Classmates

STEPHEN MCKINLEY HENDERSON

Stephen has worked on stages throughout the United States, abroad, on Broadway, off-Broadway, in television and film. His OBIE and LUCILLE LORTEL awards in the outstanding lead actor category are for his work as Pops in Stephen Adley Guirgis’, Between Riverside and Crazy. The play moved from the Atlantic Theater Co. in 2014 to Second Stage Theater, 2015, and received The Pulitzer Prize for Drama that season. For his work as Bono in the 2010 Broadway revival of August Wilson’s, Fences with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis Stephen received a Tony nomination in the featured actor category. That season he also received the Richard Seff Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor presented annually by Actor’s Equity.

In his eloquent obituary for Mr. Wilson in 2005, Michael Feingold of the Village Voice wrote,

“…To think of the great characters and scenes in August’s plays is to think of an epic parade of great African American actors who have seized their moment to make theater history: James Earl Jones and Mary Alice in Fences, Charles S. Dutton in Ma Rainey and The Piano Lesson, S. Epatha Merkerson confronting him in the latter, Roscoe Lee Browne sagely ironic in Two Trains Running, Stephen McKinley Henderson oozing malice in Jitney, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Lisa Gay Hamilton glaring a skyful of weaponry at each other in Gem of the Ocean...”

Henderson’s film and television work include the Paramount feature film of FENCES directed by Mr. Washington; Steven Spielberg’s LINCOLN for DreamWorks; Tower Heist for Imagine/Universal; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for Warner Brothers; Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series, THE NEWSROOM; HBO Films’ Everyday People presented at Sundance Film Festival in 2004; and William Duke’s PBS American Playhouse film of A Raisin in the Sun, starring Danny Glover and Esther Rolle. He also recurred as a judge for 15 seasons on NBC’s landmark series LAW AND ORDER and was a co-star on the FOX series, NEW AMSTERDAM.

In Buffalo, New York Stephen has received ArtVoice Awards for both Outstanding Performance and Career Achievement. In 1993 he was honored with the Artist of the Year Award from the Arts Council of Western New York presented by National Endowment for the Arts Chair, Jane Alexander. The late theatre and film producer, founder of the Juilliard Drama Division, John Houseman cited Stephen’s work as a student in his memoir, Final Dress, pub., Simon & Shuster. Dr. Samuel Hay cites his work as an actor, director, and educator in his text, African American Theater, A Critical Analysis, pub., Cambridge University Press.

Henderson has been part of several productions at Kennedy Center, most notably as a member of the acting company for Kenny Leon’s historic Century Cycle Readings in 2008. His six Broadway shows include two Tony winners for best Revival of a Play, A Raisin in the Sun, 2014 and Fences, 2010. He played Slow Drag in the revival of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom with Charles S. Dutton and Whoopi Goldberg and Van Helsing in, Dracula, The Musical, directed by Des McAnuff. Off-Broadway his roles include Pontius Pilate in the LAByrinth Theatre Company’s production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, directed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Turnbo in Marion McClinton’s production of Jitney. During its off-Broadway run in 2000, Jitney garnered the N.Y. Drama Critic’s Award for Best Play and earned Drama Desk, Obie, and Audelco awards for each actor as members of the outstanding ensemble of the New York season. In Los Angeles, Professor Henderson won a Drama Critics Circle Award as an outstanding featured actor and the NAACP Theatre Award for Outstanding Dramatic Performance by a Male. In London Jitney won the Olivier Award for Best New Play of the season, 2002.

In Yale Repertory’s 2009 production of Death of a Salesman, Stephen played Charley to Charles S. Dutton’s Willy Loman. Other regional roles for various companies include Azdak in Caucasian Chalk Circle, Bynum in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Creon in Antigone, Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor, Sizwe in Sizwe Bansi is Dead, Sitting Bull in Indians, and Solyony in Three Sisters. He played Winston in the Irish premiere of Athol Fugard’s The Island, for Dublin Theater Festival (1981) and received a Jeff Award nomination when the production moved to Chicago’s Wisdom Bridge Theater the following year.

Among Stephen’s directing credits is Signature Theater’s production of Charles Fuller’s, Zooman and the Sign which ran off-Broadway in 2009 for which he received an Audelco nomination (honoring outstanding achievement in African-American Theater off-Broadway). He made his New York directorial debut with ALI!, by Geoffrey C. Ewing and Graydon Royce. Their homage to the legendary champion ran off-Broadway during the 1992 season, transferring from the John Houseman Studio to the Sheridan Square Theater. The production garnered two Audelco Awards and an Obie for Mr. Ewing’s Outstanding Performance. In the summer of 1993, Stephen traveled to London to re-stage ALI! for the Mermaid Theater. It was also revived for the National Black Arts Festival in 1994 and the Olympic Arts Festival, Atlanta, 1996. His production of The Meeting by Jeff Stetson for the St. Louis Black Repertory Theater was presented at Kennedy Center as part of the Imagination Celebration in the Theater Lab, 1994.

While on the roster of Affiliate Artists Inc. (l986-9l), Professor Henderson conducted workshops and presented solo “informances” throughout the nation. A list of the corporate sponsors would include Reader’s Digest, The Alcoa Foundation, U.S. Steel, and the Purina Foundation. From l976-l982 Stephen was a resident member of the Loretto-Hilton Repertory a.k.a. Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. For ten years he enjoyed an artistic association with Studio Arena Theatre of Buffalo, NY and remains an occasional consultant for artistic directors, Mark Cuddy of Geva Theatre, Rochester, NY; Ron Himes of the St. Louis Black Repertory Theater; and Scott Behrend of Buffalo’s, Road Less Traveled Theatre Company.

Stephen’s early education in Kansas City, Kansas, led to an academic scholarship to attend Lincoln University in Missouri, a historically black institution, where he met and was directed by Dr. Thomas D. Pauley. In his freshman year at Lincoln, he auditioned for John Houseman and Michael Kahn and became a member of Group l, Juilliard Drama Division in 1968. Stephen is interviewed in the PBS American Masters documentary on Juilliard, first aired in January of 2003. His conservatory training continued at North Carolina School of the Arts (BFA) where he served as president of the student government and at Purdue University Graduate School (MA), where he was Director of the Drama Workshop for the Black Cultural Center. He has attended summer sessions at Rose Bruford Academy in Great Britain and William Esper Studios, New York. In the summer of 2001, Stephen was part of a master class taught by Lloyd Richards at the Actor’s Center, NYC and continued to study with Mr. Richards on a Fox Foundation Fellowship for three years. The Actor’s Center master class is featured in a documentary on Mr. Richards being prepared by filmmaker Michael Schultz.

He is a Fox Foundation Fellow, member of the LAByrinth Theatre Company, Distinguished Alumnus of Purdue University College of Liberal Arts, and a retired Professor and former Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance for The State University of New York at Buffalo.

PRESTON HOLMES

Preston Holmes is an industry veteran with 30 years experience as a producer, production manager and assistant director on feature films, television movies and documentaries. His production experience runs the gamut from studio features to lower budgeted independent productions shot on locations ranging from Harlem and South Central to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

After attending Princeton University, Preston left school to enroll in the prestigious Director’s Guild East’s Assistant Director Training Program and then admission to the Guild as an Assistant Director.

Moving from commercial production to features in New York, first as an assistant director and then as production manager, Preston eventually joined Spike Lee’s production team and helped turn out such films as DO THE RIGHT THING, MO BETTER BLUES and JUNGLE FEVER and MALCOM X. He then went on to
Produce or Co-Produce films including JUICE with Ernest Dickerson and NEW JACK CITY, POSSE and PANTHER with Mario Van Peebles.

In 1994 Preston relocated to Los Angeles to become President of Def Pictures for Russell Simmons and Stan Lathan. While at Def, he developed and served as Executive Producer for the films GRIDLOCK’D and DEF JAM’S HOW TO BE A PLAYER.

Preston also produced the award winning television movie BOYCOTT, directed by Clark Johnson for HBO Films, the Academy Award nominated documentary Tupac Ressurection for MTV Films and Amaru Entertainment, SUCKER FREE CITY, a movie for Showtime and SHE HATE ME, a feature film for Sony Classics, which were both directed by Spike Lee. Preston was Associate Producer of HUSTLE AND FLOW
an independent feature produced by John Singleton and Stephanie Allain.

He also served as Executive Producer on the Focus Features film SOMETHING NEW, and independent film ILLEGAL TENDER – written and directed by Franc Reyes and produced by John Singleton; and as Producer of the film WAIST DEEP, also for Focus Features.

Holmes was also Executive Producer/Line Producer on the Lionsgate film, PEEPLES and Line Producer on the ESPN, 30 for 30 documentary, ONE NIGHT IN VEGAS about the friendship of Tupac and Mike Tyson, written and directed by Reggie Rock-Bythewood.

His most recent credits include; Executive Producer – THE BEST MAN HOLIDAY written and directed by Malcom Lee for Universal Pictures. Producer – WITH THIS RING written and directed by Nzingha Stewart for Lifetime Networks.

Producer – THE BIRTH OF A NATION written, directed by Nate Parker an Independent feature. Executive Producer – ALMOST CHRISTMAS written and directed by David Talbert and GIRL TRIP, directed by Malcolm Lee for Universal Pictures.