On Friday, January 22, Broadway Black’s Andrew Shade will moderate a panel at BroadwayCon 2016 called A Brand New Day: Diversity on Broadway, featuring Erin Quill (fairyprincessdiaries.com), Allegiance‘s Telly Leung, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Alia Jones-Harvey, Tamika Sonja Lawrence and Roberta Pereira, at New York Hilton, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, (Regent Room) in New York, from 1:00PM – 1:50PM.
In the year of Hamilton, Allegiance, The Wiz Live!, Shuffle Along and more, the current Broadway climate is the most diverse most enthusiasts can remember. How far has the theatrical world actually come in terms of race and representation on stage?
Click here for more information and the complete schedule of BroadwayCon which runs January 22 -24, 2016, and to purchase tickets. BroadwayCon is the first ever fan convention for the Broadway and theater community which is being held January 22 -24, 2016 at New York Hilton, 1335 Avenue of the Americas in New York.
abcnews.go.com: Theater Fans Gear up for First Ever Fan Fest BroadwayCon
Andrew Shade
Moderator
Andrew Shade has a burning passion that lies in the arts. Originally from Fort Wayne, IN, he resides in the heart of Harlem, helping to lead the way to building a more diverse and knowledgeable audience in the theater world. He is the Founder & Editorial Director of Broadway Black, a digital platform dedicated to highlighting the achievements and successes of African-American theater artists on and off the Broadway stage.
Quiara Alegría Hudes
Quiara Alegría Hudes’ first New York production came in 2006. The play Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue was named a Pulitzer Finalist. Her follow-up play, Water By the Spoonful, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2012. In the meantime her musical, In the Heights, co-authored with Lin-Manuel Miranda, won the Tony Award for Best Musical, was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, and was a Pulitzer finalist. Next up is Daphne’s Dive at New York’s Signature Theater. Her orchestral play, The Good Peaches, premieres this spring in a co-production by the Cleveland Playhouse and Cleveland Orchestra. Her original musical Miss You Like Hell premieres in fall 2016 at La Jolla Playhouse.
Alia Jones-Harvey
Alia Jones-Harvey is an Olivier Award Winning and Tony-nominated producer, and partner at Front Row Productions, a production company devoted to bringing classic works performed by actors of color to the Broadway stage. Along with her partner and the founder of Front Row, Stephen C. Byrd, she stands as one of the only two African American lead producers on Broadway.
Jones-Harvey made her Broadway debut in 2008, co-producing the first-ever African American revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 2012, Byrd and Jones-Harvey brought a multiracial adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire, to Broadway. Byrd and Jones-Harvey then teamed up for The Trip to Bountiful, which enjoyed a successful run in 2013, and the duo followed up with a Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet.
Front Row partnered with The Public Theater to produce Eclipsed, and will be bringing the critically-acclaimed production to Broadway’s Golden Theatre in 2016. They are currently developing Black Orpheus, a re-telling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice set in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival.
Tamika Sonja Lawrence
Tamika Sonja Lawrence is a Grammy-nominated Actor/Singer/Songwriter. Tamika’s band, “Tamika and The Slay” performs all over the NYC area at some of New York’s best and well-known downtown music venue institutions, including: “The Bitter End” and “Rockwood Music Hall”. Broadway: If/Then, Book of Mormon (Tony Award-winning Best Musical of the Year, 2011), Matilda (Tony Nominee, Best Musical, 2013) Off-Broadway: Rent, Dir. Michael Grief Television: “Blue Bloods”, “Law and Order: SVU”, “Show Me A Hero,” plus countless TV performances on: “The View”, “Live! with Kelly and Michael”, “Good Morning America”, “The Today Show”, and “Live! With Regis and Kelly”.
Telly Leung
Broadway and national touring credits for Telly Leung include Flower Drum Song, Pacific Overtures, Wicked (Boq, original Chicago company), Rent (final Broadway company) and Godspell. Off-Broadway, he was featured in Manhattan Theatre Club’s The World of Extreme Happiness. Regionally, some of his favorite roles include Sammy in the world-premiere of Allegiance (the Old Globe, with George Takei and Lea Salonga), Song in M. Butterfly (Philadelphia Theater Company), Angel in Rentat the Hollywood Bowl (directed by Neil Patrick Harris), Harold Bride in Titanic (The Muny), Teen Angel in Grease (Paper Mill Playhouse), Simon in Jesus Christ Superstar (Sacramento Music Circus) and Thuy in Miss Saigon (Pittsburgh CLO). Television audiences will recognize his work on Fox’s “Glee” (Wes, the Warbler), “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”, and Hulu’s “Deadbeat”. He has performed all over the world at venues like Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, the London Hippodrome, New York’s 54 Below, San Francisco’s Feinstein’s at the Nikko and the Hollywood Bowl. His debut album, “{i’ll cover you}”, was released on The Yellow Sound Label in 2012. Telly holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and has taught as an adjunct professor at NYU’s New Studio on Broadway. Telly can also be seen coaching the next generation of Broadway performers on the PBS documentary, “Broadway or Bust”. Producing credits include “Grind” (a musical short film starring Anthony Rapp and Claire Coffee) and “Seasons of Broadway” (a concert series that celebrates the diversity of the Great White Way). Please check out his website at www.tellyleung.com and follow him on Twitter @tellyleung.
Roberta Pereira
Roberta Pereira is an Olivier Award-winning, Tony Award-nominated theater producer. She is currently the Producing Director of The Playwrights Realm, a nonprofit theater company dedicated to emerging playwrights. She is also Co-Founder and Managing Editor of Dress Circle Publishing, which specializes in books by Broadway authors, including Jennifer Ashley Tepper’s The Untold Stories of Broadway and Seth Rudetsky’s Seth’s Broadway Diary. She was previously with Bisno Productions, where she was on the producing team for shows on Broadway (Grace, Mothers and Sons) and in London (Merrily We Roll Along). A graduate of Wesleyan University and Yale School of Drama, Roberta is originally from Brazil and currently lives in New York.
Erin Quill
Erin Quill holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Performance. An original Broadway cast member of Avenue Q, she’s also been seen as Madame Liang in the 50th anniversary production of Flower Drum Song, and as Lady Thiang opposite Debby Boone in The King and I, among other roles. Television work includes Nurse Jackie, NYPD Blue, and The Following.Feature films include Man on a Ledge and The Mikado Project, for which she also co-wrote the screenplay adaptation. Erin’s social media presence has been noted by Playbill; she blogs at fairyprincessdiaries.com, helping start conversations about diversity. She has appeared in roundtables for NPR, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the Huffington Post, among others.
Click here for the Lia Chang Articles Archive and here for the Lia Chang Photography Website.
Lia Chang. Photo by Garth Kravits
Lia Chang is an award-winning filmmaker, a Best Actress nominee, a photographer, and an award-winning multi-platform journalist. Lia has appeared in the films Wolf, New Jack City, A Kiss Before Dying, King of New York, Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, Taxman and Hide and Seek. She is profiled in Examiner.com, Jade Magazine and Playbill.com.
All text, graphics, articles & photographs: © 2000-2016 Lia Chang Multimedia. All rights reserved. All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of Lia Chang. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content. For permission, please contact Lia at lia@liachang.com
