With support from the California Arts Council, SEW PRODUCTIONS, INC. will continue our “Bringing the Art to the Audience” (BATA) free staged reading series. Plays by both established and emerging African American and multicultural playwrights are read at community partner venues in San Francisco and the East Bay aimed at reaching our target population of African Americans and under-served communities. Funds will be used for staff and artist fees, production costs and marketing activities.
Founded in San Francisco in 1981 by Stanley E. Williams and Quentin Easter, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (LHT) has produced more than 140 plays, including west coast and world premieres, classics in the African-American canon, lively musicals, and poignant socio-political dramas. LHT’s presentations range from the works of Nobel Laureates Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, and Toni Morrison to Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Charles Fuller, Alice Walker and August Wilson; to large-scale musicals celebrating Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Lester Young, Fats Waller, Eubie Blake, and others; to award winning dramas by James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and namesake Lorraine Hansberry; to pioneering experimental theatre and new works by Ntozake Shange, Robert Alexander, Roger Guenveur Smith, David Rousseve Prince Gomolvilas, and Samm-Art Williams, among many others. LHT also produces the Bringing the Art to the Audience (BATA) series of staged readings to expose the works of emerging playwrights.