HOUSTON- Eileen Morris, artistic director of The Ensemble Theatre, Houston's only professional African-American theater company, and Ntozake Shange, the Obie Award-winning playwright of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and her adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, will host a town meeting tonight to discuss their experiences at The National Black Theatre Summit that was held at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, March 2 - 6, 1998.

The town meeting, free to the public, will take place at 7 PM at The Ensemble, the oldest black professional theater in the Southwest. Celebrating a $4 million renovation to its facility, The Ensemble is in its 21st season. Shange, also a poet and novelist, is an associate director of The Ensemble and an associate professor of English at nearby Prairie View A & M University.

Morris and Shange plan to relate how the findings at the five-day conference, which was partially borne out of the August Wilson-Robert Brustein debate, apply to regional black theater in general and to The Ensemble in particular. Morris and Shange were participants as well as observers at the summit. At the town meeting, they will make presentations and encourage feedback. Patrons, educators, and theater professionals are encouraged to attend.

A town meeting about the ramifications of The National Black Theatre Summit will be held tonight, March 30, at The Ensemble Theatre. For information about the free event, call (713) 520-0055

By Peter Szatmary
Texas Correspondent