40 Years:NYC Lincoln Center Out Of Doors

New York – Lincoln Center and Everyman Communities are celebrating the 40^th Anniversary of Lincoln Center Out of Doors, July 28-August 15, 2010. The 40^th year of this free summer festival launched with a talk about its birth from Everyman-Community Street Theater to Lincoln Center Out of Doors.  A reception and  one-act performance of Jim Magnuson’s  play, No Snakes in This Grass, directed by Mical Whitaker followed along with the world premiere of Ethel Fair: The Songwriters. Lincoln Center Out of Doors has grown into one of the largest free performance festivals in the U.S.

Everyman-Community Street Theater was birth by actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brother Jonathan Ringkamp, Hazel Joan Bryant and Mical Whitaker 40 years ago “to perform and give voice to new theatrical concepts, political and societal ideas for and by the people.” Fitzgerald convinced Lincoln Center to showcase the work of Everyman companies, operating in each of New York city’s five boroughs,  during a weeklong free festival.

Whitaker, the only surviving founder of Everyman-Community Street Theater, shared his recollection of the 1960’s and 1970’s when his “Harlem based East River Players flourished as one of the city’s important African American theater voices” and  Everyman-Community’s Harlem troupe.  Susan Scheftel, Fitzgerald’s daughter, amused the audience with accounts of her mother’s unwillingness to accept anything but yes when she proposed the project to Lincoln Center.

Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art (RACCA), Shirley J. Radcliffe, Executive producer honored the birth of Lincoln Center Out of Doors as the Everyman-Community Street Theater Festival with one-act of Magnuson’s play from the Civil Rights era, set in the Garden of Eden.