 |
|
The Inimitable Lynda Gravatt: Consummate Actor, Director, and Teacher
by Vera J. Katz
Gifted actress Lynda Gravatt, three-time AUDELCO Award winner (2003, 2004 and 2007) and winner of the Helen Hayes Award (2004), was born in Harlem in 1946. For many years her adoring adoptive parents, Fontaine and David Bradley, sent her to a variety of dancing schools where she studied Interpretive and African dance, and Russian ballet. As early as four years of age, she performed on Broadway in The King and I! This led to local weekly television appearances on Joe Michael's Kids. Later, at nine years of age, she also appeared in Carnegie Hall recitals, where she already displayed her sense of "gravitas" by refusing to wear an exaggerated donkey mask. Dance and drama clubs followed in high school as well as a summer scholarship at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Connecticut. Of these early years she recalls, "At home, in addition to reading the Bible aloud, I had to learn a piece a week. Proper speech was demanded, and receiving congratulations for capturing a crowd made its mark on me."
As an adult, Gravatt honed her craft in Washington, DC as a founding member of Robert Alexander's first company of Living Stage/Arena Stage (1969), where, she states, "a foundation for improvisation was laid, which has served me well." As a student at Howard University (BFA, 1971), she appeared in numerous productions, while also venturing out to perform with the ground-breaking DC Black Repertory (founded by Robert Hooks and Vantile Whitfield). She was also surrounded by such brilliant mentors as Owen Dodson, of whom she says, "His love of The Poetics and his extraordinary emphasis on the voice taught me to honor that instrument, since my early focus had been exclusively on dance." Speaking of other mentors, she continues, "Watching Kenneth Daugherty in Dodson's production of Oedipus Rex was a transformative experience as it embodied all that there was to acting. Working with Mike Malone for the first of many times in Risin' Up afforded me the opportunity to be choreographed by this extraordinary talent. Glenda Dickerson's fresh, innovative celebratory productions of Blackness were occurring at Paul Allen's Black American Theatre. I appeared in many of her stirring works, such as Jesus Christ, Lawd Today and Owen's Song. I continued to work with her in various productions including the commission we received to write a touring piece on Barbara Jordan for the Alley Theatre of Houston. The person who emphasized the craft of both acting and directing at Howard was a little, Jewish woman named Vera Katz, who cajoled, nagged and infuriated me but she pressed for excellence."
During this fecund time of the late 1960s–early 1970s in DC, Lynda also had the opportunity to interface with a confluence of innovative, literary-minded, talented peers, such as Charles Brown, Clinton Turner Davis, Petronia Paley (2008 AUDELCO winner), and Richard Wesley. Today Phylicia Rashad, another respected peer, praises her, recalling that "Lynda was always intelligent, beautiful, talented, purposeful, and clean in her work." So it was surrounded by these mentors who creatively inspired and supported her that she formed forever friendships with Glenda Dickerson, Kenneth Daugherty, Mike Malone, and Phylicia Rashad. (Continued)
To finish reading this article, purchase your subscription today and get this article and the rest of Vol. 18, no. 5 for FREE!
Vera J. Katz is a professor emerita of Howard University's Department of Theatre Arts, where she taught acting and directing for thirty-two years. Her most famous students include Debbie Allen, Lynda Gravatt, Phylicia Rashad, Isaiah Washington, Lynn Whitfield and Taraji P. Henson. For the past nine years, she has been teaching acting at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. She has served as acting coach for numerous productions and also coaches privately. In June 2008, she directed Stripping Borders by Neelam Patel, a one-woman show that combined poetry and dance and merged two worlds: Indian and American. Presently, she is working on a book that focuses on the technique of acting for beginning actors and teachers of acting. She has also been featured on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition and profiled in the Washington Post.
Mar/Apr 2009
This article was originally featured in Vol. 18, Issue. 5
Also in this issue:
To order this issue, send check or money order for $4.00 to
Black MasksP.O. Box 7334
Athens, GA 30604
Lynda Gravatt as one of the compelling hat-wearing churchwomen in McCarter Theatre's 2002 production of Regina Taylor's hit, Crowns. (Photo by Joan Marcus)
Gravatt as the bossy landlady in Lynn Nottage's acclaimed play, Intimate Apparel, produced by Roundabout Theatre in New York and restaged at the Mark Taper Center in Los Angeles, both in 2004. (Photo by Craig Schwartz)
