The Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS) Presents: 

Race and Gender Representation in Theatre for Young Audiences

Online Livestream Episode and Live Q&A

Occurred on June 17, 2020 @1pm

Michael J. Bobbitt

Michael J. Bobbitt is the Artistic Director of New Repertory Theatre. He is an arts leader, director, choreographer, and playwright. Prior to New Rep, he served as Artistic Director for Adventure Theatre- MTC in Maryland, where he led the organization to be a respected theatre/training company in the DC region and a nationally influential professional Theatre for Young Audiences. He led the company through a merger, increased the organizational budget by more than 600%, expanded audiences by 400%, commissioned 40 new works by noted playwrights, transferred two shows Off-Broadway, transferred one show internationally, built an academy, and earned dozens of Helen Hayes Award Nominations including eight wins. Bobbitt has directed/choreographed at Arena Stage, Ford’s Theatre, The Shakespeare Theatre Company, Olney Theatre Center, Studio Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Center Stage, Roundhouse Theatre, The Kennedy Center, and the Washington National Opera.

His national and international credits include the NY Musical Theatre Festival, Mel Tillis 2001, La Jolla Playhouse, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, Jefferson Performing Arts Center, and the Olympics. As a writer, his work was chosen for the NYC International Fringe Festival and The New York and Musical Theatre Festival. He has two plays published by Rogers and Hammerstein Theatricals. He trained at Harvard Business School’s Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management, The National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program, Certificate in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell and other top leadership programs. He earned the Excel Leadership Award (Center for Nonprofit Advancement) the Emerging Leader Award (County Executive’s Excellence in the Arts and Humanities), and Person of the Year Award (Maryland Theatre Guide), among others.

Pearl Cleage

Pearl Cleage is an Atlanta-based writer, currently Mellon Playwright in Residence at the Tony Award-winning Alliance Theatre. Her new play Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous, had its world premiere as a part of the theatre’s 50th anniversary season in 2019. Other plays at the Alliance include Pointing at the Moon, What I Learned in Paris, and Flyin’ West, the most produced new play in the country in 1994. Her play, The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years, was commissioned by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and co-produced with the Alliance in Montgomery and Atlanta.

Her first play for young audiences, Tell Me My Dream, was commissioned and produced by the Alliance in 2015. Blues for An Alabama Sky was included in the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival and has been produced in multiple American theatres every year since it premiered at the Alliance in 1995. The Alliance included a 20th anniversary production in their 2015 season, directed by Susan V. Booth. It recently enjoyed an extended run at The Court Theatre in Chicago and a critically praised production at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Her other plays include Late Bus to Mecca, Bourbon at the Border, and A Song for Coretta.

Her first novel, What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day, was an Oprah Book Club pick and spent nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Her other novels include Baby Brother’s Blues, which received an NAACP Image Award for Literature, I Wish I Had A Red Dress, Babylon Sisters, and Things I Never Thought I’d Do.  Her memoir, Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons and Love Affairs, was published by Simon and Schuster/ATRIA Books in April, 2014. She is also the co-author with her husband, writer Zaron W. Burnett, Jr., of We Speak Your Names, a praise poem commissioned by Oprah Winfrey for her 2005 Legends Weekend, and A 21st Century Freedom Song: For Selma at 50, commissioned by Winfrey for the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March. Cleage and Burnett are frequent collaborators including their award winning ten year performance series, Live at Club Zebra! featuring their work as writers and performance artists. They are currently collaborating with visual artist Radcliffe Bailey on their first book for children, In My Granny’s Garden.

Cleage was awarded the Governor’s Award for the Arts in 2018. She received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from her alma mater, Spelman College, in 2010 and spent two years as a member of the Spelman faculty. She was the founding editor of CATALYST Magazine, an Atlanta-based literary journal, for ten years and served as Artistic Director of Just Us Theater Company for five years. Her work has been given grant support through the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulton County Arts Council, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs, and the Coca-Cola Foundation. Her current position as Playwright in Residence at the Alliance Theatre is funded by a generous grant from The Mellon Foundation.

Benj Pasek