Coloring the Great White Way March 21, 2012

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) presents its next monthly networking panel, Coloring the Great White Way: Bringing Diversity to Commercial Theater, a discussion focused on how to bring more diverse offerings and audiences to the traditionally great “white” way.

Panelists will include producer Nelle Nugent (Stick Fly, Ghetto Klown, Time Stands Still, ...Nicholas Nickleby); Woodie King Jr., artistic director of New Federal Theatre (What the Wine Sellers Buy, For Colored Girls..., Checkmates); Stephen C. Byrd of Front Row Productions and producer of the first African-American Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ Cat On A Hot Tin Roof; Donna Walker-Kuhne of Walker International Communications; and Kamilah Forbes, artistic director of the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival, director (Def Poetry Jam on Broadway); and Melissa Marano, Senior Client Account Executive at aka Promotions (Jerusalem, The MotherF*er With The Hat, Billy Elliot, Stick Fly, A Streetcar Named Desire). They will examine the topic through the eyes of producers, the people who decide which shows to produce and the duration of their theatrical run. The panel will take place on March 21 at 7:30pm at the Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, NYC. The panel will focus on the following questions:

• Have we made any significant progress in bringing diversity into commercial theater?
• Is there an audience to support the work, and how do we tap into that audience? How can we help along the process?
• Even commercial plays with tremendous crossover appeal, such as Stick Fly and Radio Golf, have not managed to succeed as well as we might hope. How do we build a culturally diverse audience that can truly support works like these?
• Might cultivating producers of color help generate players who have a vested interest in bringing more culturally diverse works into commercial production? And can we do it without compromising the integrity of diverse voices in order to make them more palatable to the white mainstream?

Tickets are $12 (free for TRU members). Please RSVP by email to [email protected] or by phone at (212) 714-7628 at least a day in advance.

For more information about TRU membership and programs, visit www.truonline.org or call 212-714-7628.