For Release: Aug. 25, 2003
Rosie Perez (Loureen): An actress equally at home with comedy and drama, Perez began her professional career as a dancer and choreographer. She appeared on the television variety series Soul Train and the comedy/variety series In Living Color (1990-94), for which she received an Emmy nomination.Perez's film credits include Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing (1989), White Men Can't Jump (1992), It Could Happen to You (1994) and Riding in Cars with Boys (2001). She received an Oscar nomination for her performance in Peter Weir's Fearless (1993) and played the title role in Alex de Iglesia's Perdita Durango (1997). In 2003, Perez starred on Broadway in Frankie and Johnny in the Clare de Lune.
Viola Davis (Florence): Davis has enjoyed a flurry of roles in recent high-profile films--Far From Heaven (2002) and Denzel Washington's directorial debut, Antwone Fisher (2003). Davis made her movie debut in 1996 in The Substance of Fire. She has also appeared in Kate and Leopold (2001) and in three films directed by Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight, Traffic, Solaris).
Best known for her stage work, Davis won a Tony for Best Featured Actress for her role as Tonya in August Wilson's King Hedley II and received a Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut in Wilson's Seven Guitars.
Her television work includes several TV movies, notably Oprah Winfrey's Amy & Isabelle (2001), and guest-star appearances on such dramatic series as NYPD Blue, New York Undercover, Third Watch, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and CSI.
Lynn Nottage, playwright: Nottage's plays include Por'knockers (1994); Crumbs from the Table of Joy (1998); Mud, River, Stone (1999); A Walk Through Time, a children's musical (2000); Las Meninas (2000); and Intimate Apparel (2003). Her work has been produced off-Broadway and at more than a dozen regional theaters across the country. Her short play, "Poof!" (1993), premiered at Actors Theatre of Louisville and won the Heideman Award. It has been translated into five languages and performed around the world.
Nottage's work has been nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the NAACP Award and the Black Theatre Alliance Award. She received a Dreamworks/Amblin Entertainment play-writing commission and co-wrote the script for the feature film Side Streets, produced in 1999 by Merchant Ivory and directed by Tony Gerber. She was born in Brooklyn and still lives there.
Fred Barzyk, director: Barzyk is known as one of the more daring figures in the early days of public broadcasting. In 1969, he created The Medium is the Medium, which introduced the work of Nam June Paik and other video artists to TV. He directed The Lathe of Heaven, a cult classic of sci-fi drama, and worked with humorist Jean Shepherd on The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowsk, The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters and The Phantom of the Open Hearth.
His work has received three Emmys and three Television Critics Circle Awards, as well as Ace and Peabody Awards. Barzyk is one of the mainstays of educational programming for WGBH and Annenberg/CPB, serving as executive producer for such series as Destinos, French in Action and Western Tradition.
Guy Mendes, producer: Mendes has written, produced and directed a variety of programs during his 30 years at Kentucky Educational Television (KET). In addition to American Shorts "Poof!" and "The Ryan Interview," Mendes produced the Signature series on contemporary Southern writers. The Signatureprogram on playwright-director George C. Wolfe won the National Educational Telecommunications Association's "best program" award for 1997, and the program on Barbara Kingsolver won NETA's "best documentary" award the following year. Both won regional Emmys. Mendes also wrote and co-produced Mountain Born, a documentary on Appalachian folksinger Jean Ritchie.
His recent work includes Looking at Painting (2002), a series exploring the creative process of 14 painters; Living by Words (2003), about Kentucky writers; Passage to Freedom--Kentucky's Underground Railroad (2000); and Ellis Wilson--So Much to Paint(2000), a portrait of Harlem Renaissance painter Ellis Wilson. He also directed and produced World of Our Own: Kentucky Folkways, a documentary series on traditional crafts and folk practices, funded by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Community Folklife Program.