African Continuum Theatre Company
3523 12th Street, NE, 2nd Floor, Washington, DC 20017 (202)529-5763
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by: e1t1enterprises (www.e1t1enterprises.com)
About the Playwrights
Jennifer L Nelson has worked in professional theatre for thirty-five years as an actress, administrator,
educator, playwright, producer and director. She was the founding Producing Artistic Director of the African Continuum Theatre for
eleven seasons. During her tenure, she directed several world premieres and has directed at professional theatres throughoutWashington and at theatres in Los Angeles, Minnesota, Oregon and Pennsylvania. Nelson's musical play Torn from the Headlines was awarded
the 1996 Helen Hayes/Charles MacArthur Award for Most Outstanding New Play. As a poet, she is a two-time winner of the Larry Neal
Writers' Award. Her poetry appeared in the Washington Arts Review and The Kenyon Review. She is a three-time grantee of the
DC Commission on the Arts Individual Artist program, and a recipient of the Mayor's Arts Awards for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline.
S.
M. Shephard-Massat's first full-length play, Waiting to be Invited, has been produced by theaters across the United States including
African Continuum Theatre, Denver Center Theatre Company, Chicago's Victory Gardens, and the St. Louis Black Repertory Theatre. Her play, Someplace Soft to Fall received the 2001 Francesca Primus Award and was produced by Penumbra Theatre Company in March 2002.
Her third play, Levee James, developed at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference premiered at the American Conservatory Theatre and received
the nomination for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her most recent play, Starving, premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
in November 2005, and won the Helen Hayes Award for best new play or musical for 2006. Shephard-Massat received her degree from New
York University's Tisch School of the Arts and interned at London's Royal Court Theatre.
Kara Lee Corthron's play Like a Cow
or an Elephant was awarded the 2007 Theodore Ward Prize for African-American Playwrights. Corthron recently received the 2007
Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights for her play Wild Black-Eyed Susans. She is a recipient of a 2007-2008 EST/Sloan
Commission and received the 2006 New Professional Theatre Writer's Award. Corthron was nominated for the 2007 Susan Smith Blackburn
Prize and is a three-time recipient of Lincoln Center's Lecomte du Nouy Foundation Award. Her work has been developed with CenterStage,
Circle East, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Voice & Vision, and Juilliard. Her one-act play, Cave Krewe was produced at the Manhattan
Theatre Source and published in Book of Estrogenius 2006. Kara is a graduate of Juilliard School, a member of the Dramatists
Guild and Blue Roses Theatre Company.
