DCT MAINSTAGE 2008
NOON DAY SUN Earns AUDELCO Award Nominations
Including Best Dramatic Production of the Year
and Best Play of the Year

"NOON DAY SUN SHINES A BRIGHT LIGHT! With Barack Obama running for President of the United States, it is politically and socially resonant to witness a play set in 1957 that deals directly with American racism in a story about a young Black woman passing for White. The changes in our country that have taken place in the last half century come very much to mind in the evocative Cassandra Medley play." -Scott Siegel

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Janet Appel Public Relations
212-258-2413
janetappel54@aol.com

NEW YORK--Diverse City Theater Company ("DCT") announces that its mainstage production of Cassandra Medley's NOON DAY SUN earned several nominations for the prestigious AUDELCO Awards: Best Dramatic Production of the Year, Best Play (Cassandra Medley), Best Leading Actress (Gin Hammond) and Best Featured Actress (Melanie Nicholls-King). (NOON DAY SUN company member Obie Award Winner Ron Cephas Jones also earned an Audelco Award nomination as Featured Actor for his performance in The Overwhelming.)

The 36th Annual Vivian Robinson/AUDELCO Recognition Awards for Excellence in Black Theatre will be held on Monday, November 17, 2008 at The Aaaron Davis Hall--Marion Anderson Theatre at West 135th Street and Convent Avenue in Harlem, New York.

The Audelco Awards are awarded annually to recognize and honor excellence in Black Theatre by the Audelco (Audience Development Committee) organization, which is devoted to generating recognition, understanding and awareness in the Black communities and to build new audiences for non-profit theatre and dance. For more information about the event, visit www.audelco.net, call 212-368-6906 or audelco@aol.com.

NOON DAY SUN is a compelling play about identity and a woman’s flight from an undesirable past. Wendy, whose secret birth name is "Zena," is a Negro-identified woman who is passing for white. Suddenly on a "white hot day in August,” she crosses paths with her black husband from the past. NOON DAY SUN was featured on NBC's Saturday Morning News as Time Out New York's BEST BET. Theater critic Aaron Ricccio wrote: "Medley’s work is rich in figurative language (“Fireflies like gold dust whirling in the night”), but its earthy characters give it weight ... Black or white, the characters all come in shades of gray. Deftly layering melodrama over a headier look at the invention of identity, NOON DAY SUN SHINES BRIGHTLY!"

Award-winning playwright Cassandra Medley, whose play Relativity earned The Audelco August Wilson Playwriting Award and was a sold-out hit at Ensemble Studio Theater’s First Light Festival, earned the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in 1986, and was awarded a New York State Council on the Arts Grant for 1987. She was a 1989 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award in Playwriting, won the 1990 National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Playwriting, the 1995 New Professional Theatre Award, the 1995 Marilyn Simpson Award, and was a 1994 finalist in the Eugene O'Neil National Playwrights Conference. Her other plays include Ms. Mae, Ma Rose, Waking Women, Dearborn Heights, and Maiden Lane, among others.

Gin Hammond, nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress of the Year, won the Helen Hayes Award for Oustanding Lead Actress for her performance of The Syringa Tree and has performed nationally at theatres such as The Guthrie, The Longwharf Theatre, Seattle's ACT, The Berkshire Theatre Festival, Pasadena Playhouse and Studio Theatre in Washington, DC.

Melanie Nicholls-King, nominated for Outstanding Featured Actress of the Year, was part of DCT's critically-acclaimed Snapshots series in which she starred in Linda Faigao-Hall's The A Word. She previously earned an Audelco nomination as Outstanding Lead Actress for her performance in Cassandra Medley's Relativity in 2006. Her favorite roles on-screen includes Cheryl in HBO's The Wire; Jules in Disney's The Famous Jett Jackson; Rose in Showtime's Deacons for Defence; and Faye in How She Move, which was distributed by Paramount and MTV.

Directed by DCT's Artistic Director Victor Lirio (who took over Gregory Simmons), NOON DAY SUN ran in August 2008 at Theatre Row's The Beckett Theatre and featured Penelope Darcel*, Helen Hayes Award Winner Gin Hammond*, Obie Award Winner Ron Cephas Jones*, Melanie Nicholls-King*, Michael McGlone and David Newer*.

"We are very thrilled to be part of the Audelco community and very grateful for this wonderful recognition. We praise and rejoice all the artists involved in this production," said director Victor Lirio.

He added: "I am personally excited for Cassandra that this play, albeit on a limited run, finally had its voice on the New York stage. It's a very important and compelling voice. And this NOON DAY SUN has not set yet."

Producers:  Natasha Marco, Martha Zamirski; Set & Lighting Design:  Maruti Evans; Sound Design:  Elizabeth Rhodes; Costume Design:  Arnulfo Maldonado; Creative Director:  David Derr; Production Stage Manager:  Kathryn “China” Hayzer*; Stage Manager: Nick Tochelli*; Assistant Stage Manager: Nino Spallacci; Production Assistant: Edwin Noyola

*Member of Actors Equity Association

About Diverse City Theater Company

Diverse City Theater Co. Inc., is an independent not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization-run by artist playwrights, directors and actors - that focuses on promoting diversity and multiculturalism in the theater arts. Its mission is to commission, develop and produce powerful and though-provoking original plays that explore and examine diversity issues in our national culture, create multiculturally fluent theater audiences and advocate the non-traditional casting of actors.

Formed in 2003, Diverse City Theater Co., Inc. is based in New York City. For more information, visit the organization's website at www.diversecitytheater.org.