REVEAL
Yemandja

Artists

Conceived by Angélique Kidjo, Jean Hebrail & Naïma Hebrail Kidjo Book & Lyrics by Naïma Hebrail Kidjo 
Music by Angélique Kidjo & Jean Hebrail 
Developed with and Directed by Cheryl Lynn Bruce 
Production Design by Kerry James Marshall 
Music Directed by Darryl Archibald 
Lighting Design by Kathy A. Perkins 
Projections Design by Rasean Davonte Johnson 
Costume Design by Mary Jane Marcasiano 
Choreographed by Beatrice Capote 
Dramaturg, Iyvon E.


Angélique Kidjo Biography

Time Magazine has called her "Africa's premier diva". The BBC has included her in its list of the continent's 50 most iconic figures, and in 2011 The Guardian listed her as one of their Top 100 Most Inspiring Women in the World. Forbes Magazine has ranked Angélique as the first woman in their list of the Most Powerful Celebrities in Africa. She is the recent recipient of the prestigious 2015 Crystal Award given by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the 2016 Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award, and the 2018 German Sustainability Award.

As a performer, her striking voice, stage presence and fluency in multiple cultures and languages have won respect from her peers and expanded her following across national borders. Kidjo has cross-pollinated the West African traditions of her childhood in Benin with elements of American R&B, funk and jazz, as well as influences from Europe and Latin America. 

Angélique also travels the world advocating on behalf of children in her capacity as a UNICEF and OXFAM goodwill Ambassador. At the G7 Summit in 2019, President Macron of France named Kidjo as the spokesperson for the AFAWA initiative (Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa) to help close the financing gap for women entrepreneurs in Africa. She has also created her own charitable foundation, Batonga, dedicated to support the education of young girls in Africa.
 

Naïma Hebrail Kidjo, Writer

Naïma Hebrail Kidjo, a recent transplant to LA, is a Franco-Beninese actress and playwright who grew up in Brooklyn. Favorite credits include: Rachels (Pussy Grabber Plays, Los Angeles) The Crucible (Steppen- wolf, Chicago); First Deep Breath (VictoryGardens, Ignition, Chicago), Romeo and Juliet (Teatro Vista, Chicago), A Wrinkle in Time (Lifeline Theatre, Chicago); Rutherford’s Travels (Pegasus Theatre, Chicago); Dracula (Williamstown Theatre Festival). TV: Chicago Med, Chicago PD. She is a graduate of the School at Steppenwolf and received a BA from Yale University where her play, Pixel Souls, won the Berkeley College Arts Prize. 

Cheryl Lynn Bruce, Director

Veteran director, writer and performer Cheryl Lynn Bruce has staged productions for Victory Gardens Theatre; Teatro Vista Theatre Company; Illinois Humanities; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Columbia College; University of Illinois; Indiana University; De Paul University; Creative Arts Foundation. Ms. Bruce developed and directed Sandra Delgado’s La Havana Madrid; developed and directed Delgado’s Para, Graciela and Misty DeBerry’s Milkweed (both solo works); and directed Before the Pop, Pop, Pop for Collabo- raction’s inaugural citywide Peacebook Festival (2016). She also developed and directed Kerry James Marshall’s Bunraku-influenced urban comic Rythm Mastr for the Wexner Center for the Arts (2008). She won both the African American Arts and Black Theatre Alliance Best Direction Awards for From the Mississippi Delta, and earned a Joseph Jefferson nomination for her direction of Jitney, both Congo Square Theatre productions. Other recognitions include: the Illinois Public Humanities Award (2019); Robert Rauschenberg Residency (2015); a Yale Art Gallery residency (2013); and Jane Addams Hull House Woman of Valor Award (2010). 

Kerry James Marshall, Production Designer

Kerry James Marshall uses painting, sculptural installations, collage, video, and photography to comment on the history of black identity both in the United States and in Western art. He is well known for paintings that focus on black subjects historically excluded from the artistic canon, and has explored issues of race and history through imagery ranging from abstraction to comics. Marshall was born in Alabama in 1955, and grew up in Watts, Los Angeles. He is a 1978 graduate of the Otis College of Art and Design and currently lives and works in Chicago. A major survey, Kerry James Marshall: MASTRY, was on view at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Met Breuer, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Other solo exhibitions have been at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Belgium; ; Antoni Tapies Foundation, Barcelona; and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte ReinaSofia, Madrid. 

Kathy A. Perkins, Lighting Designer

Kathy A. Perkins has designed productions throughout the U.S. and internationally at such venues as Berkeley Repertory, Arena Stage, St. Louis Black Repertory, Baltimore Center Stage, Yale Repertory, Goodman, Steppenwolf, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Manhattan Theatre Club and the Grahamstown Festival in South Africa. She has designed various dance festivals including Dance Africa at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).As a practicing scholar, she has traveled throughout Africa, the Caribbean and Asia. A recipient of several research and design awards, including Fulbright, NEH, and an NAACP Image Award, she is editor/co-editor of seven theatre publications focusing on women from Africa and the Diaspora. Kathy is Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a member of USA829.

Rasean Davonte Johnson, Projection Designer

Rasean Davonte Johnson is a video artist and designer of projections for theatre, film, and installations. Theatre work includes collaborations with numerous institutions including Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Manual Cinema, Chicago Opera Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, ArtsEmerson, the McCarter Theatre Center, Yale Repertory Theatre, The Studio Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Berkshire Theatre Group, Everyman Theatre, The Ningbo Song and Dance Company, Yale Opera, Teatro Vista, B-Floor Theatre, The Hypocrites,  and many more. In addition to design for theatre he has also worked on several installations including personal works such as Living Sculpture as part of LUX: Ideas through Light at the Beinecke Rare Books Library, and Juniper Ascending at Yale University, and collaborative works including The Ballad of Lula Del Ray 2.0 with Manual Cinema at the Logan Arts Center, Convergence: A mad tea pARTy at the Yale Art Gallery, and Passenger featured at the University of Chicago and the Bridgeport Film Festival. He received his MFA from the Yale School of Drama in Design as a student in the projection program, and has lectured at Yale University, Columbia College, and Depaul University.
 

Mary Jane Marcasiano, Costume Designer

Mary Jane Marcasiano designs costumes for dance, film, theater, and performing artists. Marcasiano founded her eponymous design company in 1978, after graduating from Parsons School of Design, and has received the Cartier, DuPont, Cutty Sark, and Wool Knit Awards.  Marcasiano has designed costumes for DanceBrazil, the New York City Ballet, RythMEK at Jacob's Pillow, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, and Michael Thomas Lab Dance Company. In 2009 Marcasiano collaborated with artist Eric Fischl on costumes for his suite of sculptures, "Ten Breaths “, exhibited in galleries and museums in Germany, Paris, and New York. Since 2010 Marcasiano has designed the costumes, and public wardrobe, for Grammy Award-winning singer Angelique Kidjo and was costume designer for her PBS Special "Angelique Kidjo and Friends: Spirit Rising." Marcasiano also designs stage costumes for jazz singer Catherine Russell. Marcasiano's costume work for film includes the short film "Ate Quando”, the award-winning feature film by Bruno Barreto "Reaching for the Moon" and for Barreto's period HBO miniseries "The American Guest". Marcasiano designed the costumes for the theatre piece "Collaboration Warhol & Basquait." In 2007, Marcasiano created the Made with Love Project, dedicated to supporting women and children's projects in Brazil, Africa, and Haiti through design and production. A recurring theme in Marcasiano's work is the culture of Africa and the African Diaspora. A recent NYU Gallatin masters graduate, her master's thesis concerned itself with the intersection of Art, Nonprofits and, Social Change.

Darryl Archibald, Music Director

Darryl Archibald (Music Director/Conductor): Encore! (Disney+); Passion (Boston Court); Little Shop Of Horrors with M.J. Rodriguez (Pasadena Playhouse); The Color Purple (2015 Revival) Broadway tour; Motown The Musical on Broadway 2016 and national tour; Memphis Broadway tour; Dreamgirls national tour (associate conductor); Disney's The Lion King Broadway tour (vocal coach/assistant conductor); Wicked at the Pantages Theater (substitute conductor); Beauty And The Beast (McCoy/ Rigby); Ragtime (Pasadena Playhouse); The Wiz (The Muny); Dear World with Tyne Daly (VPAC); Jonathan Dove’s Innocence (Banff Centre and Manhattan Theatre Club); Nightmare Alley - workshop (The Geffen Playhouse); In The Heights (TUTS); Swing! (Sacramento Music Circus); Smokey Joe’s Café, Serrano – workshop with James Barbour and directed by Joel Zwick (El Portal Theater); I Married Wyatt Earp - workshop with Carole Cook and Carol Lawrence (Wadsworth Theater); In The Heights, The Producers, Legally Blonde, Kiss Me Kate with Davis Gaines, White Christmas, Funny Girl, Gypsy, A Chorus Line directed by Kay Cole, The King and I with Deborah Gibson (Cabrillo Music Theatre); Swing!, Next To Normal, The Buddy Holly Story (McCoy/Rigby Entertainment); Merry Me A Little – revised version (Celebration Theater); Two By Two with Jason Alexander and Faith Prince, How To Succeed In Business... with John O’Hurley, Carousel with M. Emmet Walsh, The Fantasticks with Eric McCormack, Once On This Island with Ledisi, Li'l Abner with Cathy Rigby and Fred Willard, Merrily We Roll Along with Teri Hatcher, I Do! I Do! with Diana Canova and Harry Groener (Reprise); Great Expectations, My Fair Lady, 1776, Little Shop Of Horrors, Camelot, and Forever Plaid (Utah Shakespearean Festival); A Christmas Memory (Laguna Playhouse); Loving Repeating, The Threepenny Opera, Raisin with Nell Carter (ICT); The Fix, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, Lady In the Dark, Sail Away (Musical Theater Guild); Ragtime, Silk Stockings, Never Gonna Dance (Musical Theatre West). Arrangement and orchestration credits include: the prime-time television special A Hollywood Holiday Celebration (ABC-TV), The Wiz (2018 new orchestrations for the Muny), Standard Time (Mark Stuart Dance Theatre), Passion (chamber orchestration for Boston Court), The Fountain Show and Christmas Trolley Show (The Grove Los Angeles), Great Expectations (Utah Shakespearean Festival and Blackpool, UK).

Beatrice Capote, Choreographer

Beatrice Capote is a Cuban American contemporary dancer, choreographer, educator and founder of Contempo: Capotechnique Exercises. In her work, she fuses Modern, Ballet, African and Afro-Cuban dance techniques to support artists with building technical skills while deepening knowledge on African Diaspora traditions. Ms. Capote has served as the choreographer for Citrus, a choreopoem play (Northern Stages) & The Wedding Band Musical (Montclair State University). She has received choreographic commissions from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and The Dark Elegy Project inspired by Suse Lowenstein performed at Gibney Dance. In 2019, she was a MANCC Forward Dialogues artist in residence where she developed her most recent solo based on “Reyita, The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the Twentieth Century” written by Maria De los Reyes Castillo Bueno. Her work has also been shown in major festivals/venues such as WestFest Dance Festival, Battery Dance Festival, BAAD! ASS Women’s Festival, Amherst College, Casita Maria!, Contemporary Dance Series at Bryant Park, Vision Festival and more. She began her training at Alvin Ailey American Dance Center and was featured in “Attitude! Eight Young Dancers Come of Age at the Ailey School” written by Katharine Davis Fisherman. She received her A.A. from University of North Carolina School of the Arts, a B.A. in Dance Education and an MFA focused on Afro-Cuban Dance Forms from Montclair State University. During the graduate program, her MFA Thesis choreography excerpt was featured on Bronx NETTV. Ms. Capote has performed for prestigious companies such as INSPIRIT, a dance company and Kyle Abraham/Abraham. In. Motion. She is a current member of Bessie Award-winning Camille A. Brown & Dancers. To continue her work in the Latinx Artist community, she co-founded The Sabrosura Effect dance company and co-curates Pepatián’s Dancing La Botanica: La Tierra Vive project and Bronx Arts and Conversation showcase under the direction of Pepatián South Bronx. She served on faculty at Montclair State University, The Ailey School, Gibney Dance, Joffrey Ballet School, and as a guest artist/mentor for many universities and dance institutions. Ms. Capote is now the Associate Professor in the department of Theatre, Drama and Contemporary dance at Indiana University.