Black Pearl Sings! Creative Team Bios
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FRANK HIGGINS (Playwright) |
is the author of The Sweet By ‘N’ By, which was produced with Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow, and Black Pearl Sings!, which was produced with Tonya Pinkins. His plays have been seen in New York and at the Williamstown Theater Festival, the Old Globe, Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, Kansas City Repertory Theater, The Barter Theater, Florida Studio Theater, Merrimack Repertory Theater, the Penumbra Theater, and the Fulton Opera House, and others. Among his other plays are WMKS: Where Music Kills Sorow, Gunplay, and Miracles. He has also written several plays for young audiences, including The Slave Dancer’s Choice, Anansi The Spider and the Middle Passage, and The Country of the Blind. Mr. Higgins is a member of the Dramatists Guild. |
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PATRICK MULLINS (Director) |
is in his sixth season at VSC and leads CULTIVATE, VSC’s Education and Outreach programs. VSC credits include //romeo&juliet/, Poetry Of Pizza, 1001 Arabian Nights: The Story of Aladdin and A Christmas Carol. Patrick hails from Atlanta, Georgia, where his first career was spent in secondary education. In addition to directing, his acting work includes Danny in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, John Hale in The Crucible, and the title role in Hamlet. Mr. Mullins holds an MFA from the University of South Carolina and is proud to be a resident artist of VSC. |
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BILL CLARKE |
previously designed Moon For The Misbegotten, To Kill A Mockingbird, Elephant Man, Intimate Apparel, Taste Test, Top Girls, Arms and The Man and Fairy Tales of New York at VSC. He designed A Walk In The Woods and Abby's Song on Broadway; off-Broadway: currently running acclaimed revival of Lemon Sky (Keen Co), Misalliance (Pearl), So Help Me God! (Lortel), Eccentricities of A Nightingale (T.A.C.T.), Power of Darkness, John Ferguson and The Daughter-In-Law (Mint Theater; NYTimes 10 Best List), June Moon (Drama Dep’t), Ann Magnuson’s You Could Be Home Now (NYSF), The Innocents' Crusade (MTC), Morocco (WPA), and The Cherry Orchard (Juilliard). Regional: Seattle Rep, Old Globe, Milwaukee Rep, Alley, Denver Center, A.R.T., Huntington, McCarter, Cincinnati Playhouse, Indiana Rep. MFA, Yale School of Drama. Recipient: IRNE (New England) Award for A Delicate Balance, Hollywood Drama-Logue Award, San Diego Theater Critics’ Circle Award for A Walk In The Woods. |
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VICTOR EN YU TAN |
last designed Taste Test for Virginia Stage. In recent years, he designed lights for Broke-ology and Borderland, Kansas City Repertory Theatre; Train to 2010, Crossroads Theatre; Sheila’s Day, Hartford Stage; Imelda, Shogun Macbeth, and Joy Luck Club, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre; On Naked Soil, Theatre for a New City; The Ballad of Emmett Till, Goodman Theatre; Resurrection, Arena Stage; Stickfly, McCarter Theatre; Gee’s Bend and Room Service, Cleveland Playhouse; King Lear, Our Town, Hamlet, To Kill a Mockingbird, Macbeth and others, Colorado Shakespeare Festival; and Topdog/Underdog, Cinderella, Gem of the Ocean and others, Sacramento Theatre Company. He had also designed for Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Pasadena Playhouse, Mark Taper Forum, Asolo Repertory Theatre among many other regional theatres. In NYC, he had designed over 25 productions for the New York Shakespeare Festival and over 30 for the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre. He is Professor of Lighting Design at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. |
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JENNIFER CAPRIO (Costume Design) |
is thrilled to be back at VSC after designing costumes for this season's God of Carnage & last season's SCKBSTD. Broadway: The 25thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Recent NY: In Transit (Primary Stages), Fugitive Songs (Dreamlight), Modern Living & Post Modern Living (LaMaMa), Two Rooms (Lion), Masked (DR2), Striking 12 (Daryl Roth) International: Queen Esther and the Harlem Gospel Singers (Tour), The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (Edinburgh Festival) Regional: Motherhood the Musical (G Four Productions), Florida Grand Opera, Minnesota Opera, Opera Boston, La Jolla Playhouse Utah Shakespeare Festival, Williamstown Theater Festival, Westport Country Playhouse, Capital Repertory Theatre, Geva, Cleveland Playhouse, Playmaker's Rep, The Hangar Theatre, among others. |
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ELISHEBA ITTOOP |
is thrilled to be back at VSC. Washington area credits include The Kennedy Center (Teddy Roosevelt and the Ghostly Mistletoe, Mermaids, Monsters, and the World Painted Purple); Roundhouse Theatre (The Talented Mr. Ripley); Studio Theatre (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, That Face, The Receptionist). Credits also include Alliance Theatre, Children's Theatre of Charlotte, and the Center for Puppetry Arts. Elisheba was a resident sound designer at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center for the 2010 National Playwrights Conference, recipient of the Kenan Fellowship at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and winner of the 2008 USITT Rising Star Award. Elisheba earned her MFA at North Carolina School of the Arts. |
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AKIN’BABATUNDE’(Musical Director) |
Mr. Babatunde’ is an accomplished actor, director, writer whose theatrical career spans the regional-off- broadway- to international stages of the world-film and T.V. He has been a resident company member of several prestigious theatrical institutions throughout the country Trinity Repertory Company-Providence, R.I., Alley Theater-Houston, Texas, La Mama Theater- N.Y. and the Dallas Theater Center. He served as musical director for the Addison Center Theater production of Black Pearl Sings!. The recipient of the several awards most recently the Audelco Award for Excellence in Black Theater for his direction of Blind Lemon Blues off- Broadway at the York Theater. Mr. Babatunde’ holds a Masters of Arts degree in Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. Mr. Babatunde serves as adjunct professor at Mountain View Community College and as lecturer at University of Texas at Dallas. |
