Harry Belafonte ~ Almanac 1953

The Broadway stage rights for the life story of the 91-year-old great American singer, songwriter, actor and activist, Harry Belafonte, have been obtained by Broadway producer Ken Davenport (Once On This Island, Spring Awakening)

A timeline, creative team, and casting for the as-yet-untitled new musical to be announced at a later date.

Belafonte made his Broadway debut in John Murray Anderson’s Almanac in 1953 for which he won a Best Featured Actor in a Musical Tony Award.  His Broadway credits include 3 for Tonight, Moonbirds, a special concert entitled Belafonte at the Palace, & Asinamali!

Harry Belafonte said, “The live theater opened up so many worlds for me as a young man. From the moment I saw professional actors on stage, I knew I could find a way forward in life as a performer and as an activist. Will humility, it brings me great joy that my story will now become a stage production that I hope will inspire audiences to follow their own dreams.”

Ken Davenport said, “Harry Belafonte is one of the most influential and respected Americans of the past century. I’m excited to be working with Mr. Belafonte to bring his powerful life story, about a son of immigrants who made a profound impact on the lives of Americans and millions of people around the world, to the theatrical stage. An outspoken Civil Rights and political activist, Mr. Belafonte has been confidante and advisor to President John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Dr. Martin Luther King, among many other leaders. To this day he remains a leading advocate for humanitarian causes. Harry Belafonte is also beloved for his unparalleled career as an acclaimed Academy Award, Grammy, Emmy and Tony Award-winning producer, actor and singer of many best-selling hit recordings including “The Banana Boat Song,” “Matilda” and “Jump in the Line.”

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Inspired by Dr. Kings famous 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence” which was performed at Harlem’s Riverside Church, MLK Now will feature historic speeches by many civil rights leaders performed by some of todays hottest actors and Broadway Black stars — including Actor and Civil Rights Icon Harry Belafonte, Actor and Comedian Chris Rock, Oscar-Winner Octavia Spencer, Tony Award Winner Lin Manuel Miranda, Actors Michael B. Jordan and Tessa Thompson, Tony Award Winner Anika Noni Rose, Andre Holland, Condola Rashad and Adepero Oduye.

And thats not all according to the press release;

“MLK Now” will also feature musical performances by Anika Noni Rose, Grammy-Nominated Artist Bilal, Acclaimed Poet/Performer Saul Williams, and Grammy-Winning Artist India Arie, and closes off with an interactive panel discussion addressing the most pressing human rights issues of today – including police violence, racial and social injustice, economic inequality, the prison industrial complex and grassroots and political mobilization. Panelists include Filmmaker and Blackout Member Ryan Coogler, Grammy-Nominated Hip Hop Artist J. Cole, Urban Cusp Founder and Publisher Rahiel Tesfamariam, Arab American Association of New York Executive Director Linda Sarsour, Million Hoodies Movement for Justice Executive Director Dante Barry, Filmmaker/Activist and Sakofa.org Co-Director Gina Belafonte; and Activist Leon Ford, Jr. The panel will be moderated by MSNBC National Reporter Trymaine Lee.

With a line-up like this, this an event that no matter where you are you don’t want to miss it. I can’t think of a better way to honor Dr. King’s legacy, especially during our current social climate.

MLK Now is this Monday, January 18th from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (doors open at 1:30 p.m.), at Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive, New York, NY.

Luckily for those not in New York City you can watch the livestream. You can watch below!

The post Harry Belafonte, Condola Rashad, & More Join United Blackout ‪MLK Now: Special Event appeared first on Broadway Black.

McQueen described working on the Robeson project as a dream come true. He first discovered Robeson as a teenager when a neighbor gave him books and articles that he felt the young McQueen would find interesting. One of these articles was about Robeson.

“His life and legacy was the film I wanted to make the second after Hunger. But I didn’t have the power, I didn’t have the juice” McQueen said at the Hidden Heroes awards in New York last November.

With a Best Picture Oscar win for “12 Years a Slave” under his belt, McQueen now has the “juice” he needs. And, as booster shot, he will team with legendary singer, actor, civil rights activist and Robeson friend Harry Belafonte, in an undisclosed capacity, to develop the film.

Belafonte, who regarded Robeson as a role model as well as a friend, once said about the extraordinary entertainer, “…it was from Paul that I learned that the purpose of art is not just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be. And that if art were put into the service of the human family, it could only enhance their betterment.”

Robeson, the son of an escaped slave, was also an exceptional athlete, cultural scholar, and author. He won a four-year academic scholarship to Rutgers University and, despite violence and racism from teammates, won 15 varsity letters in baseball, basketball, and track and was twice named to the All-American Football Team. He also was a graduate of Columbia Law School but gave up his legal career for acting and singing after experiencing racism at work.

Robeson was one of the first Black men to play serious roles in the primarily white American theatre. In the mid-1920s, he played the lead in Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings and The Emperor Jones. Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, he was a widely acclaimed actor and singer. With songs such as his trademark “Ol’ Man River,” he became one of the most popular concert singers of his time. He was, perhaps, best known in theatre for his starring role in Othello, which was the longest-running Shakespeare play in Broadway history, running for nearly three hundred performances.

Robeson was not only a star in the U.S., but was revered internationally. He spoke 15 languages, and performed benefits throughout the world for various social justice causes. He believed that the famous have a responsibility to fight for justice and peace. In the late 1940s, Robeson openly questioned why African Americans should fight in the army of a government that tolerated racism.

Unfortunately, his outspokenness and campaigns against racism and social injustice led to the House Un-American Activities Committee, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, accusing him of being a communist. Once he was labeled a communist, Robeson was blacklisted from film studios and concert venues, and his passport was revoked. Though it was reinstated in 1958, his career never recovered. Paul Robeson retired from public life in 1963. He died in 1976, at age 77, in Philadelphia.

To date, there have been no details on the filming schedule or release date for McQueen’s film. However, the world is waiting for the remarkable story of an extraordinary man to be told.

The post Steve McQueen to Direct Film About Legendary Paul Robeson appeared first on Broadway Black.

Being an actor or performer of color was difficult in the 1960s; just ask Harry Belafonte or Lena Horne, and even in 2015 there are still actors of color that face discrimination in this business (Um. Hello? #OscarSoWhite). Take for example Hollywood’s famous roundtable discussions, talks that bring actors from different backgrounds together to engage in candid dialogue. They touch on pressing issues such as racism, sexism, ageism that effect them while navigating the business.

On Aug. 28, 1963 –the same day as Mr. Luther King Jr.’s I Have A Dream speech–Harry Belafonte, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, David Schoenburn, Joseph Manckiewicz, Marlon Brando, and James Baldwin sat down to discuss the meaning of civil rights after have attending the march.

Harry on whether or not he believes America can achieve the dream Martin Luther King Jr. talks about;

“I am not so certain it will be achieved without violence. Because the negro people have conducted themselves non-violently. The 200,000 people that were there today; there were many predictions that one could take book on whether there would be a display of violence by all the extreme factions and whatnot. But the truth of the matter is that the people who came to that gathering today were people in great anguish who come from the Birminghams and come from the Jackson, Mississippi’s and they came there with anguish and with hurt and with dignity and with integrity and it was one of the most orderly displays I’ve ever seen of 200,000 people. If the Bull Conners continue to release the bull dogs on the people as an answer to their legitimate cries, if they continue to use cattle rods to prod them, if they continue to use hoses to whip them through the streets, the human heart, and human body can only contain so much. There must come a point, if  they’re pushed to it, for retaliation. So once again I put the emphasis on who it is that will precipitate it. Because the Negro community, I think I can speak for most of the 20 million Negros are committed to this thing being done non-violently.”

Sidney on his involvement in the movement and the “negro question”;

“Well, yes I am forced to participate because it is my conviction that my country has to successfully negotiate the “negro question.” It is to me not a problem, it’s the question of the negro. The unsettled question of the negro in America, we must as a country successfully negotiate that before we can, with any degree of honesty, try to become eligible for participation in the future. We must negotiate other great questions that face us today. The stamina, the texture, of our endeavor, to solve the negro question will exemplify for me the kind of interest the country as a whole has in doing the things that are necessary for us to be entitled to a future.”

More recently, The Hollywood Reporter released their annul Emmy Roundtable Dramatic Actresses: Viola Davis, Taraji P. Henson, Jessica Lange, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Lizzie Caplan. This particular discussion dealt more with what they faced in Hollywood as black women, where they draw inspiration from and what roles they wanted to take on next. (Someone go ahead and bring a production of Hedda Gabler to Broadway with Viola as Hedda and Taraji as Thea please!!!)

Taraji on what motivates her to take on roles and the iconic Cookie Lyon;

“That’s how I was trained. It’s never been about the money for me. I mean, I went from being an Oscar nominee [forThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button] to No. 10 on the call sheet. I’ve never once thought, “I’m now part of some elite group of actors; I’m never going to do theatre again or do an indie again.” If I fall in love with the role, I don’t care if it’s outside in the parking lot.

Cookie scared the hell out of me. Just before I got the role, I’d said, “F— it all, I’m going back to theatre.” I felt lazy and like I needed to sharpen the tools. So I did theatre at The Pasadena Playhouse. Then my manager said,”You have to read this script.” I’m like, “Hip-hop? Oh my God, what are they trying to do? Fox is going to pick this up? This isn’t HBO?” And then I got nervous and started pacing the floor. “Oh my God, Cookie is bigger than life. You will love her or hate her.” Empire has forced people to have conversations that they were afraid to have. And that is what art is supposed to do. I just didn’t know it was going to shake things up this much!”

Viola what drew her to Annalise Keating and what she would like to do next;

“There was absolutely no precedent for it. I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualized role in TV or film. I’m a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualized woman. I was the prototype of the “mommified” role. Then all of a sudden, this part came, and fear would be an understatement. When I saw myself for the first time in the pilot episode, I was mortified. I saw the fake eyelashes and, “Are you kidding me? Who is going to believe this?” And then I thought: “OK, this is your moment to not typecast yourself, to play a woman who is sexualized and do your investigative work to find out who this woman is and put a real woman on TV who’s smack-dab in the midst of this pop fiction.

I’d like to go back to Broadway and revisit [Henrik Ibsen’s] Hedda Gabler at some point. But I mostly want what [actress] Lynn Redgrave said to me once. I did a reading of Agnes of God with her right before she died. She told me she’d left L.A. many years ago, and I asked her why. She said one thing she felt after many years in the business was that her past hadn’t counted for anything. I want to feel like my past has counted for something. I’ve been doing this for 27 years. I’ve performed in basements, churches, off-Broadway. I want the work to reflect my level of gifts and talent. I don’t want it to reflect my color, my sex or my age. That’s what I want most.”

It’s important that these roundtables exist and even more important that people of color are represented in them, letting their voices be heard. We’ve been silenced for so long, it’s extremely inspiring to hear when actors/actresses are using their platform to share their experiences and speak out against injustice. Whether it be in their field or in relation to the current state of America. After all, they are people too, they navigate through this world just the same as we do. Even though they have a bit more glitz and glamor, underneath it all they use their art to inspire and cultivate minds just like art should.

The post Hollywood Roundtable Then & Now: Social Justice & Creating Art appeared first on Broadway Black.

A major focus of ANT was to show a wider array of stories and storytelling that was seldom seen whenever Black artists were on stage. This led to the productions of several original plays as well as adaptations of existing classic and contemporary works for all-Black casts. Their first major success came in 1944 when Anna Lucasta by Phillip Yordan debuted on Broadway starring Hilda Simms and Frederick O’Neal. It was ANT’s first all-Black play with a non-racial theme and went on to a national tour, a production in London, and a film in 1958 starring Eartha Kitt and Sammy Davis, Jr..

Financial issues and artistic difficulties brought the unfortunate demise of ANT by the mid-1950s, yet the legacy and revolutionary spirit had only just begun. The American Negro Theater was the beginning for many amazing artists such as Vinie Burrows, Harry Belafonte, Alice Childress, Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, Isabel Sanford, and many other dynamic actors, directors, and playwrights. It is because of these artists that we can do more today. Happy Anniversary!

Check out the exhibition at The Schomburg Center in celebration of the 75th anniversary of our renowned American Negro Theatre (ANT).

Known to the locals as “The Harlem Library Little Theatre,” the ANT was founded in 1940 as a community space for thespians to work in productions that illustrated the diversity of black life. This exhibition is taken entirely from the Schomburg Collections and highlights the ANT’s stage productions from 1940 through 1949 with photographs, posters, playbills, and news clippings. Images include scenes from successful plays such as Anna Lucasta, studio workshops, and radio broadcasts featuring prominent talent whose careers began at the ANT. The exhibition is located in the Theatre, and is open 10:00 – 6:00, M, F, S, and 10:00 – 8:00, T, W, Th.

Now through January 2016

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture 

515 Malcolm X Boulevard New York, NY, 10037 (917) 275-6975

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