Belated Kudos.

Sometimes the Bloginator can be accused at being asleep at the cyber-wheel. 

This is one of those times....

These accomplishments should of been announced from the roof of the Singleton Building....
May this Blog suffice.

We have a faculty member who deserves a trumpet ovation. (insert here)

Besides her long-standing/outstanding professional career (winner of the 2009 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Costume Design) just recently Toni-Leslie James, Head of Costume Design has:

• been awarded the National Black Theatre Festival's Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design Award for her contribution to the world of Costume Design for Black and American Theatre and the Entertainment Industry on August 1, 2010.

 

• accepted an invitation to join the National Theatre Conference. Founded in 1925, the National Theatre Conference, according to its Web site, “is a cooperative association of the most influential leaders in commercial, non-commercial and educational theatre.” Membership is by invitation only and is limited to just 120 people at a time. Will be inducted in December 2011.

• had costumes and an interview featured in the exhibition More Life! Angels in America at Twenty, which ran from November 2011-August 2012 at the Museum of Performance and Design in San Francisco.  The webpage featuring costumes.  http://www.mpdsf.org/PAGES/EXHIBITION/SHOWS/angels.html.

• AND is the Costume Designers four world premiere plays:
• LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE, CA (9/11)
PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS, NY (10/11)
Milk Like Sugar  

by Kristen Kirsten Greenidge

directed by Rebecca Taishman
(Winner of the prestigious Edgerton Foundation's New American Plays Award, Co-commissioned with Theater Masters and produced in association with Playwrights Horizons and Women’s Project Productions)
Milk Like Sugar moves to Playwrights Horizons in NY in October 2011 

• CITY CENTER ENCORES & JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER (11/11)
The Cotton Club Parade
Conceived by Jack Viertel
Featuring Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
Music Director Wynton Marsalis
Directed and Choreographed by Warren Carlyle
  Cotton Club Parade is a celebration of Duke Ellington's years at the famed Harlem nightclub in the 1920s and '30s. Cotton Club Parade is part of a new producing partnership between New York City Center and Jazz at Lincoln Center that will combine the organizations’ specialties: musical theater and jazz.

• YALE REP (2/12)

Good Goods
By Christina Anderson
Directed by Tina Landau
February 3-February 25, 2012

 

• THE LONG WHARF THEATRE (1/12)

Macbeth 1969

Adapted from William Shakespeare 
Directed & Adapted by Eric Ting

World Premiere

• CITY CENTER ENCORES - NEW REVIVAL (3/12)
Pipe Dreams
Music by Richard Rodgers
Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Based on the novel Sweet Thursday by John Steinbe

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• And Last But Not Least:  The West Coast Tour of The Scottsboro Boys

 The Scottsboro Boys scored 12 Tony Nominations for the 2011 Tony Awards. The production will play San Diego’s The Old Globe Theatre from April 22nd to June 3rd, 2012. The production will then move to San Francisco to play the American Conservatory Theatre from June 19th to July 15th, 2012. The entire original creative team will reunite to create these productions for the West Coast. in over a decade.

Also remember:

All of these productions
employed VCU students:

Josh Quinn (MFA as soon as he writes his thesis!):  Milk Like Sugar, Cotton Club Parade, Macbeth 1969
Cailin Anderson (2009):  The Scottsboro Boys (Vineyard), The Scottsboro Boys (Broadway)
Matt Armentrout (2013): The Cotton Club Parade
Adrian Boyes (2011): The Cotton Club Parade
Rebecca Willet (2010): The Cotton Club Parade
Gloria Kim (2013):  Good Goods
Elizabeth Ensminger (2012):  Pipe Dream
Michael Magaraci (2012):  Pipe Dream
Jessica Goldman (2012):  Pipe Dream

Congratulations Toni-Leslie James