TAYLOR, ANTOINETTE “TONI”. A playwright, Taylor is a Louisville, KY, native and graduate of Eastern Kentucky University. Her most successful play is The Triangle, about a student in a genealogy class studying the Middle Passage slave trade who discovers a family linkage. Most of her plays were performed at the Juneteenth Legacy Theatre in Louisville founded by Lorna Littleway. Other plays Taylor wrote are Miss Amanda’s Place, And the Next Day They Changed the Water, More Than Cooking Going On in This Kitchen, and This Land Is Your Land/Can You Hear It?
TAYLOR, CLARICE. Active since the 1940s, Taylor is an actress and director of stage, screen, and television. Born in Buckingham County, VA, Taylor moved to New York City to study acting at the New Theatre School and the American Negro Theatre in Harlem. Taylor made her stage debut in the role of Sophie Slow in Abram Hill’s On Striver’s Row (1940). Subsequently, she was cast in Natural Man (1941), Home Is the Hunter (1945), The Peacemakers (1946), Rain (1948), and Skeleton (1948). Taylor was also associated with two prominent theaters. At the Committee for the Negro in the Arts in Harlem, she performed in A Medal for Willie (as the mother, 1950) by William Branch, and directed Gold through the Trees (1952) by Alice Childress. At the Greenwich Mews Theatre, she acted in Major Barbara (c. 1953) and in Branch’s In Splendid Error (1954) and codirected Childress’s Trouble in Mind (1955). In the late 1960s, Taylor performed at other off-Broadway theaters, such as the Negro Ensemble Company, as well as on Broadway. Television audiences of the late 1980s and early 1990s readily recognized Taylor as Grandmother Huxtable on The Cosby Show and for her portrayal of Jackie (“Moms”) Mabley in the off-Broadway production of Childress’s Moms (1987), for which she won an Obie Award for her performance.
TAYLOR, DOMINIC. A playwright and educator, Taylor was born in Orange, NJ. Taylor received a B.A. in engineering at Brown University (1987). After he was introduced to the work of the famed Rites and Reason Theatre Taylor switched his major, and in 1995, he emerged with an M.F.A. in creative writing and hasn’t looked back. After being commissioned by the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Taylor wrote his most successful play, Wedding Dance. Produced at the Crossroads Theatre Company in New Jersey, it won the first Scott McPherson Award. Other plays he wrote are Hype Hero, Up City Service(s), Public Transportation, Photo Op, Reflexions in D Minor, It’s Your Birthday, Arrythmia, and Personal History. Taylor’s plays have been produced across the country at Joseph Papp’s NYSF/Public Theatre, the Kennedy Center, Hartford Stage, and Playwright’s Horizons. He wrote several screenplays, including Hit Me on the Hip and Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Taylor is now associate director at the Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, MN. Among the awards and honors Taylor has accumulated are the Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, Jerome Foundation Fellowship, Illinois State Arts Council grant, McDowell Foundation fellowship, Theatre Communications Group Award, and United States/Africa Writers fellowship. Taylor was a visiting assistant professor of theatre in the Africana Studies Department at Bard College.
TAYLOR, JACQUELINE “JACKIE.” Taylor, a director, actor, playwright, and producer, believes theater can be used as a strong educational tool and motivating force to help remove the blinders of racism. Discouraged by the negative images of black people in the era of blaxploitation films, Taylor founded the Black Ensemble Theatre (BET) in 1976. Not only has the BET thrived as an institution in theater-rich Chicago, Taylor has produced over 100 plays and musical biographies. More incredibly, the BET has done so in a fiscally prudent manner, never running a deficit or shutting down.
Born in Chicago, Taylor earned a B.A. in theater from Loyola University in 1973. After working for the Free Street Theatre, Victory Gardens, and the Goodman Theatre, she organized the BET. She had a three-pronged agenda—to create realistic roles for women, to avoid the stereotyping of African Americans, and to bring people of all races together in a communal setting. Initially the audiences were 100 percent black, but over the years, the demographics have changed to 55 percent black, 40 percent Caucasian, and 5 percent other. The bill of fare has changed over the years from such classics as A Raisin in the Sun, Glass Menagerie, and Julius Caesar to musically oriented biographies like Muddy Waters: The Hoochie Coochie Man, Great Women in Gospel, and The Nat King Cole Story. Indeed, musical biographies have become the signature of the BET. Taylor has taken on the role of playwright and has written such plays and musicals as The Other Cinderella and Muddy Waters (both cowritten with Jimmy Tillman), Dynamite Divas, Sweet Mama Stringbean (about Ethel Waters), Ella (biography of Ella Fitzgerald), This Is My Play Song (1978), and The Jackie Wilson Story (1999). This last play was such a huge success at the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, NC, in 2003 that the festival invited Taylor to return the show for an encore engagement in 2005. Taylor served as the artistic director of the Regal Theatre and was vice president of the League of Chicago Theatres. She also worked with troubled students in a Strengthening the School through Theatre Arts Program and was president of the African American Arts Alliance.
TAYLOR, MARGARET. See SNIPES, MARGARET FORD-TAYLOR.
TAYLOR, REGINA. An actor and playwright, Taylor was born in Dallas, TX. She earned a B.A. in theater arts from Southern Methodist University in 1981. Taylor is widely known for her role as Lily in the television series I’ll Fly Away, for which she received a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Emmy Award. She has appeared in such films as Clockers and The Negotiator, as well as in such Shakespearean productions as Macbeth, As You Like It, and Romeo and Juliet, for which she was the first black woman to play Juliet on Broadway. Taylor is also a playwright of substance, having written over 10 plays. Her most successful play is Crowns, adapted from the book of the same name. It premiered at the McCarter Theatre in 2002 and was an instant success. Subsequently, it played regional theaters throughout the United States at such theaters as the Intiman, Tyrone Guthrie, St. Louis Black Repertory, and Arena Playhouse, where it broke box-office records running at 99 percent capacity. The play was showered with honors, including four Helen Hayes Awards, a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Image Award, and seven Audience Development Committee Awards for excellence in black theater. Among the other plays Taylor wrote are A Night in Tunisia, Oblide, Watermelon Rinds, Drowning Crow, The Seagull (an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s play), Oo-Bla-Dee, Between the Lines, The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove, Jennine’s Diary, Inside the Belly of the Beast, and Behind Every Good Man. Taylor has been awarded a Distinguished Alumni Award from Southern Methodist University and a Best New Play Award from the American Critics Association for her play Oo-Bla-Dee.
TAYLOR, ROBERT “ROB”. In the early 1970s, Taylor was an inmate at Riker’s Island Prison in New York City. Rather than letting this situation debilitate him, he rechanneled his creative energies into a positive experience. Writing plays gave him a new perspective on life. Taylor collaborated with Cecil Alonzo to write Somewhere between Us Two (1972) while in prison. It was a poetic love story in one act. Two pen pals disappointed in each other when they finally meet reassess the qualities that attracted them to each other in the first place. The Alonzo Players produced it in Brooklyn at the Billie Holiday Theatre (1973) as well as the Black Theatre Alliance annual festival in New York (1974). Strike One Blow (1973) is a drama in one act coauthored with Alonzo. It is based on psychological challenges the author struggled with as an inmate. It was produced at the Tompkins Square Park Players in New York City and at the Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn (1973).
TEER, BARBARA ANN (1937–2008). A black theater founder, actress, educator, and choreographer, Teer was best known as organizer, producer, director, resident playwright, and executive producer of the acclaimed National Black Theatre (NBT, 1968). Born in East St. Louis, IL, Teer was educated at the University of Illinois (B.A. in dance, 1957). She studied drama with Sanford Meisner, Paul Mann, Phillip Burton, and Lloyd Richards and dance at Vigmont School of Dance in Berlin and in Paris. She was married to the late comedian Godfrey Cambridge and with him had two children. Teer had a rich and varied theatrical career. She danced with the Alvin Ailey and Louis Johnson Dance Companies and was dance captain on Broadway for Agnes DeMille in the musical Kwamina. She taught dance and drama in New York City public schools and founded with Robert Hooks the Group Theatre Workshop (1964), which later became the Negro Ensemble Company. In addition, she was cultural director of a teenage workshop at the Harlem School of the Arts (1967).
As the spiritual force and prime mover behind the NBT, Teer developed and created a black art standard that became the trademark of the NBT. All theatrical presentations, including plays, musicals, rituals, and revivals, adhered to her mandate to raise the level of consciousness, address political issues, educate, illuminate, and entertain. Teer also developed new art forms: “ritualistic revivals” and “blackenings.” She created what has been called the “Teer Technology of Soul” as a technique of teaching “God Conscious Art” at the NBT. She toured the NBT to theaters, colleges, and universities throughout the eastern United States, the Caribbean, and Nigeria. Since early 1960s, Teer has performed in film and frequently as a stage actress appearing in New York productions. She coproduced and directed the screenplay Rise: A Love Song for a Love People (1975), based on the life of Malcolm X. It received the National Association of Media Women’s Black Film Festival Award as best film (1975). Her directing credits include productions at the NBT, including her own dramatic works, off Broadway, and CBS-TV (1973). She was also contributing editor of numerous articles to black theater magazines.
Among the plays Teer wrote are Tribute to Brother Malcolm (late 1960s), a historical documentation of Malcolm X’s tragic assassination. The NBT Workshop performed it (late 1960s) under Teer’s direction. Organize! (1969–72) is a full-length ritual coauthored with Charlie L. Russell that took three years to evolve. In what was to become Teer’s trademark, she infused music, chants, and dance and involved audience members to create a warm spiritual experience. So-journey into Truth (also known as Soul Journey into Truth, 1975) is a full-length theatrical collage written, directed, and choreographed by Teer. The NBT produced it (1975). Thereafter it toured three West Indian and Caribbean countries. Costumer Larry Le Gaspi was honored with an Audience Development Committee (Audelco) Award (1976). Teer was the recipient of numerous awards and citations for her contributions to the theater and the community. Among them were the Vernon Rice/Drama Desk Award as best actress (196), the first annual Audelco Recognition Award in theater (1973), International Benin Award (1974), Cultural Arts Service Award from the Black Spectrum Theatre Company (1978), Monarch Merit Award from the Special Council for Culture and Art for outstanding contributions to the performing and visual arts (1983), and the National Black Treasure Award presented by the Hamilton Arts Center in Schenectady, NY, for outstanding contribution to black American theater.
TERRELL, VINCENT. A playwright, Terrell was a former artistic director of the Society of Creative Concern in Boston (1969–75). Terrell’s plays were produced by the society, including The Caskets (1969), a drama in one act that deals with the murders of three civil rights activists—Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.; Genuine Minstrel Show (1969), a musical comedy in three acts; Apollo #19 (1970), a one-act that centers on the relationship between two astronauts during a space flight; God’s a Faggot: A Biblical Confession (1970); a morality drama in one act that raises conflicting notions about spirituality; Sarge (1970), a drama in one act set in a courtroom, where a black soldier is on trial for defecting to the side of the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War; Several Barrels of Trash (1970), a morality drama in one act about garbage collectors who find a large sum of money; Shuttle United States (1970), a drama in one act advocating a revolutionary solution to America’s racial and political problems. Us (1971) is a drama in one act. As in his play Shuttle, the author offers another radical solution to America’s racial problems. Trotter (1972) is a historical drama in one act. It portrays the last days in the life of William Monroe Trotter, Boston’s militant black leader. Other plays Terrell wrote Will It Be Like This Tomorrow (1972); Trotter Debates (1973); An Evening with William Wells Brown (1974); From These Shores; or, Good Olde Crispus (1974); and Miss Phyllis (1974).
TERRY-MORGAN, ELMO. A playwright and educator, Terry-Morgan is one of the unsung heroes of black theater. As an associate professor and artistic director of the Rites and Reason Theatre (RRT) at Brown University, he continues the research-to-performance method (RPM) pioneered by its founder, George Houston Bass. The RPM is a systematic process that organizes teams of artists, scholars, and researchers in the creative development of new plays. Since its inception in 1970, the RRT has developed and produced some 75 widely divergent scripts, and spawned such playwrights as J. E. Franklin, P. J. Gibson, Dominic Taylor, and Jake Ann Jones. Terry-Morgan specializes in African American theater, African American folk traditions and expressions, and playwriting. Elmo, as his students call him, earned a B.A. in American history from Brown University and an M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of California at San Diego. He is also a director of plays and a playwright. Some of the plays he has written are The Fruits of Miss Morning, Heart to Heart: Ain’t Your Life Worth Saving (commissioned play), Spider Weave a Lovely Lie, Renaissance, Song of Sheba (a musical), and Ophelia’s Cotillion (a musical). Terry-Morgan is a member of the Audience Development Committee, Black Theatre Network, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, and the Dramatists Guild. He is also an associate director and playwright at the National Black Theatre in Harlem.
THEATRE OF THE ABSURD. A phrase that gained popularity after Alfred Jarry’s (white) production of Ubu Roi during the late 1800s. It was an alternative surrealistic theater form that viewed life and theater as being absurd. By the turn of the century, this absurdist style and confrontational stance influenced the works of such playwrights as Adrienne Kennedy in Funnyhouse of a Negro (1963), The Rat’s Mass (1966), and The Owl Answers (1965). Her objects and characters embrace multiple people and ideas, sometimes simultaneously, creating the effect of nightmares; however as in a dream, behind her kaleidoscopic vision hovers a literal story. Funnyhouse is emblematic of the madhouse of racism in America. A biracial woman is torn between the paradoxes of black and white, past and present, flesh and spirit. Shunned by the commercial theater, Kennedy’s plays gained popularity in institutions of higher education.
This avant-garde confrontational style also attracted the more radical sector of African American theater, such as Amiri Baraka’s (LeRoi Jones) Dutchman (1964), The Baptism (1964), The Slave (1962), and The Toilet (1962) and Ed Bullins’s The Electronic Nigger. Kennedy’s Funnyhouse and Baraka’s Dutchman were both honored with Obie Awards in 1964 as the best off-Broadway dramas of the season. The contemporary successor to this absurdist style is Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African American female playwright to receive the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Although Parks won the grand prize for Topdog/Underdog (2003, a nonabsurdist play), the influence of the absurdist style becomes evident in such plays as The Last Black Man on the Entire Earth.
THOMAS, VEONA. A director, playwright, storyteller, and entrepreneur, Thomas is the artistic director of Rejoti Productions in Teaneck, NJ. They have been a producing entity for the past 20 years, during which Thomas has usually directed three to four productions each year. A professional storyteller, Thomas has performed in schools, libraries, and senior centers in both New York and New Jersey. She has also written over 30 plays, one of which, The Diva and the Rapper, has been very successful. The play explores the generational conflict between an elderly blues singer and a young rapper. Among the plays Thomas has written are The Head Lady—Madame C. J. Walker, a dramatization of the life of C. J. Walker; Tuesday in No Man’s Land, about three women bonding in an abortion clinic; Nzinga’s Children (1983), which centers on a young woman having to choose whether to marry an unsuccessful black man or a successful white attorney; A Matter of Conscience (1985), in which a woman must make a decision between an easy theft and her conscience; and MLK: A Personal Look (1985), a one-woman show about the great civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King. Other plays she wrote are Couple Wanted, Heaven Sent, The Execution, and Follow the Drinking Gourd. Thomas is the recipient of the Grandmother Winifred Award and Puffin Award.
THOMPSON, GARLAND LEE SR. Born in Muskogee, OK, and raised in the state of Oregon, Thompson is a director, actor, poet, and playwright. He spent a year at the University of Oregon before he was lured to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. As a member of the touring production of Charles Gordone’s play No Place to Be Somebody, he ended up in New York City. It was there in 1973, that Thompson, along with actor Morgan Freeman, conceived the idea of a playwright’s workshop, a place where fledgling writers could work with professional actors and use audience feedback to develop their works. Thus, the Frank Silvera Writer’s Workshop was born. It still thrives today, with Thompson as the driving force.
As a playwright, Thompson’s plays were widely produced at such institutions as Studio West, Open Eye Theatre, the Schomburg Center, and the Negro Ensemble Company. Papa B on the D Train (1972), a play within a play, is about the New York subway system. Sisyphus and the Blue Eyed Cyclops (1970) is an exploration of the thin line between madness and sanity. The Incarnation of Reverend Good Blacque Dress (1978) is about a man who exorcises his demons during a surprise visit by an ex-girlfriend. Tut-Ank-Amen, The Boy King (1982) is a historical drama. Jesse and the Games (1984) is a dramatization of events leading up to Jesse Owens’s victory in the 1936 Olympic Games. Thompson received two Audience Development Committee Awards.
THOMPSON, TAZEWELL. Thompson is one of the more versatile directors and producers working today, being equally comfortable in plays, musicals, and opera. He is one of the first African Americans to assume the directorship of two white regional theaters. From 1992 to 1995, he was artistic director of Syracuse Stage. The versatility and broad palette of Thompson’s play selections led to his appointment in January 2005 as artistic director of the 75-year-old Westport County Playhouse, succeeding Joanne Woodward. He took the job, however, in 2006. He directed more than 60 plays and musicals across the country in venues like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Hartford Stage, Indiana Rep, and Goodman Theatre. He has also directed at La Scala, the Paris Opera, Teatro Real, and the Opera Bastille, as well as operas in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. Thompson has also directed plays at Arena Playhouse, Cleveland Playhouse, Virginia Stage Company, Lincoln Center, and a host of other regional theaters. He has directed the works of established masters like Molière, Euripides, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, Feydeau, and Shaw, as well as the modern playwrights Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Athol Fugard, Tennessee Williams, Terrence McNally, Marion McClinton, and Alan Ayckbourn. His opera productions include Les Dialogues des Carmélites and Porgy and Bess for the New York City Opera and Death in Venice for Glimmerglass Opera.
As a playwright, he is mostly known for Constant Star, a play with music about the life of civil rights activist Ida Wells Barnett. The play was an instant success, and Thompson has subsequently been commissioned to write plays for the Lincoln Center, South Coast Repertory Theatre, and People’s Light and Repertory Company. Thompson was a recipient of the Helen Hayes Award, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Image Award, Alan Schneider Distinguished Fund Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Theatre Residency Award.
THURMAN, WALLACE (1902–34). A major writer during the Harlem Renaissance, Thurman was a playwright, novelist, magazine editor, and film scenarist. He was born in Salt Lake City, UT, where he attended the University of Utah (1919–20). Lured by the vibrant literary movement in Harlem, Thurman settled in New York City in 1925. This was after he spent a few years in Los Angeles as a writer for the Outlet, a black newspaper. In Harlem, he assumed a position as a reporter and editor of the Looking Glass, a short-lived publishing house. His criticism of Alain Locke’s The New Negro (1925), the breakthrough anthology of black art during the Harlem Renaissance, set him apart from the “talented tenth,” as the black literary intelligentsia was called. Thurman also served as editor for the Messenger, a radical periodical (1926); as circulation manager for The World Tomorrow, a liberal white monthly (1926); and as cofounder of Fire!, a controversial magazine that included the works of younger black writers (it only had one issue). He cofounded and published with his own funds Harlem: A Forum of Negro Life, which resulted in two publications. Thurman also worked as a ghostwriter (1929) for True Story magazine (and other McFadden publications) and contributed articles to other magazines.
In 1929, Thurman earned critical acclaim for his first novel, The Blacker the Berry, and for his Broadway show Harlem. Blacker was about color stratification among blacks. Thurman, a dark-skinned man, depicted a somewhat autobiographical account of intraracism among dark- and light-complexioned blacks. Thurman cowrote with William Jourdan Rapp his three-act play Harlem: Cordelia the Crude and Black Belt, A Melodrama of Negro Life in Harlem (1929). It was taken from Thurman’s short story, Cordelia the Crude, A Harlem Sketch. A transplanted Harlem family from South Carolina is forced to give “rent parties” to survive while the daughter gets involved with a street hustler. It opened on Broadway (1929) at the Apollo Theatre (not the Apollo Theatre in Harlem) and ran for 93 performances with a cast that included Inez Clough as Ma Williams and Lew Payton as Pa Williams. The play moved to the Times Square Theatre on 42nd Street on April 1929 but was closed due to a strike (May 1929). The show was taken on the road by another company. It returned to Broadway at the Times Square Theatre for 16 performances (1929). Thurman also wrote Jeremiah the Magnificent (1930). After being hospitalized for six months in the city hospital of New York’s Welfare Island, Thurman died at age 32.
TILLMAN, KATHERINE DAVIS. A pioneer playwright, Tillman was among the first African American women to have a play published. Between 1890 and 1910, Davis wrote Fifty Years of Freedom; or, From Cabin to Congress. It was about the life of Benjamin Banneker, an early black astronomer, mathematician, scientist, and inventor. Aunt Betsy’s Thanksgiving (c. 1910) presents a mother who, many years earlier, abandoned her infant daughter, leaving her in the care of the child’s grandmother. The mother returns home as a wealthy woman to share her riches with her daughter and the grandmother.
TOLSON, MELVIN BEAUNORUS (1900–66). A playwright, poet, teacher, and politician, Tolson, was born in Moberly, MO. He attended Fisk and Lincoln Universities and earned an M.A. at Columbia University. For 20 years, Tolson taught English at Wiley College in Texas. He became a professor of creative literature at Langston University in Oklahoma, where he directed the Campus Dust Bowl Theatre and served four terms as mayor of Langston. In retirement, in the 1960s, Tolson was lured to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to assume a post created by the Department of Humanities. He is best known for his wildly poetically satirical look at life in Harlem in his book, Harlem Gallery (1965). It is widely hailed as one of the finest pieces of writing extant, and it put Tolson in the top ranks of worldwide wordsmiths.
Tolson was best known as a poet. He received numerous fellowships, prizes, and awards for his poems, which were widely published and anthologized. His playwriting efforts are The Moses of Beale Street (pre-1941), a full-length black miracle play with music coauthored with Edward Boatner, and Black Boy, a full-length drama adapted from Richard Wright’s autobiographical novel.
TONY AWARDS (ANTOINETTE PERRY AWARD). In 1947, the American Theatre Wing’s Talk of New York Award (Tony) started a program to celebrate excellence in the theater. It was named in honor of Antoinette Perry, the recently deceased (28 June 1946) actress, director, and producer who was also an active wartime leader of the American Theatre Wing. The Tony Awards debuted with a dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel (6 April 1947) on Easter Sunday. Awards are usually presented in seven categories along with special awards.
African American recipients of the Tony Awards from its inception to 2007 include Harry Belafonte for best supporting or featured actor (Almanac, 1954), A Raisin in the Sun for best play (1960), Diahann Carroll for best actress in a musical (No Strings, 1962), Pearl Bailey for a special award (1968), James Earl Jones for best actor in a play (The Great White Hope, 1969), and the Negro Ensemble Company for a special award (1969). Other recipients are listed according to the decade the award was received.
In the 1970s, Cleavon Little won for best actor in a musical (Purlie, 1970), Ben Vereen for best actor in a musical (Pippin, 1973), Raisin for best musical (1974), The River Niger for best play (1974), The Wiz for best musical (1975), Ted Ross for best supporting or featured actor in a musical (The Wiz, 1975), Dee Dee Bridgewater for best featured or supporting actress in a musical (The Wiz, 1975), Geoffrey Holder for best director and best costume designer (The Wiz, 1975), Charlie Smalls for best score (music and lyrics, The Wiz, 1975), Trazana Beverly for best featured Actress in a play (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, 1977), Dolores Hall for best featured actress in a musical (Your Arms Too Short to Box with God, 1977), Diana Ross for a special award (1977), and Nell Carter for best featured actress in a Musical (Ain’t Misbehavin’, 1978).
In the 1980s, Lena Horne won a special award (Lena Horne, The Lady and Her Music, 1981), and Hinton Battle won for best featured actor in a musical (Sophisticated Ladies, 1982); Ben Harney for best actor in a musical (Dreamgirls, 1982); Jennifer Holliday for best actress in a musical (Dreamgirls, 1982); Cleavant Derricks for best featured actor in a musical (Dreamgirls, 1982); Michael Peters for best choreographer (Dreamgirls, 1982); Charles “Honi” Coles for best featured actor in a musical (My One and Only, 1983); Hinton Battle for best featured actor in a musical (Tap Dance Kid, 1984); Fences for best play (1987); Lloyd Richards for best director (Fences, 1987); James Earl Jones for best actor in a play (Fences, 1987); Mary Alice for best featured actress in a play (Fences, 1987); L. Scott Caldwell for best featured actress in a play (Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, 1988); Ruth Brown for best actress in a musical (Black and Blue, 1989); Hinton Battle for best featured actor in a musical (Miss Saigon, 1991); and Cholly Atkins, Henry LeTang, Frankie Manning, and Fayard Nicholas for best choreographers (Black and Blue, 1989).
In the 1990s, Laurence Fishburne won for featured actor in a play (Two Trains Running, 1992), Gregory Hines for featured actor in a play (Jelly’s Last Jam, 1992), the Goodman Theatre of Chicago for a special award (1992), Tonya Pinkins for best featured actress in a musical (Jelly’s Last Jam, 1992), George C. Wolfe for best director of a play (Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, 1993), Jeffrey Wright for best featured actor in a play (Angels in America: Perestroika, 1994), Ruben Santiago-Hudson for featured role in a play (Seven Guitars, 1996), George C. Wolfe for best director in a musical (Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk, 1996), Savion Glover for best choreographer (Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk, 1996), Ann Duquesnay for best featured actress in a musical (Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk, 1996), Audra McDonald for best featured actress in a musical (Ragtime, 1998), Donald Holder for best lighting designer (The Lion King, 1998), and Crossroads Theatre Company for best regional theater (1999).
In the 2000s, Heather Headley won for best actress in a musical (Aida, 2000), Viola Davis for best featured actress in a play (King Hedley II, 2001), Russell Simmons for best director of a special theatrical event (Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, 2003), Phylicia Allen-Rashad for best actress in a play (A Raisin in the Sun, 2004), Audra McDonald for best featured actress in a play (A Raisin in the Sun, 2004), La Chanze for best actress in a musical (The Color Purple, 2006), Bill T. Jones for best choreography (Spring Awakening 2007), and Alliance Theatre for best regional theater (2007).
TOOMER, JEAN (NATHAN EUGENE TOOMER, 1894–1967). Toomer was a mulatto playwright, poet, short-story writer, essayist, and novelist. He is historically significant as one of the most original and influential talents of the Negro Renaissance in Harlem. Born in Washington, DC, of a prestigious family, he was the grandson of P. S. B. Pinchback, the famous black politician of the Reconstruction who served as acting governor and later state senator of Louisiana. Growing up, Toomer never knew much about his father, Nathan Toomer, who deserted his mother, Nina Pinchback Toomer. After high school in 1914, he took up playwriting. He was inspired by the writing style and themes of George Bernard Shaw’s plays. His most noted play is Kabnis (1923), an experimental drama in one long act and six scenes. It is a semiautobiographical play about a black intellectual from the North. Kabnis accepts a teaching position in the Deep South, where he searches for his identity. Although he makes the pilgrimage to the region that he posits as his ancestral home, he does not identify with other successful blacks or mingle with uneducated blacks who live in that region because of cultural dissimilarities. Failing to find intellectual, religious, or romantic fulfillment, Kabnis gets a revelation from Father John, who lives in a basement. John has not spoken for years. He is the symbol of the archetypal wise old man or spiritual ancestor of the black race who makes a mundane pronouncement. Thoroughly disillusioned by this utterance, Kabnis consoles himself with a night of debauchery and resolves to abandon his intellectual pursuits and begin an apprenticeship as a blacksmith. The play was rejected for production because of its avant-garde style, but during the renaissance of the 1960s, it was reclaimed as a classic by the bourgeoning black aesthetic movement. Other plays Toomer wrote include The Sacred Factory (1927) and The Gallonwerps (1928). Both are full-length expressionistic dramas. Still other plays he authored are A Drama of the Southwest (1935) and Topsy and Eva (c. late 1930).
TOPDOG/UNDERDOG (2001). Suzan-Lori Parks, best known as a writer of avant-garde plays, adapted the linear format for Topdog/Underdog and became the first African American woman to win the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for drama. It is a darkly, sardonic story of two shiftless brothers, Lincoln and Booth, whose obsession with three-card monte, a street card game, affects their lives. The play touches on sibling rivalry, family myth, slavery, past and present, and history. The play debuted at Joseph Papp’s NYSF/Public Theatre on 22 July 2001. The two-actor play was directed by George C. Wolfe, artistic director of the NYSF/Public Theatre in New York City. It featured Jeffrey Wright and Don Cheadle as the Booth brothers in a limited run. On 7 April 2002, the play opened to great reviews on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre, with a cast including Wright and Mos Def, playing some 144 performances through 11 August of that year before closing. The production also received several other major awards—the Drama Desk Award as best play, a Theatre World Award for Def, and a Tony Award and Drama Desk Award in the outstanding actor category for Wright.
TOWNE STREET THEATRE (TST). The TST was established in 1992 in Los Angeles by the triumvirate of Nancy Cheryl Davis, Nathaniel Bellamy, and Nancy Renee. They had a twofold purpose: to develop and produce new works by Los Angeles playwrights reflective of the black experience and to produce a Black Classic Series for works by established African American playwrights that have become a seminal part of black theater. Not too much has been seen of the latter, but they have succeeded admirably in developing and producing the works of new young playwrights like Barbara Morgan, Stan Sellars, Harriett Dickey, and Sherie Bailey. Established playwrights have been represented by productions of Loften Mitchell’s The Phonograph and Charlie Russell’s rambunctious comedy Five on the Black Hand Side.
The TST is one of only four black theaters in Los Angeles, having been in existence for exactly 15 years now, which portends well for the future. They have produced widely divergent plays, like Bernardo Solano’s Science and the Primitives, a look at altered states in the jungles of South America, and Barbara White Morgan’s The Dance Begins When the Waltz Goes Backward, an urban comedy that explores the encounter between an aging, white, savvy television writer and a black intellectual, homeless philosopher. The TST has added two similar additional programs to the mix over the years. One is a film reading series, and the other a stage reading affair. Both are designed to allow aspiring film writers and playwrights to hear their works read by professional actors and others informed by a professional sensibility. Scripts are read and judged by a professional panel of writers before being accepted for a reading. Revenue to support the TST comes from admissions, donations, grants, and corporate support from Toyota Motor Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Miller Brewing Company, and the Beuth Foundation.
A TRIP TO COONTOWN (1891). This is a musical farce by Bob Cole and William (Billy) Johnson, with additional music by Willis Accooe. It is the first full-length musical comedy written, performed, directed, and produced by African Americans and one of the first to depart from the minstrel pattern. This landmark production showed producers and theater owners there was an audience for all-black shows.
A Trip to Coontown opened on Broadway at the Third Avenue Theatre (4 April 1898) for eight performances. Its journey to Broadway began at the Proctor’s Music Hall in New York City (August 1897), where Cole rehearsed the show. Coontown received its tryout in the Catskills in upstate New York and in South Amboy, NJ (27 September 1897). By the end of the year, it had opened at Milner’s Eighth Avenue Theatre in New York City but had to close because of the New York Theatrical Syndicate lockout. After touring the Canadian provinces to great success at the Queens Theatre in Montreal, the Victoria Park Theatre in Ottawa, and in Toronto (February 1898), it landed at the Third Avenue Theatre. The plot centers on a naïve old black man who is saved at the last minute from being cheated out of his pension by a con man. The setting in Coontown served as a backdrop for several vaudeville specialty acts by Jim Wilson (equilibrist), Lloyd G. Gibbs (the greatest living black tenor), the Freeman Sisters (contortional dancers), and Juvia Roan (the Cuban nightingale). Among the cast were Cole (Willie Wayside, a tramp, played in whiteface), Billy Johnson (Jim Flimflammer, a confidence artist), Silas Green (the grand old man of Coontown), and Bob A. Kelley (Silas Green Jr.). The show closed in 1891 after touring for two seasons.
TURMAN, GLYNN. Turman is an actor, director, and producer. He made his stage debut at the age of 12 when he played young Travis in the ground-breaking 1959 Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee. Eleven years after his debut, he performed in Raisin again in the 1970 production when he played the lead role of Walter Lee under the direction of theatrical guru Woodie King Jr. at the New Federal Theatre. A Native New Yorker, Turman studied theater at the Manhattan School of Performing Arts, where he launched a career in theater and show business that extends to this day. He has taught acting for 15 years at the Inner-City Cultural Center in Los Angeles, where C. Bernard Jackson presided. There he directed W. B. Burdine’s satirical western musical Deadwood Dick.
Turman worked onstage and in radio, movies, and television in a varied career that has extended from coast to coast. His career has focused mainly on movies and television, where he has made over 100 appearances in everything from the legendary Cooley High to the hit HBO series The Wire, in which he has a recurring role. Turman is known as a character actor who works “beneath the radar,” in that he is noted for developing steady, workmanlike characters who contribute immeasurably to the script, but afterward one is hard pressed to recall his name. This faceless name recognition works both ways, for when viewers recognize the face, they know they are assured of a fine performance. His current project is touring his one-man autobiographical show titled Movin’ Man. Though autobiographical in form, Movin’ Man pays homage to those who helped him along the way, people who are no longer here, like Ossie Davis, Lloyd Richards, and Brock Peters. As Turman says, “I had some great shoulders to stand on—and you’ll get to meet those shoulders in Movin’ Man.”
He now lives outside of Los Angeles on a ranch. There he established Camp Giddy Up, a free western-style summer camp for inner-city and at-risk children. Turman is also a professional rodeo rider and competes on a national level as his schedule permits. He is the recipient of several National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image Awards and an NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also the holder of several awards for his humanitarian work with youth in the community.
TURNER, JOSEPH (1936–87). A playwright, newspaper journalist, and television producer, Turner was born in Phoenix, AZ. His educational credentials include a B.S. in business administration from Loyola University in Chicago and an M.A. in communication, theater, and playwriting from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is credited with writing at least 12 plays, which includes A Change Gon’ Come (mid-1980s), exploring the mysterious and surprising death of singer Sam Cooke in a seedy Los Angeles hotel in 1967. It was produced for a lengthy engagement at Excellence through the Arts in Chicago (mid-1980s). The Family Gathering (1987) is a full-length drama. It is a passionate and emotionally charged play focusing on the interactions and conflicts of a black southern family after the matriarch becomes critically ill. It was produced at the South Side Community Arts Center in Chicago (June 1987) under the direction of Claudia McCormick (Turner attended a performance on the evening before his death). The Scheme (1968) is a drama in one act depicting the moral dilemmas that confronts a black National Guard officer during the 1960s civil rights riots.
TURNER, MARY ELIZABETH (BETH). A playwright, actor, editor, publisher, administrator, and educator, Turner was a native of Troy, NY. She is best known as the founder of Black Masks magazine, a national bimonthly publication that she established in 1984 to chronicle the black performing arts. Turner received her B.A. (magna cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa) from Colby College in 1963, having spent her junior year at the University of Paris in France. She earned her master’s in education from New York University in 1966 and shortly thereafter married actor Charles Turner. At his suggestion, she began writing for the stage by enrolling at the famed Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop in New York. Between raising two children and working for various institutions of higher learning, she has written over 10 plays, most of which have been produced professionally. Among them are The Hungering Lion (1976), a short play about Mali’s first emperor; Crisis at Little Rock (1977), about the desegregation of Little Rock High School in Arkansas; Ode to Mariah (1979), centering on a young girl’s struggles against racism and sexism and which was produced at the Henry Street Settlements Family Theatre; Visions: A Dream for the Bronx (1980), a musical history in one act about the Bronx; Gursky and the Fabulous Four (1980), a comedy about students who outwit drug dealers; LaMorena (1981), a play in one act depicting the struggles of an interracial Puerto Rican family; and Sing on Ms. Griot (1976), which was produced at Afro American Total Theatre. Turner’s plays have also been produced at the New Federal Theatre (NFT), Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, Smithsonian Discovery Theatre, Lehman College, and the Madrona Youth Theatre in Seattle. She has held a variety of positions during her career, including with the Harlem Youth Opportunity Unlimited, the Urban League, the Franklin Library, Bloomfield College, NFT, and New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where she worked for 15 years until her retirement in 2005.
Turner received many grants and awards during her career, such as the Hamilton College Travelli scholarship (1961), membership in Phi Sigma Iota French Honor Society (1962), membership in Phi Beta Kappa through the Maine chapter (1963), John Hay Whitney opportunity fellowship (1965), New York State Council on the Arts grant (1974), New Jersey State challenge grant, and Bloomfield College Award (1990). Turner in retirement continues to produce Black Masks but is still working for the ultimate prize, a Ph.D.