*During the promotional leadup to last week’s premiere of “America’s Got Talent,” we were told that Howard Stern gave a 7-year-old rapper the dismissal “X” and made him cry, then felt so bad that he ran on stage to give the boy a hug.

Well, the segment aired last night. [Scroll down to watch.]

Hosting auditions in New York City, Stern — alongside seasoned judges Sharon Osbourne and Howie Mandel — saw Philadelphia-based rapper Mir Money, 7, take the stage.

The pint-sized rapper had host Nick Cannon head nodding backstage with his off-beat rhymes, but Stern wasn’t as impressed. He quickly sounded his buzzer to vote him off, and Osbourne followed suit.

“You’re a very nice young man — you are very brave to get up there. No one likes hitting the ‘X’ on a 7-year-old,” Stern, 58, reasoned as the contestant broke down in tears, prompting Cannon to declare the shock jock a “mean man.”

Realizing how his actions hurt the contestant, Stern rushed on stage to apologize and give the child a hug. “You know what, Mir Money? I’ve met a lot of rappers — I’m on the radio, I’ve interviewed them — and none of them are as quite as good as you,” Stern said as a consolation.

Watch below.

UPdate …

*EUR just received an email notification from Courtney Barnes, Ray J’s publicist saying that the singer/actor has been in a Las Vegas area hospital since the early morning of Monday, May 21, and will remain there for treatment for exhaustion and jet lag.

Barnes says Ray J was in ‘Vegas hosting a launch party for the product he is endorsing, Prince Reigns Hair Serum, and to attend the Billboard Awards.

Earlier we reported …

*TMZ is reporting that Ray J experienced some sort of health issue the morning after the Billboard Music Awards and ended up in the hospital.

According to the website, “Ray J was extremely upset after his confrontation with Whitney Houston’s family — notably Pat Houston — during the awards ceremony.  On Monday morning, someone went into Ray J’s hotel room and realized the singer was ‘out of it’ and couldn’t get out of bed.

“We’re told Ray J was extremely disoriented and was immediately taken to the hospital by ambulance.

“As for what happened … it’s looking like a combo of exhaustion and stress.  Ray J had just returned from a quick, 32-hour round trip to China and when he landed he immediately drove 4 hours to Las Vegas for the awards show.”

At press time, Ray J was still in the hospital, according to TMZ.  No word on when he’ll be released.

Who was Malcolm X?

Malcolm X was a number of things to a number of people.

To white racists, he was the physical manifestation of the chickens coming home to roost—the sins of the father being visited upon the sons. He was committed to the respect and protection of the Black community and unwavering in the extent to which he was willing to go and to which he was willing to influence millions to go to oppose and stamp out oppression.

His mission? In his own words, it was “to bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the western hemisphere…and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary.”

Those means included violent retaliation, of course, but those means also included economic revolution. Malcolm X advocated Black self-reliance as a means to freedom.

“If you can’t do for yourself what the white man is doing for himself, don’t say you’re equal with the white man,” Malcolm chided.” If you can’t set up a factory like he sets up a factory, don’t talk that old equality talk.”

Brother Malcolm became the universal symbol for Black Manhood as he challenged white superiority and privilege in a way that frightened America and made conscious Black people proud.

He also challenged the foundation and purpose of the Civil Rights Movement, which did not make him an enemy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as many people today believe.

It is ignorant to detract from one man to glorify the other. Brother Malcolm was as crucial and relevant as Brother Martin, but a fearful nation would not embrace him the same because he represented the fiery response to violence—a divergent option to Brother Martin, but certainly not an opposite option.

In a 2005 installment of his column for the New York Daily News, Stanley Crouch, a self-hating Negro, claimed that Malcolm X was a “heckler of the Civil Rights Movement” and a “minor figure,” calling the Nation of Islam a “cult,” and a “cartoon version of Islam.”

Boot-licking House Negro bitches like the “writer” Stanley Crouch can deride Malcolm X from the comfort of the twenty-first century, but in his weak little heart which pumps lemonade, Crouch knows damned well that he would never have had the testicular fortitude to be one tenth of what Malcolm X was to America—a proud Black man unafraid to tell the world what was wrong with this nation and unafraid to face it, sacrificing his life for the people he loved.

Crouch, a revisionist idiot, has no real concept of history, particularly where Black people are concerned. Malcolm and Martin had two different movements, which were moving closer to each other before they were assassinated. To call Malcolm a “heckler of the Civil Rights Movement,” is ignorant and demonstrates self-hatred.

Malcolm’s critical challenge of the foundation and purpose of the Civil Rights Movement is very different from being a “heckler,” which is someone who sits inactively on the sidelines tossing negativity.

Certainly, Martin was and is larger than Malcolm, but that has more to do with who he had following him and the times to come. Malcolm was about hate the way Martin was a racist—both false assumptions made only by idiots.

The reality is that Martin was safer than Malcolm—for whites and for scared Negroes who didn’t want anyone to make too much noise and piss off the white establishment they feared and revered.

But Martin also had detractors, many of whom hated him as they hated Malcolm. Some Negroes were afraid that Martin, too, would upset the apple cart and make it harder for them to kiss white people’s collective asses.

Malcolm X, much like Dr. King, was evolving from fighting a domestic fight on the home front for civil rights into waging a war on the world stage for human rights.

And they were both taking an economic revolution to the bottom of society.

At the end of the day, there is never a reason to choose and no one should be asked to.

But there is a reason to celebrate. To celebrate the birth of a beautiful, strong human being who changed the way Black men thought of themselves and frankly, the way the world thought of Black men.

The late Ossie Davis, who delivered the eulogy for Malcolm X in the Spike Lee film and in life at the funeral, said it best:  “Malcolm was our manhood. Our living Black manhood.”

(Malcolm was) “Our own Black shining prince who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.”

And those of us who understood him, love him as well.

Happy Birthday Brother Malcolm.

Darryl James is an award-winning author of the powerful new anthology “Notes From The Edge.”  James’ stage play, “Love In A Day,” opened in Los Angeles in 2001 and will become a feature film in 2012. View previous installments of this column at www.bridgecolumn.proboards36.com. Reach James at djames@theblackgendergap.com.

Darryl James

A father loads his child into a laundromat washing machine.

*There’s a lot of controversy over the abortion issue and whether or not women should have them.

But abortions and birth control are not the real issue. When the parents are caught jeopardizing their child’s life and/or making sure the child is the worst human being imaginable, it brings all issues on procreation into perspective.

Recently, a dumb ass put his son in a washing machine at the laundromat and closed the door. Both parents were present, so that makes the mother Mrs. Dumb Ass (more…)

Appraiser Scott Schenter, 49, accused of lowering the home values for the wealthy.

*Where is Robin Hood when you need him?

There’s a new character on the scene and he’s widening the privilege of the rich and deepening the hole for the poor.

Did you know there are folks out there that can make your home worth whatever they want it to be worth?

And depending on the price they put on your home, it will determine the tax you pay on the property. (more…)

*The car industry is doing better, but they are still trying to find consistency in their financial status.

The Big Three are cutting corners and ads are a part of those cutbacks.

Even if they do some extreme couponing, it looks like at least one of them won’t be able to afford ads during one of the biggest television events of the year. (more…)

Jay-Z arrives for the UK Premiere of 'Men In Black III', in London's Leicester Square. (May 16, 2012)

*D’Angelo, Janelle Monae and Rick Ross along with his Maybach Music Group are among the first booked acts announced by Jay-Z for his upcoming Budweiser Made in America Festival, to be held Sept. 1 and 2 at Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

As previously reported, Jay-Z is curating the festival, which will include the long-awaited live return of D’Angelo. Tickets for the show go on sale on Wednesday and more acts will be announced soon.

Among the 28 acts that will hit three stages for the show are first night headliners Pearl Jam, as well as Jay himself, Grammy-winning star Skrillex, Odd Future and the Maybach Music Group featuring Rick Ross, Wale and Meek Mill.

Other performers include Afrojack, Calvin Harris, Passion Pit, Santigold, Miike Snow, Dirty Projectors, X, Prince Royce, Rita Ora, the Knocks and a DJ set by Savoy.

Before unveiling the line-up for the fest, Jay said
 he was hoping to break down some barriers with the Labor Day gathering.

“Whenever I enter into a project, I try to hit on some touch points. The first thing is: Is it great?” Jay asked rhetorically at a May 14 press conference on the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “The second one is: Is it gonna push the culture forward?”

Watch below.

Larry Buford

*When asked what they did over the weekend we may get responses from people like “I went fishing,” “I went bowling,” “I went skiing,” or other activities that conjure a visual. But it would be odd to hear someone say “I went missing.” Can you picture that? Have you ever encountered a sign that read “Gone Missing,” like “Gone Fishing?” In our minds we can see someone on a riverbank with a fishing pole, but gone missing?

We hear it a lot in news reports these days that “He (or she) ‘went missing.’” What does that mean? Generally when we hear that a person is lost, has disappeared, or has vanished, we rationalize that it was unintentional. Whether or not someone ‘is missing’ is dependent upon observation by others, but the assumption cannot be made that someone deliberately ‘went missing.’ Someone may intentionally not want to be found, so they could say after the fact in the first person “I went missing,” but to say ‘went’ in the second person (you) or third person (he, she) can only be affirmed by the actual person who went.

Many believe the term ‘went missing’ has British origin dating back to the 1940’s and ‘50’s, and that heavy British news coverage of the disappearance of youngster Elizabeth McCann in 2007 may have influenced American reporters. Be that as it may, I find it interesting that we’ve allowed into our lexicon yet another meaning to further confuse those endeavoring to learn the English language. I’m sure it became a reference for many (e.g. ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’) when comedian/actor Stan Laurel punned, “You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead.” While foreigners (notice the ‘i’ ‘e’ rule?) are being taught that ‘went’ is the past tense of  ‘go’ – which by the way has a gazillion formal and informal meanings for such a small word – how can it be simplified in terms of a place or even an activity as described above? ‘Missing’ is not a place – I did a search and could not find one place on the globe that goes (interesting word usage here too) by that name. However, I did find a place called Nowhere, Oklahoma that could be synonymous to Missing as in nowhere to be found. Upon learning that her childhood home in Oakland,California had been torn down, renowned author Gertrude Stein declared “There is no there, there.” Over the years that quote from her book “Everybody’s Autobiography” has been misconstrued as a reference to the city itself.

Speaking of authors, the only thing I found close to a place called Missing is in a fictional book – “A Place Called Here” by Cecilia Ahern – about a person obsessed with finding missing persons who goes missing herself and ends up in a place where she finds all the people (and things) she’d been looking for. I guess we could say she went looking and found herself missing.

If a person says “I got lost” we interpret it as the person lost his way or direction. To say “I went and got lost” is to suggest the person intentionally did not want to be found. Such a distinction could be dangerous in the court of public opinion driven by the media. This is a stretch, but let’s just say hypothetically that a person was kidnapped, or disappeared under suspicious circumstances; witnesses or those who last saw the victim state that the person went missing; and by interpretation or misinterpretation some lawyer uses it as a defense strategy in a court of  law – citing that the victim voluntarily ‘went’ with the abductors based upon police report statements. You never know…stranger things have happened.

Well, I found myself  ‘missing’ most of the weekend working on this piece, so today if anyone asks for me, tell them I went hiking.

Larry Buford is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer. Author of “Things Are Gettin’ Outta Hand” (Steuben Pub) www.amazon.com. Available at Smiley’s Bookstore in Carson CA, Skylight Books, Los Angeles, and Chaucer’s in Santa Barbara CA. Visit the author at www.larrybuford.com. (213) 220-8101.

McDonald's Open House Style berry, berry refreshing First Taste presentation at the Empire Hotel

*On Wednesday, May 2, 2012 McDonald’s hosted a berrylicious preview party for its newest berry-inspired line consisting of fresh berries and seasonal fruit flavors — McCafé Cherry Berry Chiller and Blueberry Banana Nut Oatmeal – that the leading food service provider has added to its nutritional menu for a limited time.

The exclusive First Taste Event of new offerings was held in the Rooftop Garden on top of the breathtaking Empire Hotel with sweeping views of the beauteous Lincoln Center from 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Attendees were greeted by Team McDonald consisting of congenial staffers from top notch public relation dynasties — Burrell Communications, GolinHarris and MWW Group — who invited them to leisurely browse the Open House Style presentation that included all things deliciously berry and to chill out with the starry new summer offerings that have been added to McDonald’s lovin’ it menu.

This was a first-rate coming out event that featured pampering perks that you won’t find on a McDonald menu — manicures by manicurist to the stars Lisa Logan; massages; make-up tips; and makeovers.  In addition McDonald’s had lifestyle expert Bobbie Thomas and nutrition experts Tanya Zuckerbrot, MS, RD and Sylvia Meléndez-Klinger, MS, RD on hand to offer up close and personal ways to “get your berry fix” this summer.

McDonald’s new McCafé Cherry Berry Chiller is made to order with 100 percent fruit juice with natural flavors that combine the sweetness of cherries and raspberries in a refreshing, sippable icy blend.  The new Cherry Berry Chiller is a convenient and affordable way to refresh, relax and “chill” out this summer.

As part of McDonald’s Flavors of Summer, the company introduced its new made to order Blueberry Banana Nut Oatmeal consisting of summer’s seasonal fruit featuring fresh, juicy blueberries and crunchy walnuts along with a tasty hint of real banana providing two servings of whole grain and about a quarter cup of blueberries for 290 calories.

Team McDonald also reached out to attendees to disseminate information about the company’s newest promotion regarding first-ever grants to be awarded to New York Tri-State area community organizations for grassroots nutrition programs as part of the company’s search for proposals for nutrition programs that will impact the community.

Engaging experts at McDonald's berrylicious event included (L-R) nutrition experts Sylvia Melendez-Klinger, MS, RD and Tanya Zuckerbrot, MS, RD, and lifestyle expert Bobbie Thomas

In response to the need for greater nutrition awareness on the community level, the New York Tri-State McDonald’s Restaurant Owners are offering seed grants to local organizations to spur grassroots nutrition initiatives in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.  Applications are currently being accepted; submission deadline is June 1, 2012.

“As local business owners, we are committed to giving back to the communities we serve and this program helps us bring McDonald’s nutrition commitments to our customers,” said Anthony Scari, president of the McDonald’s New York Tri-State Owner/Operators Association.  “We look forward to celebrating those organizations whose projects help people make informed food choices.”

Applications will be evaluated based on a number of factors including the impact of the proposed program on nutrition awareness in the community.  Tri-State area non-profit organizations can obtain an application at www.McDNYMetroNutritionNetwork.com. Completed applications should be mailed to:  McDonald’s Owners/Operators Association; Attention: McDonald’s New York Metro Nutrition Network; PO Box 280; Little Falls, NJ 07424.

“I salute McDonald’s for expanding and improving its nutritionally-balanced menu choices and now for bringing nutritional guidance and information to the local community through this program,” said celebrated dietician and best-selling author of The F Factor Diet, Tanya Zuckerbrot, MS, RD who will serve on the selection panel.  “As a nutrition and diet expert, I know that improved well-being begins with incremental change, and I’m very excited to be part of this campaign to make nutritional information accessible to all.”

McDonald’s is one of the world’s best-known brands and is a global leader in food service serving a variety of wholesome foods made from quality ingredients to millions of customers every day.  More than 80 percent of McDonald’s 14,000 U.S. restaurants are independently owned and operated by local franchisees.

There are more than 600 McDonald’s restaurants, owned by over 100 franchisees, located throughout the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut Tri-State area.  Visit www.mcdonaldsnymetro.com or follow us on Twitter @McDNYTriState for information about other McDonald’s area programs.  (Photos by Peter Cooper)

Audrey J. Bernard is an established chronicler of Black society and Urban happenings based in the New York City area.

Audrey J. Bernard

Pam McKinnon

*Obie and Lilly Award winner and first-time Tony nominee Pam MacKinnon is one of the rising star directors on Broadway.  She directed the Pulitzer-prize winning Broadway play “Clybourne Park,” for which she received a Tony nomination for Best Direction of a Play.  “Clybourne Park” received a total of four Tony Award nominations including Best Play, Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play (Jeremy Shamos), and Best Scenic Design of a Play.  The 44 year-old director makes her Broadway debut at the Walter Kerr Theatre. MacKinnon has an impressive list of works both off-Broadway and in regional theater.  In addition to Bruce Norris’ “Clybourne Park,” she has worked on several plays with acclaimed playwright Edward Albee and many others.

Inside Broadway  
Congratulations on your Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Play.  When you first heard about your nomination, where were you and what was your reaction?

Pam MacKinnon
I guess I deliberately slept in.  I didn’t want to watch the announcements live, I was just too nervous.  So, I came out of the bedroom and my boyfriend was already up, he had been up for a little while. He said that my phone had been beeping in the kitchen.  So I went into the kitchen and I looked at my phone—we still call them phones [cellular phones], and I really don’t know why—and there were all these messages and texts and they were very general and they were like “Congratulations” and “Wahoo,” “Yay.” Then I knew that at least the production got some nominations, and shortly after that my producer, Jordan Roth, gave me a call and that’s when I knew specifically.

Inside Broadway
As the director, how did you reconstruct/change the play from the initial production that premiered at the Playwright Horizons in 2010 to its debut on Broadway?

Pam MacKinnon
I think it’s very similar.  I think people who have seen both may feel that the characterization, the emotional work and the relationships between the characters have deepened, and that really came out of having another go at it. Also, between Playwright Horizons and Broadway, it’s been two years.  And we’ve all grown-up and we’ve done interesting projects in between.  I feel as if am a stronger director and a stronger artist, and I bet the actors would say that of themselves as well.  So, it shifted organically into something stronger. What’s also interesting is to go from a small theatre like Playwright Horizons, which at most can have two hundred people in the audience, to a Broadway house. I had to physically expand it a bit, and that is definitely a shift. I had to let the audience in a little bit more, because you have to play all the way back to the balcony at the Walter Kerr Theatre, so that changes some of the physical dynamics.  And then the final thing, and a conscientious choice on my part, I really wanted to continue to mine what I have been calling the ugliness in the play. Bruce [Norris] had written a genuinely funny, really laugh out loud play.  But there are moments that are outright racist, downright ugly and should never be glossed-over.  Between laughs, I want to make sure that ugly stuff lives and lands and is honestly felt.

Inside Broadway
What were the most challenging aspects of directing Clybourne Park?

Pam MacKinnon
Walking that delicate balancing act of maintaining the humor. But also making sure that the ugliness is there, or in the case of Act One, that big emotional and tragic aspects are there, without flattening the humor; making sure the tone is really complicated and, at times, kind of oddly schizophrenic.  It’s my job to orchestrate the peaks and valleys and differences of tone.  I think it’s a constant challenge in this kind of work.

Inside Broadway
As a director, what is your process in preparing the actors for their respective roles?  What was your approach to directing this project? Please explain in detail.

Pam MacKinnon
It really changes from project to project.  Each time you’re in a rehearsal hall, there’s a different group of people. And it’s a different kind of play.  Bruce plays are centered around arguments, and even if his characters aren’t articulate, they are still using a lot of language.  It’s a big language play, and you can say it’s a play about people trying to communicate and failing.  So in working with actors’ especially when we were doing it the first time, it was a really quick rehearsal process.  We had to go really quickly and actors were pounding lines into their heads and memorizing lines.  We had to build this thing.  So there wasn’t all that much time to breathe and have a rambling conversation about feelings and stuff like that.  We ran on adrenalin in order to get to the finish line, which is the audience coming in. In other plays, you can take the time, or the physical life of them might be more important than the verbal life of them.  I do a lot of plays where I work with Edward Albee; he is also a big language writer.  I guess, I would say that I don’t really have a set way to do something.  I am a language person, so we spend a lot of time around the table before we get up and start moving.  Sometime, we don’t have the luxury of time, we have to get up and embrace it physically pretty early.

Inside Broadway
Playwright Bruce Norris’ story of Clybourne Park was inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” and is a continuation of the same storyline.  Bruce Norris publicly admitted that he never approached the Lorraine Hansberry estate about the project.  Has there been any backlash about this issue?

Pam MacKinnon
No. I think he started writing it and then he started to wonder if this was going to be allowed.  But there’s been precedence with other authors who have taken other people’s work and used them as a stepping off point.  So he felt fairly confident that this play would live in its own right and be seen as, not based on “A Raisin in the Sun,” but inspired by it, and that’s allowed.

Inside Broadway
With more than fifty years since the premiere of “A Raisin in the Sun” and with the country’s first elected African American president, how do you feel race relations and real estate have changed or not changed in this country?

Pam MacKinnon
Definitely a story in this play or an interest of Bruce’s is to get up and talk about that.  Act one is in 1959 and Act two is in 2009, and the question is how much has really changed. I don’t know—and especially when it comes to real estate, when it comes to a very hot button, very personal issue such as this is my property, this is my neighborhood.  I do think in this county that the racial divide can still be really wide.  We haven’t figured out how to have these conversations. Institutionally, not much has changed.  And when it comes down to it, emotionally, I think a lot of people haven’t figured it out.

Inside Broadway
To date, what has been your most challenging directorial project?  And why?

Pam MacKinnon
They all pose challenges. That’s why you keep coming back for more.  I’m sure you feel like that in your own work.  The moment it gets like “I got this; I could do this in my sleep.”  It’s probably time to change it up. “Clybourne Park” is a big project. I’m going to be doing Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf,” which I did in Chicago at Steppenwolf Theatre and Arena Stage [Washington, D.C.], and like “Clybourne Park,” I’m doing it again on Broadway with that same company, and it’s going to be two years later.  And it’s a big play.  It’s a mysterious play; it’s a big emotional play. Like “Clybourne Park,” it can be very funny, but it also has some really heralding emotional depth.  Putting it up for the first time in Chicago, I think we all went a little crazy—especially that third act of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf.” If you know it, it’s really devastating and it feels abusive and it’s that kind of work takes its emotional toll on you.  I remember staying up in my little beige apartment in Chicago that the theatre had rented for me—staying up to 4:00 a.m. muttering lines.  It can definitely get in as you are trying to figure out how to make it work in the rehearsal hall.  I would say that was a big, big challenge, but an exciting one, and the payoff was big. Even if it weren’t Broadway,  it’s just so great to have the chance to get together with those actors again and dig in, dig in even more, knowing that we already built a structure that works and now we get to own it.

Inside Broadway
Is there one experience or person you can identify as having had the greatest influence on your career?

Pam MacKinnon
My work with Edward Albee definitely opened up a lot of doors—a lot of early doors.  I worked at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre for the first time because Edward put my name forward as a director that he gotten to know.  I worked in Vienna similarly, so having a big writer in your corner definitely opened a few doors early. From one season to the next, I was working at very small theatres and all of sudden working at very big theatres. Even psychologically, to have a great writer—he is arguably our greatest living American playwright—in my corner, that’s a boost, that’s like “Whoa, okay.”  I can also answer this question in a more sentimental way. My parents read to me as a little, little girl.  So stories were part of our household.  I think that’s also a big part of what made me interested and, dare I say, capable in telling stories.

Inside Broadway
As a female director in a male dominated business, what has the experience been like for you?  And what have you learned from it.

Pam MacKinnon
I do get asked this question and it’s a really hard one to answer because I don’t know what the experience would be like if I weren’t a woman. So it’s a really tricky thing to say, “If I were a man and if I were only thirty five would I be further ahead, or would I be the golden boy?” It is really, really hard to answer.  I definitely recognize that there continues to be more men sitting in the director’s chair than women—especially at this “level.”  But there are a lot of women coming up and a lot of really talented directors.  I’m 44 years old and there are a lot of women my age and younger who are really coming up, and they have been doing really good work.  So you have to say “look out, things are changing.”  In my experience, I have no complaints.  I have been working really hard.  “Did I set Broadway as a goal?” No.  But I set working with interesting plays as a goal and I work a lot. I work not only in New York, and that’s fine with me.  You go where the work is.  I’ve been very fortunate to work with some great writers, some great actors, some great designers, and you keep moving through it.  The more work you do, the more people want to work with you.

Inside Broadway
Tell us what’s next for you.

Pam MacKinnon
I’m in a rehearsal process.  I’m in a workshop so there’s no full production value going into this.  It’s a new play by a younger writer, Sylvan Oswald, and we’re doing it downtown at a small theatre called SoHo Rep.  It’s a two week workshop. He’s rewriting the play, and we will stage it, but it will be script in hand.  It will be a couple of presentations.  So it’s more to get the play to the next level.  It’s not about creating a big, full production.  I have a few readings in June. They are one day affairs where you cast them and you meet with the actors for a few hours and you literally just read the play out loud for the playwright to hear and the audience to hear.  And in the summer, I’m doing some short plays by Horton Foote at Primary Stages—that’s an off-Broadway theatre.  I’m in design and casting mode right now. I never worked on any Horton Foote plays.  I just think he’s a fantastic, fantastic writer, and I’m looking forward to digging into those.  Then around the corner is Virginia Wolf. Those are the things that I know.  I really hope that my boyfriend and I can sneak away in August and not tell anyone where we are going.

Inside Broadway
Tell us one thing people would be surprised to know about you.

Pam MacKinnon
I’m a pretty ordinary person.  I ride my bike to commute around the city.

See Inside Broadway’s review of “Clybourne Park”:
http://www.eurweb.com/2012/04/inside-broadway-theater-review-clybourne-park/

See “Clybourne Park” at the Walter Kerr Theatre, (located at 219 West 48^th Street, Times Square), New York, New York.  For more information, please visit:  www.clybournepark.com.

Gwendolyn Quinn is veteran media specialist with a career spanning 20 years. She is the founder of the African American Public Relations Collective (AAPRC) and the publisher and editorial director of Global Communicator, an e-publication for public relations, marketing, journalists and communications professionals. She is a contributor to Souls Revealed (Souls of My Sisters/Kensington) and featured in Handle Your Entertainment Business (Grand Central/Warner Publishing). She is a contributor to the forthcoming book, Souls of My Faithful Sisters (Souls of My Sisters/Kensington).  Contact her at GwendolynQuinn@aol.com.

Gwendolyn Quinn