127th Street Repertory Ensemble
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The 127th Street Repertory Ensemble was a theater group based in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City.
The ensemble was founded in 1973 by Ernie McClintock and his partner Ronald Walker.[1] It ran until 1986 and was considered a landmark Black theatre institution.[2] The ensemble was an extenstion of the Afro-American Studio for Acting and Speech,[3] a school based in Harlem founded in 1966 by McClintock and his collaborators.[4]
Their first production was Roscoe Lee Browne's A Hand Is on the Gate.[5] In 1982 the ensemble won six AUDELCO awards for their production of Equus. They also received a further 12 nominations for other productions that year.[6]
Programs included plays featuring diverse voices, such as those including Afro-Caribbean, women and LGBTQ themes, which were otherwise uncommon in the Black Arts Movement.[2] Half of the program was devoted to producing Contemporary Black Classics, while the other half was a mixture of family entertainment, street theatre, historical plays, or Afrocentric plays written by people from outside of the US.[1]
Members of the ensemble include Tupac Shakur,[7] Diana Rosebud Thompson,[8] Gwendolen Hardwick,[9] and Gregory Wallace.[10]