Jasmine Guy, celebrated American star of television, film and Broadway, will join the cast of Pearl Cleage’s The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One-Hundred Years. This world premiere co-production will be directed by the Alliance’s own Susan V. Booth at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival Sept. 24 – Oct. 3 and then at the Alliance Theatre Oct. 20 – Nov. 14.
Jasmine Guy’s television credits include her memorable role as Whitley Gilbert on the Cosby Show spin-off, A Different World, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Living Single, Melrose Place, Touched By An Angel and The Vampire Diaries. Her film credits include Harlem Nights with Eddie Murphy, Spike Lee’s School Daze and Cats Don’t Dance while her Broadway credits include Crow in The Wiz, Mickey in Leader of the Pack, Betty Rizzo in Grease and Velma Kelly in Chicago.
Casting for the award-winning play August Osage County is almost complete! All roles in the play will be filled by local stars, led by Atlanta veteran Brenda Bynum as the matriarch Violet.
“The brilliance of August Osage County lies in its utterly dramatic capture of the beauty and horror of total familiarity,” notes Alliance Theatre Artistic Director Susan V. Booth. “Rather than trying to create that complicated sense of family with a roomful of strangers, we’ve opted to take grand advantage of the depth and history that Atlanta’s best actors share – and to combine the chemistry of 13 veterans with a Pulitzer and Tony Award winning script. It could be lightening in a bottle, if we get it right.”
In addition to Bynum, the cast includes such local talent as Andrew Benator (Mulan and Eurydice), Carolyn Cook (Merlin and Sight Unseen), Richard Garner (directed Eurydice), Bart Hansard (Tennis in Nablus and A Christmas Carol), Chris Kayser (A Christmas Carol and Eurydice), Tess Malis Kincaid (Moonlight and Magnolias and The Miracle Worker), Joe Knezevich (Tennis in Nablus and A Christmas Carol), and Diany Rodriguez (Middle School the Musical). The complete local cast will be announced in the weeks to follow.
More casting information will be announced in the near future!
(Note: this is info released back April... we just found a whole bunch of news that got slapped in the wrong folder, so we're posting anything that's not outdated, even if it did hit other news media earlier!)
Now in its 41st season, Atlanta’s nationally acclaimed Alliance Theatre, recipient of the 2007 Regional Theatre Tony Award® and a leading national theatre, creates the powerful experience of shared theatre for diverse people on two stages for youth and adult audiences. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Susan V. Booth, the Alliance Theatre is a national theatre with a local address, reaching out annually to almost 200,000 patrons and members of the community. Known for its high artistic standards and national role in creating significant theatrical works, the Alliance launched three Tony Award-winning hits to Broadway: Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida and Alfred Uhry’s The Last Night of Ballyhoo. And, in a rare event for a regional theatre, it originated the national tour of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. The theatre has premiered 60 works including adaptations of Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Pearl Cleage’s Blues for an Alabama Sky. Further evidence of the Alliance’s commitment to new work is found in its nationally recognized Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition, a cutting-edge program introducing student playwrights to professional networks while producing the world premiere of the winning student’s work. The Alliance Theatre also offers extensive education and outreach programs such as the Institute for Educators and the Collision Project for high school students. The Alliance continuously brings Atlanta the finest talent and finest art—proving once again that the Alliance is where great theatre lives. 404.733.4650 or www.alliancetheatre.org.
The Alliance Theatre is a division of the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia, which also includes the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, High Museum of Art and Young Audiences.
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