Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Pitch Central: where playwrights meet producers
PitchCentral is a trading floor for theatre. The platform provides the opportunity for producers, theatre companies and writers to pitch new or previously produced work to new markets. The company is also creating cross territory venue and festival directories and service guides to provide members with all the information they need to maximize the ROI on their cultural investment. The service is free to playwrights. To learn more, please click the post's title.
Fine Artistree Productions looking for directors (England)
Rosalyn Wright
Are you a theatre director with a passion for new plays? Does the idea of Pop Up theatre in London appeal to you?
Our company is on the lookout for hot new directing talent who can bring new plays from page to performance. We'd like to talk to you if you are interested in the process of showcasing new talent and enabling emerging artists find their audience.
To learn more, please click the post's title.
Owa wins NAACP Theatrical Playwrights Award
Please click image to enlarge.
Congratulations, Owa! It's good to see that our favorite iconoclast, button-pushing, gadfly is finally getting recognized for his work. Well deserved and more power to you.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
AAPEX makes history on Monday, September 19th with Hershell Norwood's BILLIE'S BLUES
Dear Folks
AAPEX is set to make a little history on Monday, September 19, when we kick off the Metro Nashville Parks Theatre Deaprtment's NEW PLAY READING SERIES, a year long series conceived by Parks administrator Carolyn German, to promote playwrighting in Nashville. Based on the research I have done, it looks like this will be the first Metro sponsored new play reading series in the country.
We are particularly grateful to AAPEX member Peter Lawson Jones of Cleveland for his support of this project.
See details and flyer below.
AAPEX is set to make a little history on Monday, September 19, when we kick off the Metro Nashville Parks Theatre Deaprtment's NEW PLAY READING SERIES, a year long series conceived by Parks administrator Carolyn German, to promote playwrighting in Nashville. Based on the research I have done, it looks like this will be the first Metro sponsored new play reading series in the country.
We are particularly grateful to AAPEX member Peter Lawson Jones of Cleveland for his support of this project.
See details and flyer below.
Jazmn47
jazmn47@aol.com
jazmn47@aol.com
The evening will be hosted by Helen "Olaketi" Shute-Pettaway, one of the six artists honored in this year's FIRST NIGHT ceremonies for her outstanding contribution to Nashville Theatre over the past 25 years.
Partnering with FILM NASHVILLE, the evening will kick off with a screening of the 2003 documentary ME & MY OLD VOICE: BILLIE HOLIDAY IN HER OWN WORDS by Nashville film maker Peter Neff.
Special Guest Artist PERLIE DUNN will follow with her rendition of STRANGE FRUIT, the Billie Holiday signature song which was recognized by Time Magazine in 1999 as the most important song of the 20th Century.
Then our audience will get in on the ground floor of an exciting new award winning play about the life of "Lady Day" when Courtney McClellan directs a cast of Nashville's finest actors in a staged reading of BILLIE'S BLUES by Oregon playwright Hershelll Norwood.
Narrated by the enchanting Elan Crawford, the cast features Vilia Steele as Bille Holiday and includes Dr. Dara Talibah, Jonah Kraut, Max Desir, Dominique Howse and Julie Ness. Jonah Kraut pulls double duty as musical director. Due to language and some of Billlie's personal issues, the reading is recommended for mature audiences.
AN EVNING WITH BILLIE HOLIDAY is honored to inaugurate the Metro Parks Theatre Debarment's New Play Reading Series. a unique and innovative project conceived by Parks Artistic Director Carolyn German to showcase our city's outstanding acting and playwrighting community.
Attached is our flyer for the event thanking our sponsors for their support. Please show YOUR support by passing this flyer on to others!
Come to Nashville and Go to the Theatre!
Please click image to enlarge.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
The Flip Side to BILLIE'S BLUES by Hershell Norwood
The Flip Side
In 1939, Billie Holiday cut a record.
It was a record whose significance we may only, just now, be able to put into proper historical perspective. It heralded the beginning of revolution on more than one front.
On one side was STRANGE FRUIT written by a Jewish activist named Abel Meeropol, who was "better known as" Lewis Allen. STRANGE FRUIT would quickly become Holiday's signature song, the song with which she closed many of her shows (when she was allowed to sing it). The song after which there was never an encore. The song which was recognized as the Best Song of the Century by Time Magazine in 1999.
On the flip side was FINE AND MELLOW, written by Billie Holiday.
STRANGE FRUIT made Billie Holiday famous at the time. If she walked into a room today and sang the song I'm sure she would become as much a sensation in our time as she was in her own, because there is no other song like STRANGE FRUIT and, I'm sure, no musical experience that would equal her performance of this particular song.
Enter Barney Josephson, a Jewish shoe salesman from Trenton, New Jersey and a great champion of Jazz and African American musicians. In 1938, Josephson opened the first integrated night club in the United States - CAFE SOCIETY: THE WRONG PLACE FOR THE RIGHT PEOPLE, where Billie Holiday began singing STRANGE FRUIT.
The world wanted Billie to record STRANGE FRUIT, but Columbia, who held her contract, was afraid of the song and refused to record it. John Hammond, who was her agent at Columbia, didn't think the song was for her, but he grew to see things differently, though he always felt that in some ways STRANGE FRUIT did damage to Holiday's career.
Enter Milton Gabler, a Harlem born Jewish fellow with a great love of jazz, who founded his own recording company on 42nd St - Commodore Records. Gabler became the champion of the song and of Holiday when he offered to record STRANGE FRUIT in 1939. Columbia agreed to release Holiday from her contract obligations so that the recording could be made.
This was the old days. It was a 78 speed vynal disk with just one cut on each side. So they needed something for the flip side.
Billie may be best known as a singer, but she's just as important as a songwriter, and Billie had a song and that song was FINE AND MELLOW.
FINE AND MELLOW was the complete antithesis of STRANGE FRUIT - one of those kind of scary co-dependant torch songs of the era that advocate that it is better to date a cad than to not date at all - but that's really fun to sing and play - and that audiences love. So FINE AND MELLOW went on the flip side of STRANGE FRUIT.
At first it didn't matter. For those of us who grew up with 45s, I'm sure you remember that you bought a song for the hit cut but that didn't mean you ever played the flip side - until one day, for whatever reason, you did listen to the unheard cut and asked your self - "WHY did I never listen to THAT song?"
Meanwhile, back at the recording studio, Milt Gabler did something extraordinary: He copyrighted FINE AND MELLOW. And he copywrighted it in Billie Holiday's name. If standard business practices had been followed, as the producer, he would normally have copywritten the song under his own name or the Commodore label. But Gabler was one of a handful of whose ethics and mission seem to have been rooted in the true spirit of the Constitution, and he, Josephson and Meeropol are outstanding examples of the Jewish contribution to American jazz and the road to integration and the unlearning of racism in our country.
Which makes history - because in the early phases of the recording industry, songwriters sold the songs (i.e. ownership/copyright) to the recording companies. As a general business practice, it would not have occurred to a songwriter to snag a copyright. So, by ipso or facto, Billie Holiday scored a hit with FINE AND MELLOW that represents a very avant garde moment in the history of the BUSINESS of songwriting. And this is how it happened:
Somewhere someone discovered FINE AND MELLOW in a way that somehow did not reflect the association with Billie Holiday and a recording was made by Decca featuring Alberta Hunter.
Eventually, of course, Holiday got wind of this and she stepped forward with her copyright. Billie got money for the Alberta Hunter recording.
But it wasn't just Billie Holiday who stepped forward - it was the people around her - Barney Josephson, Milton Gabler, John Hammond and countless others - her extended "professional entourage" if you will - establishing Holiday as a force whose talent, magnetism and contribution to our history extend far beyond the nightclub stage and the recording studio.
And the moral is - Listen to the flip side.
BILLIE'S BLUES - a new play about Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit and Fine & Mellow by Hershell Norwood. For a review copy of the script, contact:
Jaz Dorsey
Dramaturg
The African American Playwrights Exchange
Nashville, Tennessee
www.africanamericanplaywrightsexchange.blogspot.com
It was a record whose significance we may only, just now, be able to put into proper historical perspective. It heralded the beginning of revolution on more than one front.
On one side was STRANGE FRUIT written by a Jewish activist named Abel Meeropol, who was "better known as" Lewis Allen. STRANGE FRUIT would quickly become Holiday's signature song, the song with which she closed many of her shows (when she was allowed to sing it). The song after which there was never an encore. The song which was recognized as the Best Song of the Century by Time Magazine in 1999.
On the flip side was FINE AND MELLOW, written by Billie Holiday.
STRANGE FRUIT made Billie Holiday famous at the time. If she walked into a room today and sang the song I'm sure she would become as much a sensation in our time as she was in her own, because there is no other song like STRANGE FRUIT and, I'm sure, no musical experience that would equal her performance of this particular song.
Enter Barney Josephson, a Jewish shoe salesman from Trenton, New Jersey and a great champion of Jazz and African American musicians. In 1938, Josephson opened the first integrated night club in the United States - CAFE SOCIETY: THE WRONG PLACE FOR THE RIGHT PEOPLE, where Billie Holiday began singing STRANGE FRUIT.
The world wanted Billie to record STRANGE FRUIT, but Columbia, who held her contract, was afraid of the song and refused to record it. John Hammond, who was her agent at Columbia, didn't think the song was for her, but he grew to see things differently, though he always felt that in some ways STRANGE FRUIT did damage to Holiday's career.
Enter Milton Gabler, a Harlem born Jewish fellow with a great love of jazz, who founded his own recording company on 42nd St - Commodore Records. Gabler became the champion of the song and of Holiday when he offered to record STRANGE FRUIT in 1939. Columbia agreed to release Holiday from her contract obligations so that the recording could be made.
This was the old days. It was a 78 speed vynal disk with just one cut on each side. So they needed something for the flip side.
Billie may be best known as a singer, but she's just as important as a songwriter, and Billie had a song and that song was FINE AND MELLOW.
FINE AND MELLOW was the complete antithesis of STRANGE FRUIT - one of those kind of scary co-dependant torch songs of the era that advocate that it is better to date a cad than to not date at all - but that's really fun to sing and play - and that audiences love. So FINE AND MELLOW went on the flip side of STRANGE FRUIT.
At first it didn't matter. For those of us who grew up with 45s, I'm sure you remember that you bought a song for the hit cut but that didn't mean you ever played the flip side - until one day, for whatever reason, you did listen to the unheard cut and asked your self - "WHY did I never listen to THAT song?"
Meanwhile, back at the recording studio, Milt Gabler did something extraordinary: He copyrighted FINE AND MELLOW. And he copywrighted it in Billie Holiday's name. If standard business practices had been followed, as the producer, he would normally have copywritten the song under his own name or the Commodore label. But Gabler was one of a handful of whose ethics and mission seem to have been rooted in the true spirit of the Constitution, and he, Josephson and Meeropol are outstanding examples of the Jewish contribution to American jazz and the road to integration and the unlearning of racism in our country.
Which makes history - because in the early phases of the recording industry, songwriters sold the songs (i.e. ownership/copyright) to the recording companies. As a general business practice, it would not have occurred to a songwriter to snag a copyright. So, by ipso or facto, Billie Holiday scored a hit with FINE AND MELLOW that represents a very avant garde moment in the history of the BUSINESS of songwriting. And this is how it happened:
Somewhere someone discovered FINE AND MELLOW in a way that somehow did not reflect the association with Billie Holiday and a recording was made by Decca featuring Alberta Hunter.
Eventually, of course, Holiday got wind of this and she stepped forward with her copyright. Billie got money for the Alberta Hunter recording.
But it wasn't just Billie Holiday who stepped forward - it was the people around her - Barney Josephson, Milton Gabler, John Hammond and countless others - her extended "professional entourage" if you will - establishing Holiday as a force whose talent, magnetism and contribution to our history extend far beyond the nightclub stage and the recording studio.
And the moral is - Listen to the flip side.
BILLIE'S BLUES - a new play about Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit and Fine & Mellow by Hershell Norwood. For a review copy of the script, contact:
Jaz Dorsey
Dramaturg
The African American Playwrights Exchange
Nashville, Tennessee
www.africanamericanplaywrightsexchange.blogspot.com
For those who haven't heard Strange Fruit, here it is:
The Harlem Swing Dance Society will dance through the Harlem reading of D.C. Copeland's "Once Upon A Time in Harlem: A Jitterbug Romance."
Jihad Qasim & Barbara Jones
Photo by Louis Boone
Story by Eugene Melendez
Ballroom dancing was the center of activities in Harlem and the heart and soul of the Harlem Renaissance, from the mid 1920’s and up. The ballrooms of Harlem were (and should still be) the re-socialization place where people learned the customs and norms of decency and respect from their elders.
The men learned how to lead women masterfully, without sexual connotations… being compelled with discipline and good judgment. And the woman learned how to trust respectable guidance from a man… and follow gracefully.
In Harlem the art of ballroom dancing is experiencing a phenomenal revival, and two individuals, Barbara Jones and Jihad Qasim, are making their mark as guides in a movement for Harlem’s multiple dance legacies to be cultivated in
Barbara Jones is Executive Officer of The Harlem Swing Dance Society (THSDS), a new
- Formalize and preserve Lindy Hop and Swing Dance culture in its
- Reintroduce the historic dance art of Lindy/Swing to the Harlem Community
- Teach Harlem’s youth that
- Have
THSDS also aims to clarify that Swing dancing was originally called Lindy Hop, as in when Lindbergh flew or "hopped" across the Atlantic (legend has it that people started joyfully hopping around the Savoy ballroom). When the word finally reached downtown it was said that “they’re swinging uptown”. Thus the term “Lindy Hop” was in time nicknamed Swing dancing, and this phrase became more popular in years to come.
Jihad Qasim is President of the non-profit organization Consolidated Block Association. Its principal fundraising arm is "The Committee to Preserve Ballroom Dancing.” Its mission is to appeal to the music industry and other corporate sponsors for resources to open venues and teach the ballroom arts to
As a promoter of ballroom dance, Jihad is following the footsteps of his grandfather William (Willie) Teachy, who promoted ballroom dance before and during the Harlem Renaissance (and was also president of the famous 98th/99th Street Association). Jihad is proficient in the dance styles of Lindy Hop/Swing; Mambo, Son, Merengue and teaches these. Also noteworthy is "The Harlem Walk": This is a slow, suave drag-walk across the dance floor done to smooth R&B tunes reminiscent of the Doo Wop music of the '50s. This is one of Jihad’s specialties that he wants to revive.
Jihad also advocates that the benefits of ballroom dancing:
- Bring people of all ages together for mutual intergenerational communication
- Helps combat Youth violence and teaches life skills
- Promotes good hygiene habits and a healthy/modest dress code
- People learn to appreciate live music
- Encourages our youth to keep the dance cultures alive
- Good fun exercise, and helps fight obesity
Both Jihad and Barbara frequently work together to restore this respectable art form. Since Winter 2011 they, along with dedicated dance instructors, have made available Swing dance classes and workshops. These have been free or of modest cost in the
Quite a number of community organizations have lovingly assisted with the cause of promoting and preserving
Minisink/Beacon
NYC Public Library: Hamilton Grange Branch
Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Community Center
New Song Community Corporation
Abyssinian Development Corporation
Harlem Arts
The Harlem Children’s Zone
Keeping the art of Ballroom dancing alive and thriving in
For more information, Barbara and Jihad can be reached here and updates can be found at theharlemswingdancesociety.blogspot.com, Facebook under The Harlem Swing Dance Society and Twitter under “HarlemSwingBack.”
"Once Upon A Time In Harlem: A Jitterbug Romance" is raising funds for the reading through IndieGoGo. You can learn more by clicking the post's title.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Monday, September 5, 2011
The Ruby Prize: Annual new play award to woman of color playwright (9/15 deadline)
Please click image to enlarge.
For more information, please click post's title to visit website.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Red Harlem Readers: Welcome to the 5th Season
September 11, Sunday at 4:00 - Free admission! Complimentary spiced tea!!
"Welcome to the 5th Season"
Acknowledging the painful memories of 9/11/2001 we celebrate the continuity of country and community with readings from favorite poets and original short stories by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson and others Read by: Michele Fulves, Cordis Heard, Sandra M. King and Lori Payne
Red Harlem Readers, Food for the Mind, Body and Soul
Indian Cafe, Broadway, between 107th and 108th Streets
Associates: Richard Gaffield, Anne Gefell, Jerry Hassett, Cordis Heard and Lori Payne
To participate as writer, director, actor, reader and/or arts administrator, please email us: rhreaders@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/rhreaders
Find us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-RED-HARLEM-READERS/119092438126538
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