OBIE Award winner Russell Hornsby (Jitney, Eddie Sutton on ABC's Lincoln Heights) and LADCC and NAACP Award recipient Charlayne Woodard (Pretty Fire, Neat, In Real Life) star when L.A. Theatre Works records Crumbs from the Table of Joy, a sly coming-of-age comedy by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage. Seret Scott directs five performances, December 9-13, at the Skirball Cultural Center. Also in the cast are Deidrie Henry (NAACP, Garland and LADCC Awards for Yellowman) and Tinashe Kajese (LA Weekly Award winner, Athol Fugard's Victory). All performances will be recorded for broadcast on L.A. Theatre Works' nationally syndicated radio theater series, which airs locally in Southern California on KPCC 89.3 every Saturday from 10 pm - midnight and can be streamed on demand at www.latw.org.
In Crumbs from the Table of Joy, the Crump family is in trouble. Godfrey is widowed and adrift, and his teen daughters, Ernestine and Ermina, have immersed themselves in glamorous illusions of Hollywood to escape the racial prejudice of 1950s Brooklyn. But things change quickly when free-spirited Aunt Lily shows up. Suddenly, Godfrey remarries a white woman, Ermina discovers boys, and Ernestine is torn between embracing bebop and the Communist Party.
Lynn Nottage's plays include Intimate Apparel; Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (recorded by L.A. Theatre Works, starring Charlayne Woodard); Las Meninas; and Ruined, for which she received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Her plays have been produced and developed at theaters both nationally and internationally, including the Manhattan Theatre Club, Goodman Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company, Playwrights Horizons, Center Stage, South Coast Rep., Second Stage, Freedom Theatre, Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, St. Louis Black Rep., Crossroads Theatre, Intiman, San Jose Rep., Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Steppenwolf, Yale Rep., Vineyard Theatre, The Women's Project, New Dramatists Playtime Lab, The Tricycle Theatre in London, among many others. She is the recipient of numerous additional awards including the 2007 MacArthur Genius Award, an OBIE Award for playwriting, NY Drama Critics Circle Award, Best play and John Gassner Outer Critics Circle awards, American Theatre Critics/Steinberg 2004 New Play Award, 2004 Francesca Primus Award, and 2 AUDELCO awards. She was awarded a 2007 Lucille Lortel Foundation Fellowship, 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2004 PEN/Laura Pels Award for Drama.
Director Seret Scott is an Associate Artist at the Old Globe Theatre where she's directed a dozen productions, among them Crumbs from the Table of Joy (also at South Coast Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Rep), Trojan Women, Two Trains Running, The Constant Wife, Faith Healer, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Madame Mao's Memories, and the premiere of Knowing Cairo. Off-Broadway NYC, she premiered Mujeres y Hombres at New Victory Theatre, and directed Birdie Blue and Zooman and the Sign for Second Stage Theatre. Regional credits include productions for Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Studio Theatre, Ford's Theatre, Tribute Productions, Geva Theater, Studio Arena, ACT-SF, Long Wharf Theatre, Hartford Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, George Street Playhouse, McCarter Theatre (outreach), Crossroads Theatre, Alliance Theater, Indiana Rep, Alley Theater, Philadelphia Theatre Co, Merrimack Theatre, National Black Theatre, Virginia Stage Co, New Mexico Rep, and Capitol Rep among many. Ms Scott directed workshops for Roundabout Theatre, Pacific Playwright's Conference, O'Neill Theatre Center, NY Stage and Film and Sundance Playwright's Lab. She's a former Director in Residence for New Dramatists and is the author of Second Line, which was produced by NJ's Passage Theatre and DC's Atlas Theatre. As an actress, Seret was an original cast member of For Colored Girls on Broadway, and received a Drama Desk Award for her performance in My Sister, My Sister. Her directing nominations include NAACP Theater Awards, Connecticut Critics Circle and DC's Helen Hayes Awards.
