On March 10, 2021 at 7:30 pm we presented a Zoom reading of White Woman, Black Boy by David Holmberg, directed by Austin Pendleton (nominated for Broadway’s 1981 Tony Award as Best Director for directing Elizabeth Taylor in a revival of Lillian Hellman‘s The Little Foxes.)
Logline
On the eve of her possible indictment in the notorious Emmett Till murder case, the widow of one of his killers, along with other women connected to the incident, comes to terms with her terrible past.
Cast of White Woman, Black Boy
The cast featured, Sue Dennis and Rebecca Wilson (not shown), Debbie Workman, Debra Khan-Bey, Angela Hayden, Veronica Frazier and Anne Marie Ross.
History of this production
White Woman, Black Boy was accepted in the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival and was due to go up in August 2020. It was postponed and is now scheduled to play in the festival at Theatre Row in September 2021. Stupid COVID.
Playwright Bio
David Holmberg is an “old school” journalist who worked for New York Newsday, The Washington Star, and the Philadelphia Daily News, among other newspapers. He covered the civil rights movement, the war in El Salvador, and the AIDS crisis in New York in the ’80’s. As a free-lancer, he has written for The New York Times Magazine, the Times regional edition and culture and travel sections, The Nation, The Columbia Journalism Review, The Huffington Post and Reuters. He was a senior editor of The Village Voice and taught journalism at New York University. He has had three plays produced off-off Broadway: I’m Dying Now and I Did Not Kill Emmett Till, based on an interview with one of Till’s killers; A Cop Shot My Son!, based on the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a Hispanic police officer in Miami, and White Woman, Black Boy: Carolyn Bryant and Emmett Till, based on a failed attempt in 2005 to indict Bryant for Till’s murder.
Crew
director Austin Pendleton, playwright David Holmberg, zoom producers Bruce A! Kraemer and Joan Kane for Ego Actus, associate producer Debra Khan-Bey, stage manager Christina Marks, media marketing by Laura Varela, the Broadway Bound production is presented by Bruce Benway,