REGINA tAYLOR

Actress, Director, Playwright, Activist. Golden Globe, NAACP Image, Tony, Peabody & Gracie, Hope Abelson, Helen Hayes, L.A. Dramalogue Award. First African-American woman to play Shakespeares Juliet in Broadways Romeo and Juliet A prolic playwright, Taylor penned and directed Crowns, the most performed musical in the country in 2007. The play pays homage to African-American matriarchs and their beloved Sunday hats or crowns by immersing audiences in the colorful richness of black Southern culture. Taylor has won numerous awards throughout her career and is a leading example of an artist-advocate whose work inspires humanity. Taylor is bestknown for her role as Lilly Harper in the television series Ill Fly Away. She starred in the CBS drama The Unit, in lms such as The Negotiator, Courage Under Fire, A Family Thing, The Keeper, Clockers, Losing Isaiah, and Lean on Me. On stage in such plays as As You Like It, Macbeth, Machinal, The Illusion and Jar the Floor. An Artistic Associate with Goodman Theatre, her plays Magnolia and The Trinity River Plays have played there. Most recently Taylor wrote and directed Post Black, which is part of the Ensemble Studio Theatres The River Crosses Rivers festival in NYC. It features Ruby Dee, Carmen de Lavallade, and Micki Grant.

MIcKI GRANt
A multi-talented actress, singer, author, composer-lyricst, playright. Grammy Award Winner, Tony Award Nominee. CLIO Award Winner for commercial jingles. The rst AfricanAmerican cast member of a daytime soap opera. Ms. Grant has appeared in numerous plays and musicals, on Broadway and in regional theatre, such as To Be Young, Gifted and Black, Brecht on Brecht, The Cradle Will Rock, Leonard Bernstein's Theatre Songs, and Funnyhouse of a Negro among them. Of the multiple shows for which she has been both lyricist and composer, the most notable were, Your Arms Too Short To Box With God and Working which was adapted from Stud Terkel's book of the same name. She has been the recipient of Grammy, Drama Desk, NAACP Image, Outer Critics' Circle, and Obie awards. She performed throughout the country in the mid-1990s as Sadie Delaney in the stage play Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters' First 100 Years. An enduring and remarkable talent, she additionally has historical signicance, having been one of the rst Black daytime contract players on network television with running performances on soap operas The Edge of Night, Guiding Light, and a seven year run as attorney Peggy Nolan on NBC's Another World.

cARMEN DE LAVALLADE
Legendary dancer, choreographer, professor and stage and lm actress. Awarded the Black History Month Lifetime Achievement Award, the Rosie, the Bessie, the Capezio Dance Award and received her Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Julliard
de Lavallade began studying ballet with at the age of 16. She studied painting, acting, music, set design and costuming, ballet, modern and ethnic dance. She made her Broadway debut in Truman Capote's House of Flowers. Her television debut was in John Butler's ballet Flight, and in 1957 she appeared in the television production of Duke Ellington's A Drum is a Woman. She also appeared in several o-Broadway productions, including Othello and Death of a Salesman. An introduction to Twentieth Century Fox executives by Lena Horne lead to more acting roles between 1952 and 1955. She appeared in several lms including Carmen Jones with Dorothy Dandridge and Odds Against Tomorrow with Harry Belafonte. She staged musicals, plays and operas and became a professor and member of the Yale Repertory Theater. Choreographed Porgy and Bess and Die Meistersinger at the Metropolitan Opera. In 2010, she appeared in a one-night only concert semi staged reading of Evening Primrose by Stephen Sondheim.

TRAIL BLAZINg WOMEN REFUSE LIMITATIONSOR

In her new play POsT BLACk, Regina

Taylor, along with legendary actresses Ruby Dee, Carmen de Lavallade and Micki Grant, tells the story of Pearl; a 1 10-year old woman who is, among many other things, a cancer survivor. In this captivating one-woman play,Taylor uses Pearl to show us Life is supreme, life is preciouslife is something to be fought for with all of its complexities. There is nothing that we cant move through.

BOUNDARIES

Regina Taylor was one of ve playwrights chosen to participate in the Signature Theatres new Residency Five initiatives as part of their expanded programming. This is a unique program that guarantees each playwright three world-premiere productions of new plays over the course of a ve-year residency. Taylor will receive a signicant cash award, full health benets, a stipend to attend theatre, access to Signatures resources and sta, and like all of Signatures playwrights, a place at the center of the artistic process. For her recognition Taylor responded With an open heart, spirit and mind I enter into this new experience as a student and strive to bring my full self to all the work presented. For more info visit: www.thesignaturetheater.org
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