Sue Lawless directs the production, presented by Juneteenth Legacy Theatre, whose founder and producing director is Littleway.
Motion and Location, which was a finalist in the TRU Voices Play Reading Series, "is a gay coming-of-age comedy about a 17-year-old African-American who hopes to parlay her college athletic scholarship into a career as a professional baseball player. Caught between her free-spirited Aunt and her disciplined Mother, 'Clarissa' fights to make her own dreams come true."
The cast of Motion and Location features Geany Masai as Mrs. Mills; Suzanne Froix as Aunt Bo and Angela S. Arnold as Clarissa.
Performances play the Mainstage Theatre, 312 West 36th Street, 4th Floor.
Littleway's plays include Black Absurdity (La Mama, etc); If You Love Me (Chocolate Church in Bath, ME, and Little Theatre in Dallas); Billy, Lena and The Duke: A Night of Ellington Music! and Kindler Genter Nation (Kentucky Center for the Arts and Iowa State University); A Collective Piss and the Devil's Beating His Wife and Juneteenth Cotton Club Revue (Louisville) and Fin'ly Free (Louisville). She has also written several plays about 18th Century African-American poet, Phillis Wheatley, and is working on a book for the musical, WAR: Women of the American Revolution. At Queens College Littleway taught theatre and directed for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf and also created a minor degree program in African American Theatre at the University of Louisville. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and Past President of Black Theatre Network (BTN).
Sue Lawless has directed several of Lorna Littleway's plays including The Lives of Young Black Folks: Bang! Bang! Bang! and Young Sistas and a reading of Motion and Location (TRU). On Broadway, Lawless directed The Five O'Clock Girl and Off–Broadway she directed The Rise Of David Levinsky, Cut the Ribbons, Body Shop, Potholes and In Gay Company, for which she earned a Drama Desk nomination as Best Musical Director. Lawless has directed at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Goodspeed Opera House, Walnut Street Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cleveland Playhouse, George Street Playhouse and Paper Mill Playhouse.
All seats are $18 ($15 for students/seniors) and are available through Smarttix at (212) 529-7857 or (212) 529-8190. Performances will play July 25 at 6 PM, July 27 at 6:15 PM, July 28 at 8:30 PM, July 30 at 3:45 PM, Aug. 5 at 11 AM and Aug. 6 at 7:45 PM.
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Founded in 1999, Juneteenth Legacy Theatre derives its name from the traditional African-American holiday, "juneteenth," which commemorates the date, June 19, 1865, "when slaves in the western territories learned of their freedom two-and-one-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation." Juneteenth Legacy Theatre, a development company of original and new works about the African-American experience and its legacy, presented two one-acts, The Lives of Young Black Folk, at the 2005 NYC Fringe Festival. The twin-bill of comedy and drama by Littleway had a twenty-something black women riffing on love, sex and raising children (Young Sistas), and a teenage boy shot dead by an undercover police officer (Bang! Bang! Bang!).
Juneteenth has produced 72 new works at its annual three-week festival hosted by Actors Theatre of Louisville.
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Running July 17-Aug. 6, the Midtown International Theatre Festival features some 40 shows in four venues, all on the same block. Additional information on the Festival can be found at www.midtownfestival.org.
