Bushfire Theatre of Performing Arts

10/04/2025

Excellent performances by Beverly Brooks and Tim Young!

06/19/2024

03/02/2022

Al Freeman Jr. (March 21, 1934 – August 9, 2012)

Walk of Fame handprint honoree, Al Freeman Jr. was born Albert Cornelius Freeman, Jr. in San Antonio, Texas. His stage debut was in a 1954 Ebony Showcase Theatre production of Detective Story. He moved to New York City in 1959 and landed a role in the 1960 Broadway play, The Long Dream, based on a novel by Richard Wright. In 1967, he appeared in the off-Broadway play Dutchman and reprised his role in the film version of the play. His other Broadway credits include, Blues for Mister Charlie (1964), Look to the Lilies (1970) and Medea (1974). He appeared in the television movie, My Sweet Charlie (1970). He portrayed Lt. Ed Hall on the TV soap opera, One Life to Live an won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series for the role in 1979. Some of his other TV credits include appearances on The Cosby Show and Homicide: Life on the Street. He appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-nominated film Finian's Rainbow and portrayed Elijah Muhammad in Spike Lee’s film, Malcom X. Until his death, Freeman Jr. was a professor at Howard University in the Department of Theatre Arts where he taught acting and served as chair/artistic director of the department for six years.

03/01/2022

Ron Milner (May 29, 1938 – July 9, 2004)

Walk of Fame handprint honoree, Ron Milner was born in Detroit, Michigan where he attended Highland Park Junior College, Detroit Institute of Technology, and later Columbia University in New York. He received the John Hay Whitney Fellowship (1962) and a Rockefeller Fellowship (1965), to work on a novel, The Life of the Brothers Brown. His first major play, Who's Got His Own, premiered in Harlem in 1967. Some of his other plays include, What the Wine-Seller Buy, Season’s Reason’s, The Warning-A Theme for Linda, Jazz-Set and Roads to the Mountaintop (a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.). What the Wine-Sellers Buy was the first play by an African-American to be produced by Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival at Lincoln Center. Milner wrote the book for the play, Don’t Get Good Started written with the Winans gospel family. His longtime friend and collaborator Woodie King Jr., of the New Federal Theatre, staged the Broadway production of Milner’s Checkmates in 1988 starring Paul Winfield, Denzel Washington, Ruby Dee and Marsha Jackson.

02/27/2022

Judi Ann Mason (February 2, 1955 – July 8, 2009)

Walk of Fame handprint honoree, Judi Ann Mason was born in Shreveport, Louisiana and graduated from Grambling State University. Among her 25 published and produced plays are, Living Fat, for which she won the Kennedy Center’s Norman Lear Award for comedy writing at age 19, and A Star Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hole in Heaven, for which she received the first Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award in 1977. Her final play was, Storm Stories: True Dramas of Hurricane Katrina. Her television career began at age 20 when she was hired as a writer on the CBS hit Good Times. Her other TV writing credits include writing or co-writing for shows such as A Different World, American Gothic, Beverly Hills 90210 and the Emmy-nominated series, I’ll Fly Away. Her telefilm credits include Lifetime’s Sophie & the Moonhanger and Head Writer for the Writers Development Program at Guiding Light and later Associate Head Writer on Generations, the first soap about an African American family.

02/16/2022

Leslie Lee (November 6, 1930 – January 20, 2014)
Walk of Fame handprint honoree, Leslie Lee was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania., and grew up nearby in Conshohocken, and was one of nine children. He received his B.A from the University of Pennsylvania in 1954 and his M.A in theater from Villanova University in 1969. His career as a playwright began at New York’s La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club with his 1970 play Elegy for a Down Queen and his 1971 play Cops and Robbers. He went on to work at the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) where his play, Colored People’s Time starred a young Samuel Jackson and Angela Bassett. His play, The First Breeze of Summer was first produced by at the NEC and won an Obie for Best New American Play before appearing at the Palace Theatre on Broadway where it was nominated for a Tony Award in 1979. His film credits include Almos' A Man (1976) adapted from Richard Wright; The Killing Floor (1984) which won first prize at the National Black Film Consortium; and his adaptation of James Baldwin’s, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1984). One of his final works was a musical on the life of Martin Luther King Jr. He was a pioneering playwright of both Broadway and off-Broadway and taught playwrighting at NYU, The New School University and Goddard College. Some of his lesser-known projects are housed at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.

02/10/2022

Esther Rolle (November 8, 1920 - November 17, 1998)
Walk of Fame handprint honoree, Esther Rolle was born in Pompano Beach, Florida and was the tenth of 18 children. She was a member of the Shogolo Oloba dance troupe and became its director in 1960. In 1962, Rolle made her theatre debut in The Blacks. She also had roles on the New York stage in Blues for Mr. Charlie (1964), The Amen Corner (1965), and Day of Absence (1965). In 1967, she became a member of the Negro Ensemble Company. Rolle appeared in the 1970s sitcom, Maude and starred in its spinoff Good Times. She appeared in the 1979 television film I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings based on the Maya Angelou autobiography. Some of her other film credits include Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and John Singleton’s film, Rosewood (1997).

02/10/2022

Bushfire Theatre of Performing Arts
Two-day Mini Playwrights Workshop for invited HBCU Students & Other Participants At Our Langston Hughes Playwrights Workshop
“Tools to use for setting up your first stage play”
March 19th and 20th 2022
Using the principles developed for writing stage plays by Gustav Freytag, Lajos Egri, and William Thompson Price, this two day, four to five hours per day weekend workshop will provide training on the basic tools necessary for crafting your premise line, story outline, scene and act structure, plot, turning points, beats and character development using the techniques outlined in their publications. Handouts and exercises will focus on developing a better understanding of these techniques.

02/05/2022

Gertrude Hadley Jeannette (November 28, 1914 - April 4, 2018)
Walk of Fame handprint honoree Gertrude Hadley Jeannette, born in Urbana, Arkansas was an actor. playwright and director. In 1945 she began her career with a lead role in Our Town followed by appearances on Broadway in Amen Corner (1965), The Great White Hope (1968), and The Skin of Our Teeth (1975). She appeared in the films Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and Shaft (1971). In 1979, she founded the H.A.D.L.E.Y. Players (Harlem Artists Development League Especially for You).