The Center at West Park presents

CREATIVE TEAM

Reynaldo Piniella (Performer & Playwright)
Kevin R. Free (Director)

PRODUCTION TEAM

Michael Artuso (Sound Design)
Madelyn Paquette (Production manager)
Amanda Kettell (Stage manager)
Joe Bilello (Technical director)

CREATIVE TEAM BIOS

REYNALDO PINIELLA is an actor, writer, activist and educator from East New York, Brooklyn. In 2021, he was in the acting company of two Broadway shows at the same time – Thoughts of a Colored Man and Trouble in Mind. His Off-Broadway acting credits include The Death of the Last Black Man…, Venus (Signature), The Skin of Our Teeth (TFANA), Lockdown (Rattlestick), The Space Between the Letters (The Public/UTR), Lockdown (Rattlestick) and The Best of Theatreworks (Working Theater). Regional acting credits include work at Baltimore Center Stage, Syracuse Stage, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, O’Neill, Sundance Theatre Lab and Cleveland Play House. As a playwright, his work includes Black Doves (Thomas Barbour award for Playwriting), Real Life RPG (commissioned by Baltimore Center Stage, produced by San Diego Rep, Shakesqueer Theater Company and Pioneer Theater Guild), No Shade (produced by the Lee Strasberg Institute at NYU Tisch), I’m Old School (produced by Single Carrot Theater) and Black and Blue (Ars Nova’s ANT Fest.) He received the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship from Theatre Communications Group to develop a bilingual English-Spanish Hamlet with the Classical Theatre of Harlem. He is a current member of All for One Theater’s Solo Collective, a New Victory Theater LabWorks artist, Artist-in-Residence at Abingdon Theatre Company and an alum of the Civilians’ R&D Group. He is the inaugural recipient of the All Stars Project’s Fellowship for Young Artists of Color, a FREEdom Fellow at the Weeksville Heritage Center and has received residencies from the Public Theater’s Shakespeare Initiative and HB Studio.

KEVIN R. FREE is a multidisciplinary artist whose work as an actor, writer, director, and producer has been showcased and developed in many places, including The Moth Radio Hour; Project Y Theater; Flux Theater Ensemble; the Queerly Festival; The New York Neo-Futurists; and The Fire This Time Festival, where he served as Producing Artistic Director for 5 years, winning an Obie for his work in 2015. He is now the Resident Artistic Director of FRIGID New York (www.frigid.nyc) and was just named Artistic Director of Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken, NJ (www.milesquaretheatre.org). His full-length plays include Face Value; The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual; or TRIPLE-CONSCIOUSNESS; Night of The Living N-Word; and A Hill on Which To Drown. He is also the co-writer and co-producer of the award-winning web series Gemma & The Bear! and the upcoming Beckys Through History (MyCarl.org). Favorite Directing Credits include Last Ship to Proxima Centauri by Greg Lam (Portland Stage); Pipeline by Dominique Morrisseau (Mile Square Theatre) and Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet by Tarell Alvin McCraney (Nevada Conservatory Theatre). As an actor, along with performing in over 100 professional productions (including the world premiere production of WINK at Marin Theater Company), he became the first African-American to play the role of Bellomy in The Fantasticks Off-Broadway. An accomplished voice actor, as well, Kevin is the voice of Kevin from Desert Bluffs on the popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale. He is very proud of his accomplishments as an audiobook narrator, having contributed to over 450 projects in the past 20 years, including The Known World by Edward P. Jones; Yes, Daddy by Jonathan Parks-Ramage; The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris; A Complicated Love Story Set in Space by Shaun David Hutchinson and all the books in the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Twitter/Instagram: @kevinrfree www.kevinrfree.com

PRODUCTION AND MAJOR SUPPORT Credits

Black and Blue is presented through a residency at The Center at West Park and is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

SPECIAL THANKS

Special thanks to Ars Nova for giving Black and Blue its first home and to All for One Theater for shepherding the show's growth.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The Center at West Park is a not-for-profit community performing arts center based in the historic West Park Presbyterian Church, a New York City landmark on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

We recognize that this land where we are privileged to be is the unceded territory and ancestral home of the Munsee Lenape. Today, members of the Lenape and many other indigenous sovereign nations continue to live, work, and create in New York City.

For over 30 years in the mid-19th century, this land was home to Seneca Village, the first free Black community in New York City. In 1857, the city used eminent domain to forcibly remove the residents and demolish their homes, schools, and churches to make room for the construction of Central Park.

Since its construction in 1889, this building has been home to countless artists and activists:

In 1978, West Park led the way in openly welcoming LGBTQ+ members as part of the More Light Movement.

From 1980 to 1985, West Park was home to The Shakespeare Center and the renowned Riverside Shakespeare Company.

From 1987 to 1991, God’s Love We Deliver worked out of West Park’s kitchen to serve up to 250 meals per day to people living with AIDS during the height of the crisis.

The West Park Presbyterian Church building was named a New York City Landmark in 2010. In 2016, The Center at West Park was founded by a coalition of community members to preserve and revitalize West Park as a community resource and home for arts and culture.

We are deeply inspired by the legacy of those who have called this land and this building home before us. We hope to honor them in all our work today and in the future.

ABOUT THE CENTER AT WEST PARK

The Center at West Park is a community performing arts center based in the historic West Park Presbyterian Church, a New York City landmark. We present engaging and boundary-pushing early-career and established artists through our artist residency programs, provide affordable rental space for artists to develop their work, and steward the restoration of our historic home’s landmark exterior. The Center is a secular, 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization.

This program is made possible by the generous support of audience members like you. To make a donation to support future residencies, go to centeratwestpark.org/donate.

Staff

Natasha Katerinopoulos, Managing Director
Zachary Tomlinson, Artistic Director
Dane Jerabek, Marketing & Box Office Manager
Richard Pimentel, Fascilities Manager
David Shocket, Consulting Technical Director
Gary Eisenkraft, CPA, Accountant
Mercedes Marrero-Alvarado, Porter
Dion Thompson, Porter

EVOLUTION FESTIVAL PRODUCTION TEAM

Madelyn Paquette, Line Producer
Olaiya Olayemi, Artistic Doula
Amanda Kettell, Stage Manager
Bleu Zephra, Stage Manager
Joe Bilello, Technical Director

OBJECT MOVEMENT CURATORS

Maiko Kikuchi
Rowan Magee
Marcella Murray
Justin Perkins

FALL 2022 GUEST CURATORS

Christina Franklin
Melanie Greene
Trevor Weston

Board of directors

Marian M. Warden, President
Marsha Flowers, Vice President
Theodore S. Berger, Treasurer
Beryl Abrams, Secretary
Jennifer Rogers Carlock
Don Frantz
Derrick McQueen
Mitchell Schamroth
Susan E. Sullivan