Mile Square Theatre announces Community Resilience Program: Panel Discussion on Black History Month, February 23
WHEN: Tuesday, February 23, from
7:30pm-8:30pm at VIRTUAL MST
WHERE: Go to www.milesquaretheatre.org to register for this community event.
ADMISSION:
For more information on Mile Square Theatre, please visit www.milesquaretheatre.org
MST’s Community Resilience program commemorates Black
History Month with a panel discussion about race and theatre.
Black History Month began as Black History Week in 1926. In
1970, after the great Civil Rights campaigns of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, the
United States began celebrating Black History Month.
Now, 95 years after the first week was celebrated—in the
wake of mass social protests against police brutality and white supremacy, in
the aftermath of an attempted coup that threatened our Democracy, and in the
midst of a world health pandemic that has shuttered the performing arts and put
most performers out of work—we gather to discuss the significance of Black
History Month in our current moment.
Please join MST in welcoming a panel of distinguished Black
theatre artists as they discuss what Black History Month means to them, their
hopes, fears, and dreams for our country in general and the performing arts in
particular, and their vision for a way forward as we look to re-open theaters
and perform again.
Nathaniel Stampley—Panelist
Nathaniel, a Milwaukee native, is a proud graduate of the
University of Wisconsin where he received his Bachelors of Music Degree.
Broadway credits include: CATS, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, The Color
Purple (original production and the revival), and The Lion King
(Broadway and the West End). National tours: The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
(Los Angeles NAACP Award nomination), and Ragtime. He has also appeared
on the hit television shows, Law & Order: SVU (NBC), The Blacklist (NBC)
and Blue Bloods (CBS). He is an Artistic Associate at the Milwaukee Repertory
Theater. He is also a Lunt-Fontanne Fellow awarded by the Ten Chimneys
Foundation with master teacher and mentor Ms. Phylicia Rashad.
Blaire Brooks—Panelist
Blaire started her acting career
in NYC after receiving her MFA in theater performance from Rutgers
University. Film/TV: Like Father, Demolition. Bull, Law &
Order: CI, Blindspot, Friends from College, Blacklist, The Following.
National commercials for Progressive, CDW, Microsoft, FedEx, Heineken, NY
Lottery, and Booking.com. She has performed Off-Broadway at the Public Theater and
Manhattan Theater Club. She is a company member of the Charleston, SC based
theater company Crescent Stage and Mile Square Theatre. Her most favorite and
cherished roles at MST have been Darzee in The Garden of Rikki
Tikki Tavi, and Lilly in Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse. Blaire
is an adjunct acting professor at Pace University’s Musical Theater program, a
wife, and mom to a four and soon-to-be two-year-old.
Erich McMillan-McCall—Panelist
Erich is an actor, producer and activist. For the past
decade he has served as Founder/CEO of Project1VOICE, Inc. (P1V) is a 501(c)
(3), nonprofit performing arts service organization based in New York City. The
organizations mission is to support and promote the American theater
specifically the narrative of and as written by African American and
African Diaspora people. P1V was founded in 2009 during the devastating
economic downturn to create awareness and support for the many
community-building historically African American cultural arts institutions
whose doors were closing with no hope of reopening. P1V’s core activity
is the coordination of an international, same-day, staged reading series
that revives and reintroduces—forgotten—seminal works by playwrights of and
whose focus is the African American and African Diaspora narrative for the
American theater. The event is called One Play One Day. It takes place each
year on the third Monday in June.
Joi Danielle Price—Moderator is a singer, writer, and actor. Her love of the written word led her to study journalism alongside musical theatre at the University of Michigan. Her credits include numerous staged readings, workshops, and new musicals, in the New York Musical Theatre Festival, with the Prospect Theatre Company, and at the York Theatre. Joi has also appeared on Broadway and National Tours of Mamma Mia! and Ragtime: The Musical. A native of Flint, Michigan, Joi appears on episode 3 of Disney Plus’ Encore!, which reunites the now-adult cast of her Flint Central High School musical. She is the mother of two children educated in Hoboken and is honored to serve on the Mile Square Theatre Board of Trustees.
MST Season Sponsorship: Advance Realty, Aecom/Tishman, Bijou Properties, Haven Savings Bank, Jet.com, Kearny Bank, The Rockefeller Group.
Mile Square Theatre is supported by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.
This program is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts and by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs, Thomas A. Degise, County Executive, and the Board of Chosen Freeholders.
Mile Square Theatre is a member of The New Jersey Theatre Alliance.