City of Los Angeles Certificate of Appreciation (1982); and Los Angeles Human Relations Commission Certificate of Merit (1982).
JACKSON, ELAINE. A playwright, Jackson graduated from Wayne State University. A recurring theme in her plays is a loss of innocence in the world of young black girls and women. Jackson’s first published play, Toe Jam (1971), explores the realities of black girlhood. It is unique, given the abundance of plays at the time dealing with black manhood and social crises. The play received wide recognition. Jackson produced three other plays of note. Paper Dolls (1979) is an attack on the hegemonic construct of American beauty that inundated the entertainment business. The late Hazel Bryant at the Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art in New York City (January 1983) produced it under the direction of Duane Jones. Cockfight (19787) is set on a chicken farm outside San Francisco and centers on relationships among black men and women in American society, with one set of partners filled with demands and ambitions, while the other only dreams of being a writer or a country-and-western singer. Woodie King Jr. directed a production at the American Place Theatre (1978), with a cast of Morgan Freeman, Charles Brown, Gylan Kain, and Cynthia McPherson. Birth Rights (1987) is a comedy. It is a portrait of nine anxious expectant mothers in a delivery room of an overburdened metropolitan hospital in New York City and of the lack of communication among the overworked doctors and the authoritarian nurses. Among the awards Jackson received were the Rockefeller Award for playwriting (1978–79), Langston Hughes Playwriting Award (1979), and National Endowment for the Arts Award for playwriting (1983).
JACKSON, SAMUEL L. Over the past 20 years, Jackson, an actor and producer, has emerged as a highly respected and sought-after actor in Hollywood. He is among the top three African American actors financially, as his films have grossed over $4 billion worldwide. Jackson’s portrayal of the bible-quoting hit man Marcellus Wallace in Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction drew the attention of both audiences and critics. Since then, he has worked steadily in films and costarred with such A-list actors as Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Sharon Stone, and Kevin Spacey. Jackson has appeared in over 100 films, including the Star Wars trilogy and films like Shaft, The Red Violin, Jurassic Park, Die Hard with a Vengeance, The Long Kiss Goodnight, S.W.A.T., Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, Patriot Games, Rules of Engagement, and The Negotiator.
Born in Washington, DC, Jackson was raised in Chattanooga, TN. He attended the historically black college of Morehouse in Atlanta, GA, as a student of architecture. After participating in a school production of Bertolt Brecht’s Three Penny Opera, he changed his major to drama. Morehouse was also where Jackson met filmmaker Spike Lee, who later cast him in Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever. At Morehouse, he was schooled in the basics of drama, including voice production, elocution, script and character analysis, movement, and choreography and appeared in such plays as King Heroin by Al Fann, Getting It Together by Ed Bullins, and Dr. B. S. Black by Barbara and Carleton Molette.
Jackson moved to New York after graduation and eventually found work with the Yale Repertory Theatre, Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival, and the Negro Ensemble Company. During a decade of work, he appeared in Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children; Ntozake Shange’s Spell #7; Richard Wesley’s The Mighty Gents; and three of the 10-play August Wilson canon, The Piano Lesson, Fences, and Two Trains Running. By this time, he was also working in films but not consistently. In the late 1980s, Jackson developed a severe addiction to drugs and alcohol. After an overdose in 1991, Jackson was committed to a rehabilitation facility in New York, where he finally conquered his habit. He returned to the screen in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever. Jackson played secondary roles until his breakout role in Pulp Fiction (1994). Jackson’s many awards include a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Image Award as well as awards from the Berlin Film Festival, Acapulco Black Film Festival, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
JAHANNES, J. ARTHUR. Jahannes is a playwright, poet, and scientist. He received his education at Lincoln University (cum laude, 1964), Hampton University (M.A., 1966), and the University of Delaware (Ph.D., 1972). Among the plays he wrote is One More Sunday (1985), an operatic folk story that shows how a church congregation maneuvers politically in preparation for receiving Dr. Martin Luther King. Ain’t I Something! (1985) is a musical set in the 1950s and 1960s about life growing up black. And Yet We Sing (1986) focuses on black family life in America from 1600 to the 1980s. La Dolorosa (1986), in oration and music, depicts the life, death, and rebirth of Jesus Christ. Go Down Death (1985) is an adaptation of James Weldon Johnson’s vignettes from the Bible.
JEANNETTE, GERTRUDE. An actress, playwright, director, and teacher, Jeannette was one of the great ladies of the American theater. She spent over 50 years as a performer on and off Broadway, at regional theaters, in films, and on radio and television. In 1942, aside from taking bookkeeping classes, Jeannette became the first female licensed cab driver in New York due to the paucity of males during the war. Three years later, she took speech classes at the American Negro Theatre, where she launched her theatrical career with a part in Our Town. During her lengthy career, Jeannette appeared in such plays as God’s Trombones and The Great White Hope and in such films as Cotton Comes to Harlem, Shaft, Nothing but a Man, Vieux Carre, and Lost in the Stars.
In 1979, at age 65, Jeannette founded the Hadley Players Theatre, a community theater headquartered in Harlem, where she lives, as her way of giving back to the community. Her goal was to hone theatrical abilities and to enhance the artistic and cultural life of Harlem. To that end, Jeanette wrote and directed many of the productions and cultivated and trained hundreds of young people who wanted to pursue a career in the theater. Jeanette has been recognized with numerous awards and honors across the span of her career. They include the Audience Development Committee Outstanding Pioneer Award (1984), National Black Theatre Festival Living Legend Award (1991), Lionel Hampton Legacy Award (1998), Arkansas Black Hall of Fame (1999), and Actors Equity Paul Robeson Award (2002).
JELLY’S LAST JAM (1992). George C. Wolfe wrote and directed this 2-act, 12-scene musical drama retrospective of Jelly Roll Morton. The music was arranged by Luther Henderson, who composed additional music with lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. Jelly’s Last Jam was developed at Crossroads Theatre Company in New Brunswick, NJ (1991), before it moved to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles (winter 1991–92). It opened on Broadway at the Virginia Theatre (April 1992), with Wolfe as director, Hope Clarke as choreographer, and Gregory Hines and Ted L. Levy doing the tap choreography. The life and death of Morton, a New Orleans jazz musician of mixed heritage, is celebrated on the eve of his death by an African spiritualist, Chimney Man, and characters from his past life as Morton wrestles with his repulsion against being neither black nor white. Among the original cast were Gregory Hines (Jelly Roll Morton), Savion Glover (Young Jelly), Keith David (Chimney Man), and Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Buddy Bolden, a musician). Among the awards Jelly received were Tony Awards for Hines for best leading actor; Tonya Pinkins for best featured actress; Wolfe for best book and best director; Luther Henderson for best original score; Hines, Levy, and Clarke for best choreography; and Toni-Leslie James for best costume design.
JENKINS, FRANK SHOCKLEY. Born in Seattle, Jenkins, a playwright and poet, is a veteran writer who lives in Los Angeles. He traveled throughout the world as a merchant marine seaman, lived in France and New York City, and worked a variety of jobs, including at the U.S. Post Office. He has written several books of poetry, including My World, which was presented by him and his actress wife, Lynn Hamilton, at Purdue University, Northwestern University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Southern California. His plays have been produced at such venues as the Matrix Theatre, Amistad Cultural Center, and the Back Lot Theatre. As a playwright, he has written Driving While Black in Beverly Hills (1969), which centers on a middle-class black family’s drives through Beverly Hills; Nobody: The Checkered Life of Bert Williams; My World (1978); and The Boy and the Bird (2006). Jenkins’s books of poetry include I Didn’t Start Out to Be a Poet (1977), Black Mac Say (1981), What It Is? (1981), Curious about Myself (1987), and From behind My Eyes (2002).
JENNINGS, CALEEN SINNETTE. Jennings, a playwright, is professor of theater at American University in Washington, DC. She is the author of over 80 plays and is a two-time Helen Hayes Award nominee for outstanding new play. In 2002, she received the Heidman Award from Actor’s Theatre of Louisville for her play Classyass, which has been published in five anthologies. In 2000, her play Free Like Br’er Rabbit was performed at the Kennedy Center New Visions/New Voices Children’s Play Festival. In 1999, she received a $10,000 grant from the Kennedy Center’s fund for new American plays for her play Inns and Outs. Her Playing Juliet/Casting Othello was produced at the Folger Elizabethan Theatre in 1998. Jennings received her B.A. in drama from Bennington College and her M.F.A. in acting from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She has been a faculty member of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Teaching Shakespeare Institute since 1994. In 2003, Jennings won the award for outstanding teaching of playwriting from the Play Writing Forum of the Association of Theatre in Higher Education. She received the university’s 2003 Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award.
JOHNSON, GEORGIA DOUGLAS (1886–1966). A playwright and poet, Johnson was one of the leading members of the Washington, DC, literati during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Born in Atlanta, GA, she received her education at Atlanta University, Howard University, and Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She taught school for a brief period in Atlanta before moving to Washington, DC, with her husband, Henry Lincoln Johnson, a lawyer who was appointed recorder of deeds by President Howard Taft.
For some 40 years, her home in Washington, DC, located on S Street in the northwest section, earned the distinction of being a literary haven for black artists and intellectuals of the area. Because they met on Saturday nights, they were called the “Saturday Nighters.” Among the well-known figures who frequented her home were Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, May Miller, Sterling Brown, Owen Dodson, Angelina Grimké, Marita Bonner, and Richard Bruce Nugent.
Johnson wrote and published four volumes of poetry, her husband’s biography, a novel, numerous short stories, and about 30 one-act plays. Among the plays she penned is Sunday Morning in the South (1925), a tragedy in one act set in a small southern town. A frail grandmother learns her innocent grandson has been arrested and accused of assaulting a white woman the night before. While she is seeking help from a prominent white woman, she is told her grandson has been lynched by a white mob, a fatal blow to the grandmother, who collapses and dies. There are two versions of the play, one in which singing is heard from a black church in the background throughout the play and the other in which the singing is heard from a white church. Blue Blood (1926), a drama in one act, explores black social snobbery, miscegenation, and incest. On their wedding night, a black couple and their respective mothers learn that the bride and groom have the same father, a wealthy white southern aristocrat. Blood received honorable mention in the Opportunity Contest Awards (May 1926). In its first production by the Krigwa Players in New York City, there were three performances (April 1927). Plumes (1927) is a folk tragedy in one act. It explores the superstitions and funeral practices of lower-class blacks during the 1920s. A desperately ill daughter’s indigent mother struggles with a decision whether to spend the $50 savings on an emergency operation not guaranteed to save her mother’s life or on a lavish funeral “with plumed horses.” The mother makes her decision based on the coffee-ground readings of a superstitious friend who declared the operation would do no good. The play won first prize in the Opportunity Contest Awards of 1927. It was followed by productions at the Harlem Experimental Theatre, New York (1928), and the Cube Theatre in Chicago (1928). Other plays Johnson wrote are Safe (c. 1929), a one-act drama; Blue-Eyed Black Boy (c. 1930), a drama in one act; and William and Ellen Craft (1935), a black history play in one act. Johnson gained a modicum of attention for writing plays dealing with lynching, such as And Still They Paused, Midnight and Dawn, A Bill to Be Passed (about the need for an antilynching law), Camel-Leg, Heritage, Miss Bliss, and Money Wagon. Johnson remained in Washington, DC, still writing and publishing her work until her death at 80.
JOHNSON, JAVON. An actor and playwright, Johnson is a multitalented young man from Pittsburgh, PA. He is widely regarded as a protégé of the late August Wilson, who befriended him at the Edward Albee Theatre Conference held in Valdez, AK, in 1998. As an actor, Johnson has also performed in several of Wilson’s plays. A native of Anderson, SC, Johnson holds a B.A. from South Carolina State University and an M.F.A. in Theatre Arts from the University of Pittsburgh (1999).
Johnson had already begun writing plays in college, winning the Lorraine Hansberry Award for the first play he wrote, Papa’s Blues (1998). The next year (1999), he won the coveted Theodore Ward Award for best play for Hambone. Johnson’s plays include The Spanish Jade, Breathe, Runaway Home, The House That Jack Built, A Noose for Bettyanne, Cryin’ Shame, Eighty Six, Things That Lovers Do—with George Faison, The Pawn, Sanctified, Hobo King, and Homebound. As an actor, he has appeared in Fences, Measure for Measure, Pericles, and Macbeth, as well as in several films. He is a founding member of the Chicago-based Congo Square Theatre Company and functions as its literary manager. In a relatively short period, Johnson has earned several prestigious awards. They include best one-act play at the American College Theatre Festival competition (1996), Kennedy Center fellowship for the Eugene O’Neill Playwright Conference (1998), Yukon/Pacific New Play Award (1998), Pittsburgh Playwright Award (1999), and the Sundance Theatre Lab (2000).
JOHNSON, OKORO HAROLD. Johnson, a veteran director, actor, and administrator, has worked in the Chicago area for years to help improve the cultural life of the citizenry. He was born in Chicago in 1925, eventually earning a B.A. in theater from Roosevelt University and an M.A. from Governors State University. Johnson holds the distinct honor of cofounding the eta Creative Arts Foundation with Jackie Taylor in 1969. He functioned as the artistic director of eta for the next 17 years. Johnson also served as director of the South Shore Cultural Center in Chicago and has taught at the collegiate level. Johnson has directed such shows as A Candle in the Wind, A Change Is Gon’ Come, Purlie Victorious, Fats Waller: His Life and Times, and Jazz Set. The plays he has written include The Regal Theatre, SCLC: Second Coming, Last Chance, Strange Fruit, and Kintu and the Law of Love. He has also appeared in the film versions of A Raisin in the Sun, The Wedding, and The Spook Who Sat by the Door. Johnson is a recipient of the Paul Robeson Award.
JOMANDI PRODUCTIONS. Based in Atlanta, GA, Jomandi is one of the oldest black theaters in the country. It was cofounded in 1978 by Thomas W. Jones II and Marsha Jackson Randolph. The production company evolved from a play Jones wrote as a tribute to his father that became its initial production. Jomandi eventually incorporated as a nonprofit 501(c)3, producing theater for the eclectic city of Atlanta. It has developed into one of the leading theaters in the country in producing cutting-edge new work and providing a forum for a new generation of black writers. Jones, an actor and playwright of increasing renown, led the company for 22 years in producing over 100 productions, including the premiering of over 50 new plays. Jomandi has toured in over 40 states and five countries. Among the plays they have presented are If God Was a Blues Singer; Josephine Live; Zooman and the Sign; Buddy Bolden’s Blues; Do Lord Remember Me; That Serious He-Man Ball; Boesman and Lena; The Black Play; Every Now and Then I Get the Feeling; The Wizard of Hip; House of Cold Funk; Harlem Nutcracker; Trick the Devil; And the Men Shall Also Gather; Black Nativity; Hip 2: Birth of the Boom; and Welcome Home, Marian Anderson.
The theater has garnered much acclaim and many awards over the years, including the 1990 Governor’s Award for the arts, the Bronze Jubilee Award, the Back Stage Dramalogue Award, an Audience Development Committee Award, and eight Helen Hayes Awards. The theater, however, went through a transitional phase. Jones left the company in 2000 in pursuance of other interests. Jackson Randolph also left soon thereafter. In 2002, though, it moved into their first permanent space, a 99-seat black box theater located at City Hall East. Since then, the theater has initiated a theatrical training program called JADA, the Jomandi Academy of the Dramatic Arts. The program is being run under the direction of Carol Mitchell-Leon, head of the Theatre Arts Program at Clark Atlanta University.
JONES, DANIEL ALEXANDER. Jones is an interdisciplinary performance artist. This form of theater took root in the late 1980s, flourished in the 1990s, and is now recognized as a theatrical art form, albeit not without detractors. Jones works from a large canvas, incorporating visual art, poetry, live music, tape recordings, slideshows, and other elements designed to clarify the message of the event, though the message can be interpreted several ways.
A native of Springfield, MA, Jones received a B.A. in African studies from Vassar College (1991) and earned an M.A. in theater from Brown University (1993). His works have been performed in Seattle; New York City; Boston; Atlanta, GA; Dublin, Ireland; London; and a host of other cities. He has worked in collaboration with many of the leading performance artists in the world, including Robbie McCauley, Erik Hen, Carl Hancock Rux, and Helga Davis, among others. Two of his more popular performances were Bel Canto, a drama set in New England in which opera and jazz intermix. It is a story of a shy, young man abandoned by his father. The other piece, Blood: Shock: Boogie, is the story of a young man discovering his homosexuality and the fantasy world he inhabits to counteract societal pressures. Other “plays” Jones wrote are Earthbirths: The Blackbird Cipher, a jazz play; Ambient Love Rights; Black Barbie in the Hotel de Dream; Whale; Phoenix Fabrik; Clayangels; and La Chanteuse Nubienne.
Jones taught at the University of Texas at Austin as a professor in playwriting. In 2006, he won a prestigious Alpert Award of $50,000 given to “early midcareer” artists in the fields of dance, film, video, music, theater, and the visual arts. Jones was also awarded a 2000 National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group playwright-in-residence fellowship at Boston’s Theatre Offensive. In addition, he has received other grants and awards from such organizations as the Jerome Foundation, Playwrights Center, Creative Capital Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation. Jones received the 2008 Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award.
JONES, JAKE ANN. An actor, composer, and playwright, Jones is one of a growing cadre of young artist who are re-inventing the art of the theater. She was born in Harlem, New York, where she earned a degree from CCNY in 1988. Jones then enrolled at Brown University, where she studied in the Rites and Reason program, obtaining an M.F.A. in 1996. Thereafter followed a life of modeling, acting, and eventually writing after she enrolled in the Frank Silvera Writers Workshop. She has also worked with the New York Theatre Workshop, the Public Theatre, and the Trinity Repertory Theatre.
Her most prominent work to date has been Death of a Ho, which she later developed into a musical Magic Kingdom: A Ho’s Tale. The musical has quickly become a staple at performance venues around the country. Other performance pieces written by Jones include Pedisyon (1996) in which a Catholic woman ponders what to do after her fourth pregnancy. The play is an exploration of guilt, race, and class interlaced with Haitian voodoo. Black Bitches Brew (1995) a solo performance piece with the kitchen as a metaphor for the power and empowerment of women. Sojourner Truth Meets Napoleon (1993) is an imaginary meeting between two opposites from different centuries who attempt to find common ground. Jones is the recipient of a Jonathan Larson Award for her musical, The Magic Kingdom: A Ho’s Tale.
JONES, JAMES EARL. An actor, Jones has one of the most recognizable and distinctive basso voices of the past half century that is the very symbol of authority. People throughout the world recognize him both as the iconic voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars trilogy and the voiceover for a world news network when he tones, “This is CNN.” Born in Arkabutla, MS, Jones was raised by his grandparents on a farm in Michigan. He overcame a severe stuttering problem with the aid of a teacher, using acting as a tool to correct it. He quit medical school at the University of Michigan to pursue acting but wound up in the army. After military service, he moved to New York City, where he made his theatrical debut in 1957. He has performed in over 200 stage, movie, and television projects, including The Lion King, Clear and Present Danger, The Great White Hope, Field of Dreams, The Hunt for Red October, Fences, Othello, Light, Dr. Strangelove, Homicide: Life on the Street, King Lear, As the World Turns, Cry, The Beloved Country, Patriot Games, Baal, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, The Defenders, and Gabriel’s Fire, to name but a few.
Jones has been recognized for his acting with many awards and honors during his lifetime, including two Tony Awards, five Drama Desk Awards, two Obie Awards, two Cable Ace Awards, four Emmy Awards, and a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Image Award. President Bill Clinton awarded him a National Medal of Arts Award in 1992 for his distinguished career in theater.
JONES, LEROI. See BARAKA, AMIRI (LEROI JONES).
JONES, SARAH. Jones, a performance artist and playwright, was born in Baltimore, MD. She attended Bryn Mawr College on a Mellon minority scholarship intending to be a lawyer but put her education on hold when her sister died. She also attended the United Nations International School, where she was introduced to people of various nationalities and learned many different speech patterns, nuances, and inflections. Her interest turned to writing, and she became involved in the renowned Nuyorican Poets Café (NPC) in New York, eventually winning the Grand Slam Championship in 1997. She began developing monologues from her poetry based on experiences with relatives of her parents after they divorced while she was growing up in Washington, DC; Boston; and New York City. Jones performed her first solo show, Surface Transit, at the NPC in 1998. Owing to its success, it attracted the attention of several feminist organizations as well as Equality Now, which commissioned Jones to write a play addressing discriminatory laws against women, Women Can’t Wait. It premiered in 2000 at the United Nations International Conference on Women’s Rights.
Jones wrote three more plays, each one adding to her reputation as one of the fine wordsmiths of her generation. Each play features multiple characters, all deftly handled by Jones, who has no formal training in acting. She has appeared in off-Broadway productions of The Vagina Monologues and on the PBS series City Life. She also performed on CBS, ABC, and NBC. In 2000, Variety magazine named her among the “Top Ten Comedic Talents of the Year.” Abroad, Jones has performed in India, Nepal, Europe, and South Africa and locally at such diverse locations as the American Place Theatre, the Apollo Theatre, Riker’s Island, and the 92nd Street YMCA in New York City. Other plays Jones wrote are Waking the American Dream, A Right to Care, and Bridge and Tunnel. The latter was produced off Broadway (2005) at the Circle in the Square Theatre. In 2006, it premiered on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Of the awards and honors bestowed on Jones, the most significant are the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Commission Award, Helen Hayes Award, Theatre World Award, Drama League Award, and the Ford Foundation Award.
JONES, SILAS. A University of Los Angeles City College playwright, Jones was born in Paris, KY. He studied literature and creative writing at Washington State of America Open Door Program. His plays were produced by the Negro Ensemble Company and at the Mark Taper Forum, Penumbra Theatre, and other venues across the country. His most successful plays are American Medea and The Afrindi Aspect. Other plays Jones wrote include Canned Goods, The Eight Planet, God in Little Pieces, The John Doe Variations, Night Commander, Romancing Stereotypes, Vagaries, and Waiting for Mongo. Jones has also written several short stories and a TV documentary. He is a member of Dramatists Guild of America and is the recipient of a Gwendolyn Brooks Literary Award.
JONES, SYL. Jones, a playwright and journalist, graduated from Augsberg College in 1970 with a journalism degree. He has worked in that profession while juggling a career that includes both film- and playwriting. As a playwright, he has written over 50 plays, mostly in conjunction with the Mixed Blood Theatre Company in Minneapolis. His plays have also been produced at the Kennedy Center, Penumbra Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Arena Playhouse, Mark Guthrie Theatre, and Great American History Theatre, among others. One of his plays, Black No More, won the prestigious Roger Stevens/Kennedy Center Award for best play in 1998. A representative sampling of his plays is Mother of the Movement, Lazarus, Gunplay, Cincinnati Man, The Brotherhood, Burnt, Gunplay, Shine, Sacrament, and Fire in the Bones. During a lengthy career, Jones has been duly recognized for his work, accumulating such awards as the Cornerstone Award, a Jerome fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the McKnight Foundation Award, and the Mixed Blood American National Playwrights Award.
JONES, THOMAS W., II. Jones, a longtime actor, director, and producer, has mounted over 200 productions worldwide. He is perhaps best known as the founder/director of Jomandi Productions in Atlanta, GA, a company he started in 1978, which still exists today. Jones was born and raised in Queens, where he began writing as a child. He earned a B.A. with honors from Amherst College. Jones started Jomandi Productions as a vehicle to produce a play he had written as his senior thesis, Every Father’s Child. It was quickly expanded to become a broad-based community theater dedicated to providing a forum for new work and expanding visions.
As a playwright, Jones has written several plays of note. They include Hip II; Birth of a Boom; and his critically acclaimed one-man show, The Wizard of Hip. Probably one of his most acclaimed works is Bessie’s Blues, a tribute musical to the great blues singer Bessie Smith. Jones’s main interest is in music, and his efforts have resulted in the following musicals of note: Three Sistuhs; Point of Revue; Two Queens, One Castle; Cool Papa’s Party; Harlem Rose: A Love Song to Langston Hughes; and Bricktop, written with Calvin A. Ramsey. Jones has been the recipient of many awards during his career, including a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Award and 12 Helen Hayes Awards. After 22 years with Jomandi, having built the theater into the third largest African American theater in the country, Jones resigned in 2000 and created his own new company, VIA Theatrical. Jones continues to write, direct, and perform in venues around the country and the world.
JONES, WALTER. An actor, director, and playwright, Jones is a native of Fayetteville, NC. He has been involved in theater for over 25 years, either as an actor or director. His plays have been produced at venues throughout the United States, including the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theatre, New Federal Theatre, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Museum of Modern Art, Penumbra Theatre, and regional theaters and colleges across the country. Jones adapted Langston Hughes’s musical Black Nativity and produces it each year with great success. Other plays are Jazznite, Nigger Nightmare, Fish and Chips, Reverend Brown’s Daughter, Dudder Lover, The Boston Party at Annie Mae’s House, Mom’s Long Leash, The Withering Rose, and Underground. He also collaborated with Edgar White and Norma Jean Darden in writing a musical, The Lady from Philadelphia, a tribute to the operatic diva Marian Anderson. Jones was also a staff writer for the Norman Lear–Bud Yorkin sitcom What’s Happening? Jones is the recipient of a Rockefeller fellowship grant for playwriting.
JORDAN, JUNE (1936–2002). A playwright, poet, and educator, Jordan was one of the most acclaimed and prolific writers of the 20th century, producing over 50 volumes of poetry, plays, children’s books, and political essays. She was also an educator, a professor who taught English, women’s studies, and African American studies at City University of New York, Yale, Sarah Lawrence, and the University of California at Berkeley during her lifetime. Her birthplace was Harlem, and she was educated at Barnard College, where she excelled. She is known primarily as a poet but had some success with the three plays, enjoying productions at Lincoln Center, American Place Theatre, Seven Stages Theatre, Eureka Theatre, John Jay Theatre, and several theaters in Europe. Jordan also served as playwright-in-residence at the New Dramatists Theatre in 1987–88. The plays Jordan wrote include All My Blessings, a semiautobiographical play about a young woman growing up with a tyrannical father in Bedford-Stuyvesant during the civil rights movement. Bang Bang, Uber Alles! is a musical in which activists hold a benefit concert in Ku Klux Klan territory to protest racism. I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky is about a diverse group of people who are trapped together during the Los Angeles earthquake and have to overcome their differences. Among the numerous awards and honors Jordan received were the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Award, a McDowell fellowship, a Yado fellowship, Ground Breakers Dream Award, and Chancellors Distinguished Lectureship at the University of California at Berkeley and from such organizations as the New York Foundation for the Arts, Prix de Rome, National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, and Massachusetts Council on the Arts.
JOYCE, ELLA. Joyce is an up and coming actor of the 21st century who has made a name for herself both onstage and in television. She is best known for her role as Eleanor in the 1990s sitcom Roc with Charles Dutton. Born as Cherron Hoye in Chicago, Joyce was raised in Detroit, where she studied acting at the Performing Arts Curriculum at Cass Technical High. She also attended Eastern Michigan University to hone her dramatic talents. Joyce has performed in regional theaters throughout the country, including the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, the Seattle Repertory Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, South Coast Repertory Theatre, Boston Huntington, Yale Repertory Theatre, and the Juneteenth Legacy Theatre. She has the unique distinction of creating two roles from the August Wilson canon—Risa in Two Trains Running (1992) and Tonya in King Hedley II (1999). Other plays she performed in include Crumbs from the Table of Joy by Lynn Nottage, The Mighty Gents by Richard Wesley, Split Second, Medea, and Anna Lucasta.
Joyce has also made over 30 television and movie appearances in shows like PBS Hollywood Presents; Bubba Ho-tep; Selma, Lord, Selma; The Jamie Foxx Show; Sabrina, the Teenage Witch; Seinfeld; Clockin’ Green; The Client; Bid Whist Party Throwdown; and Who Made the Potato Salad? Her most recent project, A Rose among Thorns, is a one-woman biopic of the life of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. It met with great success at the 2007 National Black Theatre Festival, her eighth consecutive appearance at the festival as a performer. The carefully researched play debuted at New York’s Richard Allen Center in 2006 and has been constantly touring since. Joyce has been the recipient of an Audience Development Committee Award, a Jeff Award, and a Black Theatre Alliance Award.
JUA, CHAKULA CHA (CAYETTE MCNEIL). Jua, born Cayette McNeill, is known as an actor, director, writer, producer, and enabler of all things theatrical. He is a living legend in his hometown of New Orleans, where he has been involved in theater since 1968. As a youngster, he was enthralled while witnessing a performance by the Free Southern Theatre (FST). Following his stint in the U.S. Air Force, he returned and worked as a staffer for the FST not knowing this was the beginning of a long theatrical career. After the demise of the FST in 1972, he began working for the Ethiopian Theatre as an actor and later directing plays for them. Eventually he founded the Chakula Cha Jua Theatre Company in 1985, and they have performed continuously. Jua has been an active presence in New Orleans theater for many years, at one time teaching theater at Xavier University and serving as president for the Alliance of Community Theatres. He regularly tours the schools and libraries of New Orleans, either involving students in storytelling or performing one of his one-man shows, such as Has Anyone Here Heard of Langston Hughes?
JUBILEE THEATRE. Based in Fort Worth, for over 25 years, Jubilee Theatre has been providing black theater of high quality to the people of Texas. Rudy and Harriett Eastman founded Jubilee (1981), with Rudy serving as its artistic director. The first five years, it was a gypsy operation, performing in churches, lobbies, and schools. By 1986, it had made great strides in obtaining 501(c)3 nonprofit status and obtaining an Actors Equity contract. This enabled Jubilee to bring in professional actors, to merge with its resident company, and to elevate the quality of productions. Most of the productions were traditional plays, such as God’s Trombones, Langston Hughes’s Christmas spectacle Black Nativity, and original musical The Blues Ain’t Nothin’.
In 1993 and 1995, Jubilee held two successful fund-raising campaigns, which the administration used to enlarge office space and increase staffing. They also began to produce more challenging work by staging Crumbs from the Table of Joy by Lynn Nottage, Cookin’ at the Cookery by Marion J. Caffey, and Home by Samm-Art Williams. The 2003–4 season marked another turning point. They increased the seating capacity to 150 seats, renovated the lobby, and increased dressing room and lobby space without going into debt. Jubilee also launched an educational outreach program in the school system that involved over 38,000 students. The theater has seen its audience rise each year and serves an average of 12,000 patrons yearly. Unexpectedly, artistic director Rudy Eastman passed away. A year later, a nationwide search produced his successor—Professor Edward Smith, a theater veteran with an impeccable record. The transition has been seamless, with Smith introducing a program of staged readings in the 2006–7, along with A Lovesong for Miss Lydia by Donald T. Evans and August Wilson’s epic journey Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
JUNEBUG PRODUCTIONS, INC. (JP). In the late 1960s, John O’Neal, a playwright, actor, and director, founded JP, an African American theater company based in New Orleans. It was one of the many multicultural artistic collaborations O’Neal organized. Earlier in the decade, he had cofounded the historic Free Southern Theatre (FST) and later the Color Line Project, a social-justice group. O’Neal began his theatrical journey at the height of the civil rights movement. Growing up in Mound City, IL, O’Neal had been subjected to racial tensions and social upheaval in what he described as a rigidly segregated community of 2,200 people divided along racial lines.
After the demise of the FST (late 1960s), O’Neal embarked upon a one-man show utilizing dance, music, and storytelling. Although O’Neal came from a family of privilege, that did not protect him from being subjected to oppression and exploitation. To combat social injustice, O’Neal put together a performance piece akin to the storytelling traditions of the Deep South called Don’t Start Me to Talking or I’ll Tell You Everything I Know. He embodied onstage the character of Junebug Jabbo Jones, a modern-day African American storyteller who enlightened audiences with humorous introspection. After the success of this show, he added three other works that comprise the Junebug Cycle—You Can’t Judge a Book by Looking at the Cover, Till the Midnight Hour, and Trying to Find My Way Back Home, for which O’Neal’s son made his stage debut. Each piece was interactive. JP engaged audiences through six humorous tales using down-home charm to tell the truth about coming of age in the cotton fields of Pike County, MS; leaving home, and getting old. For more than 30 years, O’Neal traveled to numerous community and educational institutions and regional theaters with versions of the Junebug Cycle, captivating audiences throughout the country from east to west.
JUNETEENTH LEGACY THEATRE (JLT). The JLT is Kentucky’s only professional African American theater company. It is a testament to the day blacks gained their freedom. On 19 June 1866, slaves of Ashton Villa in Galveston, TX, first learned they were free owing to the executive order of President Abraham Lincoln (he had signed the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, three and a half years earlier). It became a day of celebration and family reunions for blacks akin to the Fourth of July in the United States.
In 1993, producer, director, playwright, actress, and educator Lorna Littleway founded the JLT in Louisville and assumed the mantle of artistic director of the Minority Theatre Workshop. She also served as codirector of the African American Theatre Program at the University of Louisville (1994–99). As an assistant professor there, she designed courses in African American theater history, dramatic literature, and performance. Littleway also initiated the Juneteenth Festival of New Works: A Cultural Celebration of Emancipation, which she produced from 1997 to 1999. Littleway has directed extensively on the regional theater circuit and at colleges and universities.