The Hansberry Project Hosts Award-Winning Playwright Keith Josef Adkins

First new play commission in debut reading at Theater Off Jackson

The Final Days of NegroVille

by Keith Josef Adkins

Saturday, July 24 at 7:30 PM

First public reading with playwright in attendance,

followed by post-performance discussion.

Tickets

FREE!

Where:

Theater Off Jackson

409 7^th Avenue South

RSVP: valviv@hansberryproject.org

Seattle, WA – July 20, 2010 – The Hansberry Project, with support from ACT - A Contemporary Theatre, announces its first new play commission. Keith Josef Adkins, a New York-based playwright, was awarded the commission, underwritten by Gian-Carlo and Eulalie Scanduzzi as the sixth play commissioned by ACT through the New Works for the American Stage program. The play, with a working title The Final Days of NegroVille (a comedy that turns tragic), will have its first public reading on July 24 at 7:30 p.m. in collaboration with and at Theatre Off Jackson. Adkins will be in attendance and a post-reading discussion will follow.

The Final Days of NegroVille is set in a small town close to a large city. Built largely on the success of its Black middle class inhabitants (doctors, lawyers, school administrators), the town is fraught with dysfunction – loneliness, infidelity, and a loss of history. Over the course of a single day, the town’s well-educated African-American mayor, the play’s central character, is caught in a series of events that challenge the truth about the town’s history and forever change the future for this set of middle class African-Americans.

A cast of veteran Seattle performers are featured in this first public reading, including: Timothy Piggee as Mayor Cornell Gates, Tracy Michelle Hughes, Monique Robinson, Reginald A. Jackson, Jose Rufino, Kibibi Monie, and Shanga Parker.

When Adkins arrives in Seattle, he will work with Hansberry Project Artistic Director Valerie Curtis-Newton to prepare for an evening of firsts! The Final Days of NegroVille marks the first time in more than a decade in the Seattle area that an African-American play has been commissioned by a regional theatre interest under the leadership of African-Americans. It connects the Hansberry Project to a national revival of support for the work of Black playwrights. At the end of June, Adkins along with Jocelyn Prince, the artistic associate at New York’s Public Theater, and fellow playwright J. Holtham (Welcome to New Jersey) announced their co-leadership in development of the New Black Fest, a festival showcasing innovative work by and about Black people from around the world. They recently won support from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Lynn Nottage.

Keith Josef Adkins is a playwright, screenwriter, and blogger. His plays include Safe House, Farewell Miss Cotton, The Patron Saint of Plants, Pitbulls, Salt on Sugarhill, Hollis Mugley’s Only Wish, On the Hills of Black America, Wilberforce, The Global Warming Plays, Cobra Neck, andSweet Home, among others. He has received commissions from the Goodman Theatre New Stages Series, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Mark Taper Forum, and The Joseph Papp Public Theater and New York City Council on the Arts. Awards include 2009 New Professional Theater Playwright Award, Richard Sherwood Distinguished Emerging Theater Artist Award, Robert S. Duncanson Artist Fellowship Residency, Cleveland Public Theater Best Play of the Festival Awards, and a 2008 Kesselring Prize nomination, among numerous other honors. For three seasons Keith also worked on the CW hit comedy series Girlfriends. His screenplay, The Disappearing, commissioned by Starburst Films is slated for production later this year. He blogs regularly on art and culture at TheRoot.com and makes appearances on NPR’s All Things Considered.