Lincoln Center Out of Doors Opens With Celebration of Street Theater Roots 7/28

Inaugurated in 1971 under director of community programming Leonard Depaur, Out of Doors began as a small festival of street theater, in collaboration with Everyman Theater (co-founded by actress Geraldine Fitzgerald.) Former Lincoln Center President John Mazzola's vision was "to bring the community to Lincoln Center and bring Lincoln Center to the community." Gradually expanding to include music and dance performances, the re-christened Lincoln Center Out of Doors has grown into one of the largest free performance festivals in the U.S. Over its 40-year history, Out of Doors has commissioned some 90 works from composers and choreographers and presented hundreds of major dance companies, renowned world-music artists, and legendary jazz, folk, gospel, blues and rock musicians, many under the auspices of its popular "Roots of American Music" mini-festival, and poets and storytellers as part of the annual "La Casita." It has highlighted the rich cultural diversity of New York City with performances by established ensembles and up-and-coming groups and has partnered with dozens of community and cultural organizations including the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center, Brooklyn Arts Council, Bronx Council on the Arts, Center for Traditional Music and Dance, the Chinese American Arts Council, Americas Society, and Dancing in the Streets.

NO SNAKES IN THIS GRASS

WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 4:00-5:30 P.M.
Opening Night Talk
Marking the 40th Anniversary of Lincoln Center Out of Doors

David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center
Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Streets

Speakers
James Magnuson, playwright
Mical Whitaker, director
Shirley J. Radcliffe, producer
Susan Scheftel
The speakers, will discuss the early days of Geraldine Fitzgerald's Everyman Theater
and their participation in performances and events that helped to establish the
Everyman-Community Street Theater Festival at Lincoln Center, which evolved into
Lincoln Center Out of Doors. Ms. Scheftel, Geraldine Fitzgerald's daughter, will share insights on her mother's career.

Introduced by
Bill Bragin, Director of Public Programming, Lincoln Center

Refreshments served.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 6:30 P.M.
Performance of No Snakes In This Grass

Barclays Grove at Lincoln Center
Hearst Plaza, North of the Metropolitan Opera House, near W. 65th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam

The birth of Lincoln Center Out of Doors as the Everyman-Community Street Theater Festival is honored with a classic one-act of street theater from the Civil Rights Movement. Set in the Garden of Eden, an all-American Adam has read the script and is going to send Cain and Abel to separate schools and have the boats ready for the flood. All his dreams come up short however, when he is confronted with a black Eve. No Snakes In This Grass is hilarious and moving comedy about race and the Fall, then and now. Written by James Magnuson; directed by Mical Whitaker; produced by Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art (RACCA), Shirley J. Radcliffe, Executive Producer, Imani, Artistic Director.

Lincoln Center Out of Doors is Sponsored by Bloomberg and PepsiCo, Inc.

FREE; OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Atrium seating is limited; first-come, first served.
For more information, visit: LCOutofDoors.org

James Magnuson is the author of eight novels, a dozen produced plays, and many screenplays. He has been a Hodder Fellow and Playwright-in-Residence at Princeton University and is presently the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. His African Medea was performed at the Lincoln Center Street Theater Festival in 1971, and his one-act play No Snakes In This Grass was first mounted with The New Heritage Repertory Theater in Harlem in 1966. Winner of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction, his most recent novels are Windfall and The Hounds of Winter.

Mical Whitaker (Director) with this Lincoln Center Out of Doors production of Jim Magnuson's No Snakes In This Grass, Mical Whitaker returns to his artistic roots in New York City street theater, his beloved RACCA and Lincoln Center. It was here, 40 years ago, that Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brother Jonathan Ringkamp, Hazel Joan Bryant and Whitaker envisioned and founded the Everyman Street Theater Festival, a weeklong free program showcasing the work of the Everyman companies which were operating in each of the city's boroughs. It was here, in the 1960's and 1970's that his East River Players, based in East Harlem, flourished as one of the city's important African American theater voices. Whitaker was a board member of the Black Theatre Alliance, artistic director for RACCA producing in 1979 Black Theater USA at Lincoln Center, the first national black theatre festival. He was producer for radio's Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Story Hour, and a long time director of the annual AUDELCO Awards ceremony. In 1981, he returned to his native Georgia to begin a career as a theater professor and director at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. After 24 years and over 100 productions, he retired in 2005. Since then he has added actor to his credits, playing leading roles in Langston Hughes' Black Nativity, Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy and the title role in William Shakespeare's King Lear.

Shirley J. Radcliffe, Executive Producer, Artistic Director of Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art (RACCA) returns to Lincoln Center Out of Doors as co-producer of No Snakes In This Grass. RACCA, under the direction of its founder, Hazel Bryant, along with Geraldine Fitzgerald, Mical Whitaker and Brother Jonathan Ringkamp is one of the original Everyman Street Theater Companies. The historical significance of the street theater movement lies in the fact that it gave birth to many of the theaters that exist today. The street theater movement gave voice to new ideas - theatrical concepts, political, and societal. It was a theater of, for and by the people. The leadership of Lincoln Center at that time, Amyas Ames, John Mazzola, John O'Keefe, Leonard Depaur and many others shared a vision of what has become Lincoln Center Out of Doors and is replicated across this country and beyond.

 

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