Langston Hughes Play ARE YOU NOW OR HOW YOU EVER BEEN... Opens at MetroStage

Producing Artistic Director Carolyn Griffin is pleased to announce that the play Are You Now or Have You Ever Been..., a play written and conceived by Carlyle Brown and directed by MetroStage Artistic Associate Thomas W. Jones II with original music by William Knowles, will be in performance Oct. 5-Nov. 5 at MetroStage.

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been... is a fictional account of the demons and dilemmas faced by Langston Hughes while attempting to write a poem on the night before his appearance before the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations on Un-American Activities led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1953. It was first presented at The Guthrie Theatre's Dowling Studio in 2012. It includes poems by Langston Hughes enhanced with original music by William Knowles as well as a poem by Frederico Garcia Lorca, representing the time Hughes spent in Mexico. This will be the second production of the play.

Director and choreographer, Thomas W. Jones II has written and directed Harlem Rose, Three Sistahs, Two Queens One Castle, Bricktop, Cool Papa's Party, Pearl Bailey...by request, Ladies Swing the Blues, Bessie's Blues, Shake Loose, Uprising and Blackberry Daze, and directed The Gin Game, Anne & Emmett, and Gee's Bend, for which he received a Helen Hayes nomination. He recently completed a run of his one man show Wizard of Hip on our stage. As an actor he has been seen in Topdog/Underdog and Waiting for Godot at Studio Theatre and, more recently, in Cherokee at Woolly Mammoth. He has also appeared on stage and directed at Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis, and many other regional theatres around the country. He will be directing Black Pearl Sings! at San Diego Rep this spring, and his adaptation and direction of Blackberry Daze just completed a sold out extended run in Atlanta.

Music Director, composer and accompanist on the keyboard William Knowles is also a mainstay at MetroStage having music directed Anne & Emmett (also on tour including, most recently, at the National Museum of

African American History and Culture and the National Black Theatre Festival), Shake Loose, Blackberry Daze, Uprising, Gee's Bend (Helen Hayes nomination), Bricktop, His Eye is on the Sparrow, All Night Strut, Ella Fitzgerald: First Lady of Song, Cookin at the Cookery, Ladies Swing the Blues and Cool Papa's Party (Helen Hayes Award) and, most recently, Wizard of Hip. He has also received Helen Hayes nominations for Dinah Was (Arena Stage), SLAM! (Studio Theatre), and Tambourines to Glory (Lincoln Theatre).

Marcus Naylor (Langston Hughes) has previously collaborated with Thomas W. Jones II on The Rise and Fall of Huey P. Newton, Spunk, and Fraternity. Recent credits include Eight Nights (Berkshire Playwrights Lab), Macbeth (Shakespeare Theatre Company), The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (LaMaMa) and Jitney (Penumbra Theatre). His television credits include Boardwalk Empire, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order, Without a Trace, and Only in America. He is an Ensemble Company member of The Collective New York, The Negro Ensemble Company and Karamu House Alumnus.

Josh Thomas (Frank Reeves, Langston's Lawyer) is a Baltimore based actor who has been seen in Three Sisters (Studio Theatre), Mobile Unit (Cyrano) and three years in various roles with the Young Playwright's Festival (Center Stage), Much Ado About Nothing (Baltimore Shakespeare), and university productions (University of Southern Mississippi) that included Grapes of Wrath, Fences, Smokey Joe's Café, Urinetown, Company and Marat/Sade. Next he will be appearing in The Winter's Tale at Folger Theatre.

Michael Sharp (Senator Joseph McCarthy) has performed and directed at MetroStage since 1996, where he was first seen in Side by Side by Sondheim (HH nomination). He was in the cast of Starting Here Starting Now which opened the new theatre in 2001 and directed the iconic seasonal favorite Broadway Christmas Carol for five years, also playing both the role of Scrooge and the Man Who Isn't Scrooge. He won the Helen Hayes Award for Grand Hotel at Signature, where he also played Tobias in Sweeney Todd (twice), the Boss in Side Show, Elegies, and Rapunzel's Prince in Into the Woods, and more. He was most recently seen at MetroStage in Master Class and in his cabaret Back in Business.

Russell Sunday (Senator Everett Dirksen) has appeared in the MetroStage productions of Closer Than Ever, Broadway Christmas Carol, and Musical of Musicals, The Musical!. At Signature Theatre he has been seen in Chess, Sweeney Todd, Les Miz, Brother Russia and, more recently, Titanic and Sheryl Crow's Diner. At Olney Theatre he has been seen in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, Carousel and Beauty and the Beast (playing the Beast). He received a HH nomination for Jekyll and Hyde at Toby's Dinner Theatre, where he was recently seen in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. He has also performed the lead role in Sweeney Todd opposite his wife, Janine Gulisano Sunday, at Red Branch Theatre Company. Next up Miracle on 34th Street at Toby's.

Marni Penning (Roy Cohn, Subcommittee's Chief Counsel) is a playwright, teacher, voiceover artist, children's book illustrator, two-time Helen Hayes Award nominee (and Sarah Palin impersonator during the 2008 election). In DC she has performed at Shakespeare Theatre (Lorenzaccio, The Comedy of Errors), Woolly Mammoth Theatre (The Unmentionables, After Ashley, Big Death and Little Death), Folger Theatre (The Comedy of Errors), Round House (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Washington Stage Guild (Red Herring). Regionally she has performed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival and many others. Her next role will be in Book of Will at Round House Theatre.

Wood Van Meter (David Schine, Subcommittee's Chief Consultant) has played Tony Whitcomb in Shear Madness at the Kennedy Center, and appeared in Kiss Me Kate (Shakespeare Theatre Company), Elmer Gantry and Cloak and Dagger (Signature Theatre), The Whale (Rep Stage), Silence The Musical (Studio Theatre), The Last Train to Nibroc (Washington Stage Guild), and Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat at Toby's Dinner Theatre. He has appeared regionally at Actors Guild of Lexington, the Hangar Theatre, Pittsburgh Musical Theatre and the Weathervane Playhouse.

Designers are: Carl Gudenius, set; Robbie Hayes, projections; Michael Sharp & Sigrid Johannesdottir, costumes; John Alexander, lights; Gordon Nimmo-Smith & Denise Rose, sound. David Elias is the Stage Manager.

Performances for Are You Now or Have You Ever Been... will be Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8, Saturdays at 3 and 8, Sundays at 3 and 7, Oct 5-Nov 5. Tickets are $55-60 with student and active military and group discounts available. Press night is Sunday Oct 8 at 7 pm. For ticket reservations or information about group sales call the theatre at 703-548-9044 or go online to www.metrostage.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.