January 30, 2003

BIRMINGHAM, AL — The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of English Alumni Lecture Series will present the one-man play “Black Boy,” starring Charles Holt, at 7 p.m. Tuesday, February 11, at the Hill University Center, Alumni Auditorium, 1400 University Boulevard. Admission is free and open to the public. Call (205) 934-5292 for more details.

The play is adapted from Richard Wright’s autobiography, Black Boy, that describes his life and his harrowing experiences as a black man growing up in 20th century America. The play, performed by actor and motivational speaker Charles Holt, will feature 22 vignettes depicting scenes from the book. Holt, who is a native of Nashville, has performed “Black Boy” in New York, Atlanta and Provo, Utah.

The performance of “Black Boy” at UAB is co-sponsored by UAB Cultural Affairs and the Office of the Provost, Comprehensive Minority Faculty and Student Development Program.

Richard Wright was born outside Natchez, Mississippi, in 1908. As a youngster, Wright, the son of an illiterate sharecropper, developed a fascination with the power of words. Years later, he moved to Chicago where he worked as a street-sweeper and a postal worker and began to write. In 1937, Wright left Chicago for New York. He published his first book, Uncle Tom’s Children, to good reviews in 1938. In 1940, his second book, Native Son, brought him critical acclaim and it made him the first African-American author to be a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Five years later, he published the runaway best seller Black Boy.

“Black Boy,” adapted and directed by Wynn Handman, is an American Place Theatre Literature to Life™ presentation made by special arrangement with The American Place Theatre.

The American Place Theatre was co-founded in 1963 by Handman, who is also the theatre’s artistic director. The American Place Theatre is committed to producing high quality new works by diverse American writers. The theatre has been an important place for emerging African-American theatre by producing first productions of plays by writers such as Michael Bradford, Ed Bullins, Alonzo D. Lamont Jr., Ron Milner and Vincent Smith.

The American Place Theatre’s educational program, Literature to Life™, is a performance-based literacy program that presents professionally staged verbatim adaptations of significant American literary works.

Handman received the 1999 Obie for Sustained Achievement, the 1993 Lucille Lortell Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the League of Off-Broadway Theatres and the 1994 Rosetta LeNoire Award from Actor’s Equity Association.