Photo Flash: HADESTOWN Star André De Shields Receives 2019 Project1Voice Lifetime Achievement Award

Emmy and 2019 Tony Award-winning actor, singer, dancer, director, choreographer, playwright and educator André De Shields received the 2019 Project1Voice Lifetime Achievement Award at The Schomburg on October 7.

AUDELCO President Jackie Jeffries, Project1Voice Founder and CEO Erich McMillan-McCall, Marcia Pendelton, President of Walk Tall Girl Productions/Black Theater Online, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Kevin Young, Director, Schomburg Center) presented THE THEATERMAKERS - A Black Theater Preview: Fall Edition at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, hosted by four-time Tony Award®-winning producer Ron Simons of SimonSays Entertainment (A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, Porgy & Bess, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Jitney).

Mr. De Shields took The Schomburg audience to church, kicking off the evening with an acapella rendition of "Lift Every Voice and Sing." During the conversation, Mr. De Shields shared the story of his audition for The Wiz and then sang his audition song, "In the Midnight Hour," which sealed the deal. Scroll down for photos and video of the night.

André De Shields is the triple-crown winner of the 2019 theater awards season, having won the Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Tony Awards as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his unanimously critically acclaimed performance as Hermes, Messenger to the Gods, in Hadestown. The Actors' Equity Foundation followed suit with the Richard Seff Award, which honors veteran stage actors' best supporting performances of the year. Mr. De Shields will receive The York Theatre Company's 2019 Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre on November 11 and will be inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame on November 18. He recently received the Key to the City of Baltimore from Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young. Prior to his Tony Award win, Mr. De Shields was best known for his show-stopping performances in four legendary Broadway productions: The Wiz, Ain't Misbehavin' (Emmy Award), Play On! (Tony Nomination), and The Full Monty (Tony Nomination). In a career spanning fifty years, he has distinguished himself as an unparalleled actor, director, and educator, receiving in 2018 the 8th Annual Off Broadway Alliance Legend Award, and the 33rd Annual Bob Harrington Life Achievement Bistro Award. Among his other accolades are the 2009 National Black Theatre Festival's Living Legend Award and the 2007 Village Voice Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance. www.andredeshields.com

Black Theater Preview, now in it's second year, shines the spotlight on the presence of black artists on stage: Broadway, Off-Broadway, and beyond. The evening featured presentations from Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, Ta-Nehesi Coates' Between Me and the World at The Apollo Theatre, and the Broadway-bound Thoughts of a Colored Man (Baltimore Center Stage); conversations with playwrights Donja R. Love (one in two) and Glynn Borders; directors Saheem Ali (Fires in the Mirror, The New Englanders), Robert O'Hara (Slave Play, Booty Candy, Mankind); leaders of black theater institutions such as Carl Clay (Black Spectrum Theatre Company), Dr. Indira Etwaroo (The Billie Holiday Theatre) and Kamilah Forbes (Apollo Theatre).

Excerpts were presented from Classical Theatre of Harlem's A Christmas Carol In Harlem; (A)loft Modulation by Jaymes Jorsling; Black Spectrum Theatre Company's Sassy Mamas by Celeste Bedford Walker; for all the women who thought they were MAD by Zawe Ashton; American Slavery Project's Unheard Voices conceived and directed by Judy Tate; Reparations by James Sheldon; Broadbend, Arkansas - A new musical by Ellen Fitzhugh & Harrison David Rivers; The Black History Museum...According to the United States of America by Zoey Martinson; New York Theatre Workshop's runboyrun & IN OLD AGE by Mfoniso Udofia; and Thoughts of a Colored Man by Keenan Scott II.

Photo credit: Lia Chang