Eugene Lee To Join Norm Lewis On A SOLDIER'S PLAY National Tour; Full Cast Announced

Veteran actor Eugene Lee will join Norm Lewis to star in the 20-week North American tour of Roundabout's 2020 Tony Award-winning Best Revival of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning A Soldier's Play. 

Written by American playwright Charles Fuller, A Soldier's Play will be directed by Tony Award winner and Roundabout Theatre Company's Senior Resident Director Kenny Leon. The North American tour of A Soldier's Play begins performances December 8 at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, CT and officially opens on December 15 at The Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theatre. The full tour schedule and additional information is available at asoldiersplaytour.com.

 

As previously announced, Emmy, Tony and SAG Award nominee Norm Lewis will star as 'Captain Richard Davenport.' Joining him will be Broadway, TV and film star Eugene Lee, who originated the role of 'Corporal Bernard Cobb' in the original 1981 Off-Broadway Production of A Soldier's Play, as 'Sergeant Vernon C. Waters.'

 

The cast includes Will Adams as 'Corporal Bernard Cobb,' Brandon Alvión as an understudy, Sheldon D. Brown as 'Private C.J. Memphis,' Malik Childs as 'Private Tony Smalls,' Ja'Quan Cole as an understudy, William Connell as 'Captain Charles Taylor,' Charles Everett as an understudy, Alex Michael Givens as 'Corporal Ellis,' Matthew Goodrich as 'Captain Wilcox,' Chattan Mayes Johnson as 'Lieutenant Byrd,' Branden Davon Lindsay as 'Private Louis Henson,' Tarik Lowe as 'Private First-Class Melvin Peterson,' Al'Jaleel McGhee as an understudy, and Howard Overshown as 'Private James Wilkie.'

 

Joining director Kenny Leon for the tour of Roundabout Theatre Company's A Soldier's Play is the Broadway design team that includes Derek McLane (Sets), Dede Ayite (Costumes), Allen Lee Hughes (Lights), Dan Moses Schreier (Sound) and Cristina Angeles (Associate Director). The tour of A Soldier's Play is produced by Roundabout Theatre Company and Tamar Climan.

 

"The recent passing of The Giant that is Charles Fuller has only magnified his brilliance...an amazing writer who left us so much with his masterful A Soldiers Play," said director Kenny Leon. "We honor him with this American tour of the Broadway production of this great American classic. Come - laugh, think and reflect - America is in need of love."

 

In 1944, on a Louisiana Army base, two shots ring out. A Black sergeant is murdered. And a series of interrogations triggers a gripping barrage of questions about sacrifice, service, and identity in America. Charles Fuller's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece opened on Broadway for the first time on Jan. 21, 2020 at Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre, nearly forty years after it was written. The acclaimed production was nominated for 7 Tony Awards and 3 Drama Desk Awards, winning Best Revival for both.

 

The A Soldier's Play tour stage management team is John Atherlay and Ronnie Campbell. The company management team is Frank Lott and Jordan Lingreen.

 

Roundabout Theatre Company was most recently represented across the country with its longest-running musical on Broadway, the revival of Cabaret, which received a multi-year tour across the country beginning in 1999 and again in 2016. Before that, Roundabout produced the critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning North American tour of Anything Goes starring Rachel York which toured for 48 weeks. In 2006, Twelve Angry Men went on a 63-week tour across the United States and Canada. In 2011, Roundabout Theatre Company's acclaimed work reached a worldwide cinema audience with the HD capture and broadcast of their Tony nominated production of The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Brian Bedford.

 

Roundabout Theatre Company celebrates the power of theatre by spotlighting classics from the past, cultivating new works of the present, and educating minds for the future. A not-for-profit company, Roundabout fulfills that mission by producing familiar and lesser-known plays and musicals; discovering and supporting talented playwrights; reducing the barriers that can inhibit theatergoing; collaborating with a diverse team of artists; building educational experiences; and archiving over five decades of production history. Acknowledging its impact, Roundabout has also embarked upon a five-year strategic plan to evaluate and evolve how to address equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism in its work, workplaces and communities.

 

Roundabout is also sending its nationally recognized education programs on tour. Members of the cast and crew will facilitate acting workshops, pull back the curtain on backstage jobs, and explore the educational resources of the UPSTAGE Guide, a free resource that allows audiences to discover more about the production through interviews, biographies, stories about the historical, social, and artistic context of the production, discussion questions, and activities for students and teachers.

 

In New York, Roundabout Theatre Company presents a variety of plays, musicals and new works on its five stages: Broadway's American Airlines Theatre, Studio 54 and Stephen Sondheim Theatre, and Off-Broadway's Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, which houses the Laura Pels Theatre and Black Box Theatre.

 

American Airlines is the official airline of Roundabout Theatre Company. Roundabout productions are supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

Bios:

TAMAR CLIMAN (Producer) is a Tony Award-winning theatre producer with almost three decades of experience producing and general managing on Broadway, who is also developing a number of new works. Tamar is on the producing team for the Tony Award and Grammy-winning Jagged Little Pill for its North American and Australian tours. Previous producing credits include, on Broadway: Jagged Little Pill, Oklahoma!, Children of a Lesser God; West End: Waitress; and North American tour: Anastasia. She also serves as an advisor to Roundabout Theatre Company. Tamar founded Richards/Climan, Inc. (RCI), Theatrical General Management firm, in 1997. While at RCI, Tamar managed over 80 productions of plays and musicals written by such notable artists as Tracy Letts, David Mamet, Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. She also had the extraordinary opportunity to work with renowned actors like Angela Lansbury, James Earl Jones, Audra McDonald, Al Pacino, Sutton Foster and Bryan Cranston. Tamar was born in Montreal, Canada and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Roundabout Theatre Company's tour of A Soldier's Play is made possible in part by generous support from Denise Littlefield Sobel.

 

Learn more at asoldiersplaytour.com

Norm Lewis (Captain Richard Davenport). Emmy, Grammy, Tony, and SAG Award nominee, Norm Lewis, recently starred in Spike Lee's critically acclaimed, Da 5 Bloods, and in the groundbreaking FX series, "Pose." Additionally, Mr. Lewis can be seen starring in ABC's newest series, "Women of The Movement" and offscreen, his voice can be heard in the latest season of Apple TV's animated series, "Central Park." He was also seen as 'Caiaphas' in the award-winning NBC television special, "Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert!" alongside John Legend, Sara Bareilles, and Alice Cooper. Mr. Lewis returned to Broadway in the Fall of 2021, starring in Chicken and Biscuits at the Circle In The Square Theatre. He previously appeared in the Broadway revival of Once on This Island and as Sweeney Todd in the Off-Broadway production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street at the Barrow Street Theatre, receiving the AUDELCO Award for his performance. In May of 2014, he made history as The Phantom of the Opera's first African American 'Phantom' on Broadway. He has been seen on PBS in the "Live From Lincoln Center" productions of Showboat with Vanessa Williams, "Norm Lewis: Who Am I?," "New Year's Eve: A Gershwin Celebration" with Diane Reeves, as well as "American Voices" with Renée Fleming and the PBS Specials "First You Dream - The Music of Kander & Ebb" and "Ella Wishes You A Swingin' Christmas." He can be seen recurring in the VH1 series, "Daytime Divas," also alongside Vanessa Williams. His additional television credits include "Law & Order," "Dr. Death," "Mrs. America," "Better Things," "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," "Bull," "Chicago Med," "Gotham," "The Blacklist," and "Blue Bloods," as well as in his recurring role as Senator Edison Davis on the hit drama "Scandal." Mr. Lewis is a proud founding member of Black Theatre United, an organization which stands together to help protect Black people, Black talent and Black lives of all shapes and orientations in theatre and communities across the country. He received Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle award nominations for his performance as Porgy in the Broadway production of The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess. Other Broadway credits include Sondheim on Sondheim, The Little Mermaid, Les Misérables, Chicago, Amour, The Wild Party, Side Show, Miss Saigon, and The Who's Tommy. In London's West End he has appeared as Javert in Les Misérables and Les Misérables: The 25th Anniversary Concert, which aired on PBS. Off-Broadway Mr. Lewis has performed in Dessa Rose (Drama Desk nomination, AUDELCO Award), Shakespeare in the Park's The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Drama League nomination), Captains Courageous, and A New Brain. His regional credits include Porgy in The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (A.R.T.), Ragtime, Dreamgirls (with Jennifer Holliday), First You Dream, Sweeney Todd, and The Fantasticks. His additional film credits include Christmas In Tune (starring opposite Reba McEntire), Magnum Opus, Winter's Tale, Sex and the City 2, Confidences, and Preaching to the Choir. Norm's albums "The Norm Lewis Christmas Album" album & "This is The Life" can be found on Amazon.com as well as cdbaby.com.

 

Eugene Lee (Sergeant Vernon C. Waters). In 1972, while in college at Southwest Texas State (now Texas State), Lee acted in a command performance of A Raisin in the Sun for President Lyndon B. Johnson at his Texas ranch. Nearly 50 years later years later he has gone on to appear on camera and extensive voice over (ADR) work in over 200 television movies, films and series and long since lost count of the number of plays he's been involved with. He went on to appear in a lot of episodic television shows and movies, including: "The Women of Brewster Place" with Oprah Winfrey, "Dallas," "Good Times," "The White Shadow," and "The District," and the title character in Wolf, an award-winning independent film, and recently after performing in the Broadway production of American Son he recreated his role in the Emmy-nominated Netflix film adaptation, to name a few. He has appeared on stage across the country and across the globe. He has worked and traveled with New York's renowned Negro Theatre Ensemble, performing in the Pulitzer Prize winning A Soldier's Play and numerous other works. He is considered a "Wilsonian Warrior" for his many appearances in the works of August Wilson, including the Broadway production of Gem of the Ocean. He performed in six of Wilson's 10 plays at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and in the taped PBS recordings of all ten plays in the Century Cycle as well as in August Wilson's final autobiographical one-man piece, How I Learned What I Learned. His writing credits include "Homicide: Life on the Streets," (Episode: "Every Mother's Son") which is among a Writer's Guild designation as one of the top 100 television series, "Walker, Texas Ranger," "Michael Hayes," "The Journey of Allen Strange," "The Turks" and the TV movie "Port Chicago." His own characters come to life through his plays, one of which is East Texas Hot Links, which has been produced on stages from Los Angeles to New York and London's Royal Court and is published by Samuel French play publishers. His other plays include Fear Itself, Somebody Called: A Tale of Two Preachers, Ode to Juneteenth, Killingsworth, the book to the musical Twist and Lyin' Ass about a fictional first Black female Texas Ranger. Lee is Artist in Residence and Artistic Director of the Black and Latino Playwright's Celebration at Texas State University which celebrating its 20th year in 2022. Through this venue, Lee has brought playwrights and students, together with professional directors and performers to work on developing new plays with those aspiring to have their voices heard. Lee was inducted into the prestigious Texas Institute of Letters in 2018. eugeneleeonline.com

 

Will Adams (Corporal Bernard Cobb) recently starred in the film A Holiday in Harlem (Hallmark) and recurred in Tyler Perry's "The Oval" (BET). His theatre credits include Skeleton Crew, A Death of a Salesman (Trinity Rep), and Curse of the Starving Class (Williamstown Theatre Festival). MFA: Brown/Trinity Rep.

 

BRANDON ALVIÓN (Understudy) is from Newark, NJ. He received his MFA in Acting from Wayne State University. Select credits: Harpo in The Color Purple (2nd Nat'l), Kenny in Chicken & Biscuits (Virginia Rep) and Martin L. King Jr. in The Mountaintop (Hope Summer Rep). Many thanks to the cast, crew, and creatives. Social media: @iactwright

SHELDON D. BROWN (Private C.J. Memphis). Theater credits include Steppenwolf Theatre, (Choir Boy, Jeff Award winning), Court Theatre (Man In The Ring); About Face Theatre (Magnolia Ballet) and more. Film/TV screenwriting credits include Cicada (Spirit Award nominated), "The Big Leap" (FOX). He is represented by Stewart Talent & Innovative Artists.

 

Malik Childs (Private Tony Smalls) is native to the eastside of Detroit, MI. UNC School of the Arts (2019). Recent production