Panelists will include producer Nelle Nugent ("Stick Fly," "Ghetto Klown," "Time Stands Still"); Woodie King Jr., artistic director of New Federal Theatre ("For Colored Girls..."); Donna Walker-Kuhne of Walker International Communications; Kamilah Forbes, artistic director of the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival and director ("Def Poetry Jam on Broadway"); and Melissa Marano, senior client account executive at aka Promotions ("Jerusalem," "The Motherf**er With The Hat," "Stick Fly," "A Streetcar Named Desire").
The panel will take place on Wednesday, March 21 at 7:30 p.m. at the Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal St., NYC. Tickets are $12 (free for TRU members). To RSVP, email TRUnltd@aol.com or call (212) 714-7628 at least a day in advance.
The panel will focus on whether artists have made any significant progress in bringing diversity into commercial theater, if there is an audience to support the work and how producers can attract that audience, and the importance of cultivating producers of color to help bring more culturally diverse works into commercial production, without compromising the integrity of minority voices in order to make them more palatable to the mainstream. The panelists will examine the topic through the eyes of producers, who decide which shows to produce and the duration of their theatrical run.
TRU’s monthly panels have been a core program of TRU since its inception. In recent years, executive director Bob Ost has partnered with Back Stage to generate topics of interest to both TRU members and Back Stage readers. "Through TRU, Back Stage is able to reach beyond its actor base to a wider theater community," Ost said, "and we get more visibility through the Back Stage connection."
