INTERVIEWS with ARTISTS

BEN VEREEN

JEANINE TESORI

PSALMAYENE 24

SYLVIA MCNAIR

MICHAEL McELROY

DEIDRE KINAHAN

BOB ARI

PAUL TAZEWELL

PATRICIA ROZARIO

NANCY RHODES

MAIA DANZIGER

EARL “PEANUTT” MONTGOMERY

WILLIE RUFF

DENNIS D’AMICO

GRACE CACHOCHA

KAREN SAILLANT

JENNIFER HORNE

JEANIE THOMPSON

ROBERT PERRY

WAYNE SIDES

JAMIE LEE McMAHAN


Articles

Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company

Black Theatre United

Mabou Mines

Theater J

Pangea World Theater

Round House Theatre

Bucks County Playhouse

Charleston Stage

Maryland Ensemble Theatre

Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

PURE Theatre Company

Ronald Rand’s “CREATE! How Extraordinary People Live to Create and Create to Live”

Virginia Stage Company

Constellation Theatre Company

League of Professional Theatre Women

Maryland Hall

BlackRock Center for the Arts

Great American Songbook Foundation & Academy

Kennedy Center REACH

Inter Act Art Theatre

“Grand Ball in the Belle Epoch” – Edwardian Period Style Salon

 

 

“Cultivate an ever continuous power of observation...see the sunlight and everything that is to be seen.”
– John Singer Sargent

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
– T.S. Eliot

"Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world."
– Harriet Tubman

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”
– William Faulkner

“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”
– Ernest Hemingway:

“The only reason to write is from love.”
– Stephen Sondheim

BlackRock Center for the Arts

BlackRock Center for the Arts is the leading performing arts center in upper Montgomery County, Maryland located in Germantown. Under the direction of Alyona Ushe, who came to BlackRock in November 2017, the BlackRock Center for the Arts is now presenting theatrical productions.

Ms. Ushe began a new initiative – Creative Consortium, a resident arts-organization program to support the “best of the best” in regional artists. Ms. Ushe told us: “The first of the consortium partners with BlackRock is Frederick-based Free Range Humans providing the group rehearsal space and a theater to present their productions. BlackRock and the group’s Producing Artistic Director Elizabeth Lucas want to build a relationship that “nurtures local talent in our own backyard.”

Ushe arrived at BlackRock from south Florida where she was president and CEO of Cultural Arts Creatives, an organization that programs and manages artistic events and also worked with the New Orleans Opera Association. She began her career in Arlington, Virginia in 1992 as the Founder and Executive Director of Classika Theater.

She went on to say: “BlackRock is now going to embark on a new program called “BlackRock Without Borders.”  BlackRock is so much more than a building and we plan on taking some of the performances into “pop-up” spaces where vacant stores are sitting empty. I also want to work with developers so that artists can show their works in their lobbies and get more exposure. It’s important to hear from audiences and since the Arts Center was launched by residents. I want to make sure local residents think of the Arts Center as a place to go when they are looking for something to do on the weekend.”

A music concert at the BlackRock Center for the Arts

“BlackRock offers everything, from bluegrass music to film, to comedy and now theatre. What makes BlackRock unique is it’s very intimate and the audience can bond with the artist who is performing, creating a “soul to soul” connection. BlackRock is offering all types of arts and a “cross-pollination” from the performing arts to educational courses to an art gallery. The arts can transform lives and it is a universal language and if BlackRock plays a small role in that transformation, we’ve done our job.”

BlackRock Center for the Arts also offers three types of summer camps where young people can learn new songs, dances and act in different skits. An intensive musical theatre program for grades 3-8 is offered where campers are cast in an original show, learn stage directions and character development. BlackRock instructors include: Charu Kamdar, Beena Raichura, Parisa Faghih, Maria Shorb, Natasha Mirny, Tyler Joyce, Brian Mason, and Kelli Harrison. In addition, BlackRock Center for the Arts provides all types of classes for adults including musical theatre scene study, classical ballet, hip hop jam, beginning improv, piano and drawing.  BlackRock also has gallery space for the creative expression of artists in the Kay Gallery.

One House Project Exhibit at the BlackRock Center for the Arts

BlackRock and Free Range Humans presentations have included “Striking 12,” “I Love You Because,” “Broadway Gold” with Tracy Lynn Olivera, a two-time Helen Hayes award-winning Signature Theatre favorite. For info: BlackRock Center for the Arts is located at 12901 Town Commons Drive, Germantown, MD 20874, (301) 528-2260, www.blackrockcenter.org

“If I look for words, everything I do will always be invalid. I am condemned to use them because I am condemned to say something about the not-human world, the world as it is; this is the acceptable way to pass something to you, to communicate. The world as it is: this is the world of stars, the world of trees, of water; and I say this with words. I can touch this world when I am as original as a tree, or a star, or water. But to say this makes this invalid. It is not exact.” - Jerzy Grotowski


"It is a law of life that man cannot live for himself alone. The world's problems are also our personal problems. Health is achieved through maintaining our personal truth in a balanced relation of love to the rest of the world. No expression is more emblematic of this relation than the creative act which we call art, and none more than the theatre. The theatre, to be fully understood and appreciated, must be seen as a manifestation of this process of interchange between society and the individual. It must be judged as a continuous development of groups of individuals within society, becoming richer, acquiring greater force and value as it grows with the society. Only in this way can the theatre nourish us."  - Harold Clurman

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