TAYLOR, Regina (Annette) 1960(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born August 22, 1960 (some sources cite 1959 and 1962), in Dallas, TX; daughter of Leannell Taylor (a social worker and poet). Education: Southern Methodist University, B.A., 1981.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Innovative Artists, 1505 Tenth St., Santa Monica, CA 90401; William Morris Agency, 151 South El Camino Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90212-2775; Sally Ware, The Gersh Agency, 130 West 42nd St., New York, NY 10036.

CAREER:

Actress and playwright. Actress in television series, including (as Lilly Harper) I'll Fly Away, National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 1991-93; (as Sandra Broome) Feds, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), 1997; and (as Judith Hackett Bryant) The Education of Max Bickford, CBS, 2001-02. Actress in television movies, including Nurse, 1980; (as Minnie-jean Brown) Crisis at Central High, CBS, 1981; (as Pam Hayes) Howard Beach: Making the Case for Murder (also known as In the Line of Duty: Howard Beach, Making a Case for Murder and Skin), NBC, 1989; (as Lilly Harper) I'll Fly Away: Then and Now, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 1993; (as Lieutenant Alec Curtis) Hostile Waters, Home Box Office (HBO), 1997; (as Anita Hill) Strange Justice, Showtime, 1999; and (as Cora Jenkins) "Cora Unashamed," Masterpiece Theatre, PBS, 2000. Actress in television miniseries, including (as Burnetta) Concealed Enemies, PBS, 1984; (as Drusilla) Children of the Dust (also known as A Good Day to Die), CBS, 1995; and (as Mish Delaware) The Third Twin (also known as Ken Follett's The Third Twin), 1997. Appeared in television specials, including The American Television Awards, American Broadcasting Companies (ABC), 1993; The 50th Annual Golden Globe Awards, Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), 1993; and Echoes from the White House, PBS, 2001. Appeared in episodes of television series, including (as Evelyn Griggs) "Mushrooms," Law & Order, NBC, 1991; and (as Sarah Maslin) "Virtue," Law & Order, NBC, 1994. Appeared as Eve Marchetta in the pilot Silent Witness.

Actress in films, including (as Mrs. Carter) Lean on Me, Warner Bros., 1989; (as Rosie) Jersey Girl, Electric Pictures, 1992; (as Angela Lamont) The Keeper, Rada Film, 1995; (as Gussie) Losing Isaiah, Paramount, 1995; (as Iris Jeeter) Clockers, Universal, 1995; (as Ann) A Family Thing, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists, 1996; (as Meredith Serling) Courage under Fire, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1996; (as Willy) Spirit Lost, LIVE Entertainment, 1996; and (as Karen Roman) The Negotiator, Warner Bros., 1998. Actress in stage productions, including (as Celia) As You Like It, New York Shakespeare Festival, 1986-87; (as first witch) Macbeth, New York Shakespeare Festival, 1986-87; (as Juliet) "Romeo and Juliet," Shakespeare on Broadway for the Schools, New York Shakespeare Festival, 1986-87; King Lear, 1987; (as Ariel) The Tempest, La Jolla Playhouse, La Jolla, CA, 1988; Doctor Faustus, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, New York, NY, 1988; (as Regina) Sarafina!, Cort Theatre, New York, NY, 1988-89; Escape from Paradise (solo show), Circle Repertory Company, New York, NY, 1994; and Urban Zulu Mambo, Signature Theatre Company, New York, NY, 2001; also appeared in The Illusion, New York Theatre Workshop; Jar the Floor, Second Stage Theatre, New York, NY; Machinal and Map of the World, both Public Theatre, New York, NY; Millennium Mambo, Goodman Theatre, Chicago, IL; and The Vagina Monologues. Director of stage production "Dr. Kheal," Transformations, Goodman Theatre, Chicago, 1997. Recorded audiobook The Wedding, Simon & Schuster Audio, 1998. Theatre Communications Group, member of board, 2000—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Emmy nomination, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Golden Globe Award, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and Image Award, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, all for I'll Fly Away; Gracie Allen Award, Women in Film, for Strange Justice; American Theatre Critics/Steinberg New Play Award, 2000, for Oo-Bla-Dee.

WRITINGS:

STAGE PLAYS

Watermelon Rinds (one-act play), produced at Women's Project, Westbeth Theatre Center, New York, NY, 1993.

Escape from Paradise (solo show; based on her earlier work Jenine's Diary), produced at Circle Repertory Company, New York, NY, 1994.

Mudtracks (one-act play; produced at Marathon, then Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York, NY, 1994), published in EST Marathon 1994: One-Act Plays, Smith & Kraus (Lyme, NH), 1995.

The Ties That Bind: A Pair of One-Act Plays (solo show; contains Watermelon Rinds and Inside the Belly of the Beast; produced as Ties That Bind at Goodman Theatre, Chicago, IL, 1994-95), Dramatic Publishing (Woodstock, IL), 1995.

Between the Lines (produced at Humana Festival of New American Plays, Louisville, KY, 1995), published in Humana Festival '95: The Complete Plays, Smith & Kraus (Lyme, NH), 1995.

Behind Every Good Man, produced at Humana Festival of New American Plays, Louisville, KY, 1999.

Oo-Bla-Dee, produced at Goodman Theatre, Chicago, IL, 1999.

A Night in Tunisia, produced at Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Montgomery, AL, 2000.

(With others) Millennium Mambo (also see below), produced at Goodman Theatre, Chicago, IL, 2000.

(Adaptor) Drowning Crow (based on The Seagull by Anton Chekhov), produced at Goodman Theatre, Chicago, IL, 2001.

(With others) Urban Zulu Mambo (based on her play Millennium Mambo), produced at Signature Theatre Company, New York, NY, 2001.

Crowns (based on the book by Craig Marberry and Michael Cunningham), produced in Princeton, NJ, 2002.

Author of plays Jenine's Diary, Humana Festival of New American Plays; Jubilee (musical), Alliance Theatre Company, Atlanta, GA; Love Poem (short play), 7 Stages, Atlanta; and Millennium Mambo, Goodman Theatre, Chicago, IL; adaptor of Ghost Train and Sty Farm (one-act plays; based on works by Franz Xavier Kroeta), New York Theatre Festival, New York, NY.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

A musical adaptation of the novel The Color Purple, by Alice Walker.

SIDELIGHTS:

To most people, Regina Taylor is best known as the actress who played the Jim Crow-era maid Lilly Harper on the television series I'll Fly Away. But, Taylor told Newark, New Jersey Star-Ledger contributor Peter Filichia, "acting is just my day job." The rest of the time, Taylor is a playwright.

Taylor's play Oo-Bla-Dee focuses on the fictional all-female, African-American jazz group Evelyn Waters and the Diviners, and takes place during the period immediately following World War II. During that war, with so many men away fighting, many women moved into formerly all-male occupations, and jazz musician was no exception. This prize-winning play is loosely based on actual history; Taylor was inspired to write the play after meeting a friend's great-aunt, who had played in such a band as a young woman. Oo-Bla-Dee "contains a wealth of potentially dramatic conflicts, from the plight of women on the road to struggles with internalized sex roles, not to mention the problems raised as the men return from war—both for the women faced with losing their jobs and for the black servicemen no longer willing to submit to racist indignities," Robert Hurwitt explained in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Drowning Crow is an adaptation of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's work The Seagull. Taylor moves the play from provincial Russia to an island off the coast of the state of Georgia, where a family reunion is occurring. The members of the family are all artists of one sort or another; one is a sitcom writer for the network UPN, one is an actress in a low-budget touring production of Rent; and one is trying, with little success, to make a living as a performance artist. "Taylor draws some fascinating parallels between Chekhov's chronicling of the bored flailings of the provincial bourgeoisie [and] … contemporary issues in African-American culture," Chris Jones wrote in Variety. Jones dubbed Drowning Crow "an erudite meditation on the complex relationship between African-Americans and their images in the media."

Urban Zulu Mambo and its earlier incarnation, Millennium Mambo, are one-woman shows which contain several different stories about the lives of modern African-American women. Taylor asked four well-known playwrights—Ntozake Shange, Suzan-Lori Parks, Kia Corthron, and Adrienne Kennedy—to craft monologues for her, which she wove together with her own poem. (Millennium Mambo contained all four monologues; for Urban Zulu Mambo Taylor dropped Kennedy's piece.) The topics of the monologues are disparate, ranging from homelessness to cancer to the sexuality of older women. The show can be depressing in its depiction of the serious problems that African-American women are forced to confront, but as Ben Brantley wrote of Urban Zulu Mambo in the New York Times, "there is a vitality in the telling—in a defiant inventiveness that belongs equally to the characters and their authors—that undercuts the despair."

Crowns is "a highly distinctive, gospel-infused play about church hats that's wise, funny, and contagiously energetic," Mark Evans declared in the Bergen County, New Jersey, Record. The play is a unique project inspired by a coffee-table book by photographer Michael Cunningham and interviewer Craig Marberry. The two documented the flamboyant church hats worn by African-American women and interviewed those women about the emotional connections they have with their hats. For the stage production, Taylor created six composite characters out of the fifty women in the book and created a new character, a teenager named Yolanda, to tie them together. After Yolanda's brother is shot, her mother sends her from Brooklyn to her grandmother's home in South Carolina. The action occurs before church one day, as Yolanda's grandmother and her friends discuss their hats and the "hattitude" necessary to wear one well. Through words, singing, and dance, the women convey their personal histories and their pride in their heritage. Taylor "has done a careful and tasteful job of mixing the serious"—death, racism—"with the humorous," Evans commented. New York Times reviewer Alvin Klein noted the difficulty of categorizing Crowns. Despite the prevalence of song and dance, "it is not a musical. Nor is it an adaptation or dramatization of the book," he wrote. Taylor "has created an entirely original liturgical structure."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Black Biography, Volume 9, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1995.

PERIODICALS

Atlanta Journal Constitution, April 2, 2000, Kathy Janich, "Backstage: Alliance's Taylor Wins Humana Fest Prize," section L, p. 6; July 16, 2000, Kathy Janich, interview with Taylor, section L, p. 3; March 23, 2003, Wendell Brock, "Upcoming Alliance Season to Kick off with Hat-itude," section M, p. 1.

Back Stage, March 11, 1997, Larry S. Ledford, review of Escape from Paradise, p. 36; August 27, 1999, Karl Levin, review of Jar the Floor, p. 56.

Back Stage West, November 9, 2000, Anne Louise Bannon, interview with Taylor, p. 12.

Chicago, November, 1995, pp. 53-55.

Christian Science Monitor, March 30, 1993, Marilynne S. Mason, review of Jennine's Diary, p. 11.

Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), April 2, 2000, Judith Egerton, "Theater Critics Honor Playwright Regina Taylor," p. 3.

Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), March 14, 1999, Jack Helbig, review of Oo-Bla-Dee, p. 2; March 19, 1999, Jack Helbig, review of Oo-Bla-Dee, p. 32; February 4, 2000, review of Millennium Mambo, p. 23; January 11, 2002, review of Drowning Crow, p. 20.

Daily Variety, December 6, 2002, Marilyn Stasio, review of Crowns, p. 11; August 6, 2003, Robert Hofler, review of Drowning Crow, pp. 1-2.

Essence, March, 2004, Danyel Smith, "Drama Queen: Playwright Regina Taylor," p. 128.

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, February 20, 2002, Michael Granberry, interview with Taylor, section K, p. 7546, "Regina Taylor at a Glance," section K, p. 7547.

New York, December 16, 2002, John Simon, review of Crowns, pp. 62-63.

New York Times, October 22, 1991, Sara Rimer, review of I'll Fly Away, section B, C, pp. 1, 13; February 26, 2001, Ben Brantley, review of Urban Zulu Mambo, section E, p. 1; September 29, 2002, Alvin Klein, review of A Night in Tunisia, section NJ, p. 11; October 13, 2002, Celia Wren, review of Crowns, section AR, p. 5; December 4, 2002, Bruce Weber, review of Crowns, section E, p. 5; October 27, 2002, Alvin Klein, review of Crowns, section NJ, p. 11; December 22, 2002, Valerie Gladstone, review of Crowns, p. 5; February 20, 2004, Ben Brantley, "Chekhov Shows He Can Rap," section E, p. 1.

People, March 23, 1992, Tim Allis, interview with Taylor, pp. 75-76.

Record (Bergen County, NJ), December 8, 2002, Mark Evans, review of Crowns, section E, p. 6.

San Francisco Chronicle, January 6, 2002, Steven Winn, review of Urban Zulu Mambo, p. 7; January 14, 2002, Robert Hurwitt, review of Urban Zulu Mambo, section D, p. 5; March 13, 2002, Robert Hurwitt, review of Oo-Bla-Dee, section D, p. 3.

Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), May 23, 2002, "Douglas to Lift Curtain on George St. Season," p. 36; October 18, 2002, review of Crowns, p. 4.

Variety, April 10, 2000, Charles Isherwood, "Taylor Wins Top Crix Nod," p. 73; November 20, 2000, review of Oo-Bla-Dee, p. 38; March 5, 2001, Robert Hofler, review of Urban Zulu Mambo, p. 53; February 4, 2002, Chris Jones, review of Drowning Crow, p. 41.

Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2001, Amy Gamerman, review of Urban Zulu Mambo, section A, p. 20; January 22, 2002, Joel Henning, review of Drowning Crow, section A, p. 18.

ONLINE

Centerstage Web site,http://centerstage.net/ (November 25, 2003), "Regina Taylor."

La Jolla Playhouse Web site,http://www.lajollaplayhouse.com/ (November 25, 2003), "Regina Taylor."*