August Wilson Festival

KATHRYN BOSTIC

participant

KATHRYN BOSTIC is known for her work on film, TV and live theater. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and Television Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bostic has written for Broadway, most notably collaborating with the award-winning playwright August Wilson on Gem of the Ocean and various productions of his last play Radio Golf, as well as Joe Turner’s Come and Gone directed by Phylicia Rashad. Bostic was asked to score the PBS American Masters program “August Wilson - The Ground on Which I Stand.” Reflecting on Mr. Wilson’s career, this documentary inspired her to write “The August Wilson Symphony” and her song “State of Grace”. In addition to her work with Wilson, Bostic's work on Broadway includes Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. She has been nominated for several awards including the Ovation Award, NAACP Theater Award and a Drama Desk nominee for Outstanding Music in a Play. Bostic has toured and recorded with several renowned artists including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Nas and David Byrne.

KIRSTEN CHILDS

participant

The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin Obie, Kleban, Audelco, Richard Rodgers, Gilman Gonzalez-Falla awards; Rockefeller and Jonathan Larson Grants; Lortel, NAACP, Drama Desk nominations. Bella: An American Tall Tale Frederick Loewe Award, Edward M. Kennedy Prize Finalist, four Audelco Awards. Fly with Rajiv Joseph, Bill Sherman and Director Jeffrey Seller. Washington Square with Ben Wexler. New Group commission with Gordon Greenberg. Funked Up Fairy Tales. Miracle Brothers. Lucky Boy Penn State Commission. NEA, Larson grants. American Songbook series. New Electric Company. Disney’s Believe and Disney’s Wishes. Guggenheim Museum Works & Process. Songwriter for Dianne Reeves (with Billy Childs).

DAVID GALLO

participant

DAVID GALLO creates innovative scenic and media design for television, concerts and events. He has designed over 30 Broadway shows, garnering four Tony nominations (including for Jitney) and one win. Working with August Wilson from 1996 until his death, David designed the premiere productions of Wilson's later works, including King Hedley II, Gem of the Ocean, Radio Golf and Jitney. He has also won two Emmy Awards for best production designer for Sesame Street. He is creative director for Phish's New Year's Eve extravaganzas, his Blue Man Group work has been seen by millions and the Illusionarium he created for Norwegian Cruise Line was a pioneer in immersive entertainment. His work is seen daily in a dozen cities worldwide. The Smithsonian Institution and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame both own samples of his work. davidgallo.com

MARCUS GARDLEY

participant

MARCUS GARDLEY is a proud Oakland-born playwright-poet whom the New Yorker calls “the heir to Garcia Lorca, Pirandello and Tennessee Williams.” His play, The House That Will Stand won a 2019 Obie award and opened off-Broadway in the summer of 2018 to rave reviews and a sold-out extension with 8 AUDELCO nominations, winning 4 including Best Play. It is now being adapted into a motion picture written by Gardley. Another play, X Or The Nation V. Betty Shabazz was a New York Times Critic Pic and was remounted off-Broadway in the Spring of 2018. He is the recipient of the 2019 Doris Duke Artist Award and the 2019 San Francisco Library Laureate Award. Gardley received the 2018 Guiding Light Award presented by Cal Shakes and won the 2017 Special Citation Theater Award for his play black odyssey, which swept the Theater Bay Area Awards garnering 6 other prizes including Best Production and a special play wrighting award. He is the 2015 Glickman Award for The House That Will Not Stand and the 2013 USA James Baldwin Fellow. He was the 2011 PEN Laura Pels award winner for Mid-Career Playwright. His work has been produced across the country with several productions in England and France. Currently, Gardley is writing a biopic about Marvin Gaye produced by Dr. Dre, a film adaptation of The Color Purple musical, and developing tv shows at F/X and OWN. He is co-executive producer of The Chi on Showtime.

WILL POWER

participant

WILL POWER is an internationally renowned playwright, performer, lyricist and educator. His plays and performances have been seen in hundreds of theaters and concert halls throughout the world including Lincoln Center (New York), The Public Theater (New York), The Battersea Arts Centre (U.K.), The Sydney Opera House, as well as numerous venues in Asia, Africa, Europe and throughout North America. Power has received numerous awards for his work as a writer and performer in the field including The Doris Duke Artist Award, a Lucille Lortel Award, a United States Artist Prudential Fellowship, an NEA/TCG Residency Grant, TCG Peter Zeisler Memorial Award, a NYFA Award, a Joyce Foundation Award, and others.Currently Will Power is the Distinguished Visiting Professor of theater at Spelman College in Atlanta.

DR. SANDRA G. SHANNON

patricipant

DR. SANDRA G. SHANNON is Professor Emerita of African American Literature in the Department of English at Howard University. Widely acknowledged as the leading authority on playwright August Wilson, she is Founder and President of the August Wilson Society and the author of two book-length studies: The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson and August Wilson’s Fences: A Reference Guide. She has written numerous essays and chapters on Wilson and served as the sole Editor of Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1980s and August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle. She co-edited August Wilson and Black Aesthetics and the MLA Approaches to Teaching the Plays of August Wilson. Dr. Shannon is also frequently invited to lecture and lead post-show discussions on Wilson’s work at conference and theatre performances.

As a leading scholar of African American drama, Dr. Shannon was named a Fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre in 2018 and awarded the Winona Lee Fletcher Award for Excellence by the Black Theatre Network in the same year. Also, in 2018, she organized Go Back and Pick up the Ball: An August Wilson Society Colloquium, a national gathering hosted by the August Wilson African American Culture Center in Pittsburgh, PA. She also spearheaded the Society’s successful fall 2019 launch of the annual August Wilson’s Ground Lecture Series at Howard University. Dr. Shannon currently serves as Editor of the College Language Association Journal and founding board member of the Black Theatre Network’s Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre, and Performance.

MOLLY SMITH

participant

MOLLY SMITH (Artistic Director) has served as Artistic Director since 1998. Her more than 30 directing credits at Arena Stage include Carousel, Oliver!, The Originalist, Fiddler on the Roof, Camp David, Mother Courage and Her Children, Oklahoma!, A Moon for the Misbegotten, My Fair Lady, The Great White Hope, The Music Man, Orpheus Descending, Legacy of Light, The Women of Brewster Place, Cabaret, South Pacific, Agamemnon and His Daughters, All My Sons and How I Learned to Drive. She most recently directed Our Town at Canada’s Shaw Festival. Her directorial work has also been seen at The Old Globe, Asolo Repertory, Berkeley Repertory, Trinity Repertory, Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, Montreal’s Centaur Theatre and Perseverance Theater in Juneau, Alaska, which she founded and ran from 1979-1998. Molly has been a leader in new play development for over 30 years. She is a great believer in first, second and third productions of new work and has championed projects including How I Learned to Drive; Passion Play, a cycle; Next to Normal; and Dear Evan Hansen. She has worked alongside playwrights Sarah Ruhl, Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, Lawrence Wright, Karen Zacarías, John Murrell, Eric Coble, Charles Randolph-Wright and many others. She led the re-invention of Arena Stage, focusing on the architecture and creation of the Mead Center for American Theater and positioning Arena Stage as a national center for American artists. During her time with the company, Arena Stage has workshopped more than 100 productions, produced 39 world premieres, staged numerous second and third productions and been an important part of nurturing nine projects that went on to have a life on Broadway. In 2014, Molly made her Broadway debut directing The Velocity of Autumn, following its critically acclaimed run at Arena Stage. She has been awarded honorary doctorates from American University and Towson University.

RILEY K. TEMPLE

participant

RILEY K. TEMPLE is a retired telecommunications attorney, having practiced law for over 40 years. In 2014, he earned the Master of Theological Studies degree, cum laude, from the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, VA, America’s largest Episcopal Seminary, where he was a Bishop John Payne Scholar, and where he now lectures on the Theology of Secular Drama. He also regularly preaches and teaches at Episcopal Churches throughout the country. He serves on the Boards of WETA, the National Archives Foundation (Program Committee Chair), and the Trust for the National Endowment for the Humanities. With Kenny Leon, he co-founded Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company (Atlanta, GA) in 1998, and served as its first Board Chair. He was also the chair of the Board of Trustees of Arena Stage (1993-1996), and the Whitman-Walker Clinic (1985-1996). His honors and awards include: Oliver Cromwell Cox Lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard, the Mildred Claypoole Community Service Award, Individual Arts Patron Award from the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington, Bridge Builder Award for the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, and the naming of Lafayette College’s Riley K. Temple Art Gallery. His oral history has been made a part of the permanent collection of the Library of Congress Archive of the HistoryMakers, an archive of African Americans whose contributions have been deemed noteworthy by a Board of Distinguished Black Scholars and Historians.

His is a well-published essayist, and is the author of Aunt Ester’s Children Redeemed: Journeys to Freedom in August Wilson’s Ten Plays of Twentieth-Century Black America (Cascade, Eugene, 2017). He holds the AB degree from Lafayette College (Trustee 1997-2008, Secretary, Vice-Chair) 1971 (LL.D. honoris causa, 2009), and the JD degree from Georgetown University, 1974.

PAUL TETREAULT

participant

PAUL TETREAULT has focused on enhancing the quality of the institution’s artistic programming while expanding its mission to include a stronger focus on education since joining Ford's Theatre in 2004. Critics and the theatre-going public have recognized the theatre for such productions as the pre-Broadway run of Come From Away, the world premieres of The Heavens Are Hung in Black, Necessary Sacrifices, The Widow Lincoln, Meet John Doe and The Guard, the American premiere of Jefferson’s Garden, and the musicals Ragtime, The Wiz and Into the Woods. In 2008, Tetreault led the institution through a $54 million capital campaign, the most extensive renovation to the Theatre and Museum since the building reopened to the public in 1968, and the creation of a new Center for Education and Leadership adjacent to the Petersen House (opened February 2012), which seeks to further explore Lincoln’s legacy in America today.

Tetreault served as Managing Director of the Alley Theatre for 10 years, where he produced more than 100 productions and worked with talented artists such as Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, Trevor Nunn, Nicky Silver, Frank Wildhorn and August Wilson, among others. He has held senior management positions with Crossroads Theatre Company, New Jersey; Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California; and Circle Repertory Company, New York City.

CONSTANZA ROMERO WILSON

moderator

CONSTANZA ROMERO WILSON has been the executor of the August Wilson Estate since 2005. Her costume design credits with Arena Stage include: Pullman Porter Blues. Her Broadway costume credits include: The Mountaintop, Fences, Gem of the Ocean, Seven Guitars and The Piano Lesson. She has been a producer on Netflix’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,”Manhattan Theater Club's Jitney and “Fences” in 2010 with Denzel Washington. She completed the Spanish translation with Fernando Luna of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and she directed the Spanish reading at Seattle Rep 2019. Her regional credits include: Seattle Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, Denver Center Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, Huntington Theatre and Yale Rep. Other credits include: Artist in Residence, Seattle Rep. Teaching: Costume design and scenic design at University of Washington and University of California, Santa Cruz. Awards: Tony nominations (Fences, Gem of the Ocean); Ovation Award for Best Costume Design (Gem of the Ocean, Mark Taper Forum). Education: MFA, Design, Yale School of Drama.