Elizabeth VanDyke
GREAT MEN OF GOSPEL: SPIRIT INTO SOUND:
Written By: Elizabeth Van Dyke
Directed by: Elizabeth Van Dyke
Choreographer: Dyane Harvey
Musical Director: Cliff Terry
Vocal Arranger: Gregg Payne
Producer: Woodie King’s New Federal Theatre
Featuring: Richard Bellazzin, Jeff Bolding, Ralph Carter, Cliff Terry, Gary E. Vincent, Montroville C. Williams
Production Stage Manager: Chris Halpin
Set Design: Roger Predmore
Lighting Design: Shirley Prendergast
Costume Design: Ali Turns
Sound Design: Sean O’Halloran
Props: Brooke Fulton Myers
Great Men of Gospel: Spirit Into Sound, using a tremendous ensemble of actors and singers traveling the journey through the evolution of gospel music in America, celebrating that African Continuum- that spirit which is the foundation of music in the world today. They portray the slaves, the Jubilee Quartets, sing the songs of Tindsley, Dorsey, the Five Blind Boys, The Pilgrim Travelers, the Dixie Hummingbirds, The Soul Stirrers, James Cleveland and more. Great Men of Gospel: Spirit Into Sound is an uplifting, moving and inspirational evening of theatre.
WAITING TO BE INVITED
Written by: S.M. Shepard-Massat
Directed by: Elizabeth Van Dyke
Featuring:
Joyce Anastasia Murray, BeeBe Wilson, Shirley Marks Whitmore, Wayne DeHart, Julie Oliver, Deborah Oliver Artis
Producer: Eileen Morris, The Ensemble Theatre (Houston, Texas)
Dramaturg: Daintee Glover Jones
Production Stage Manager: Broderick Jones
Set Designer: James V. Thomas
Lighting Designer: David Gipson
Costume Designer: Sarah Smith
It’s the summer of 1964 in Atlanta, Georgia and four middle-aged church going black women, co-workers from a local doll factory, travel by city bus to a “Whites Only” eating establishment inside a downtown Atlanta department store. Their purpose is to ‘test’ their newly acquired civil rights handed down by the Supreme Court outlawing segregation in restaurants.
Waiting to Be Invited takes the audience on a warm, moving, and courageous journey towards freedom.
SOPHISTICATED LADIES:
Book by Donald McKayle
Music by: Duke Ellington
Directed by: Elizabeth Van Dyke
Musical Director: James Alston
Choreographer: Greer Reed
Featuring: Christina Maria Acosta, Nefertiti Alves, Gabriel Ash, Kevin Brown, Catlin Lee-Covert, Sandy Dowe, Tyler LaRue Grinage, Cynthia Jackson, Benjamin Mapp, Greer A. Reed, Dana Woodruff and Gary E. Vincent
Dramaturg: Marta Effinger
Production Stage Manager: Renee’ B. Sorrell
Set Designer: Kenneth Ellis
Lighting Design: Jason Peroney
Costumes: Betty Pendleton & Heddie Thomas
Sound: Wayne Gaines
Sophisticated Ladies is a revue that pays tribute to the big-band music of legendary composer Duke Ellington, inclusing “In a Sentimental Mood,” “It Don’t Mean A Thing, If It Ain’t Got That Swing,” and the title tune.
SWEET MAMA STRINGBEAN
Written by: Beth Turner
Directed by: Elizabeth Van Dyke
Choreographer: Mickey Davidson
Featuring:
Sandra Reaves-Phillips, Cjay Hardy Phillip, Marishka Shanice Phillips, Gary E. Vincent, Darryl Jovan Williams
Produced by: Woodie King, Jr. New Federal Theatre
Production Stage Manager: Bayo
Musical Director: Gregg Payne
Set Designer: Ademola Olugebefola
Lighting Designer: Shirley Prendergast
Sound Designer: Sean O’Halloran
Costume Designer: Carolyn adams
Video & Film Designer: Theo Macabeo
Sweet Mama Stringbean shows an aging and severely overweight, legendary stage and film star Ethel Waters faced with a waning career and the prospect of an impoverished old age, when, a dream of a childhood spiritual awakening opens her to a new future with the Billy Graham Crusade.
SWEET MAMA STRINGBEAN shows two Ethel's: a wild and adventurous skinny woman able to introduce songs like Sweet Georgia Brown, Dinah, Am I Blue, and Stormy Weather; and the older 275-pound spiritual Broadway dramatic actress who starred in Mamba's Daughter and Member of the Wedding, as well as defining her life through the song, His Eye Is On The Sparrow.
THE OLD SETTLER
Written by: John Henry Redwood
Directed by: Elizabeth Van Dyke
Featuring:
To-Ree’-Nee’ Wolf Keiser, Barbea Williams, Walter Belcher, Tracy Loving
Producer: Susan Claassen, The Invisible Theatre
Production Stage Manager: Franklin Calsbeek, Jr.
Set Design: James Blair
Lighting Design: James Blair & Franklin Calsbeek, Jr.
Costume Design: Maryann Trombino
Sound Design: Gail Fitzhugh
Synopsis:
In World War II Harlem, New York, a fifty-five-year-old spinster (or as they were called in those days—an Old Settler), Elizabeth Borny, takes in a young male roomer, Husband Witherspoon, to help her with the rent. Husband has come to Harlem from South Carolina to search for his girlfriend, Lou Bessie Preston. Also living with Elizabeth is her sister, Quilly McGrath, fifty-three. There is an ominous cloud of tension that hangs over Elizabeth and Quilly's relationship. This tension is further exacerbated when Elizabeth and Husband take to liking each other. Quilly, who doesn't like Husband living with them in the first place, surely doesn't approve of their "carrying on," especially since Elizabeth is old enough to be Husband's mother. It is this "carrying on" that exposes a thirty-year-old wound which, until now, only had a bandage—now the wound can heal for the sisters.