For Immediate Release
May 4, 2007

"BACKSTAGE WITH BELLAMY"
An Evening of Celebration

May 4, 2007; Minneapolis, MN: Penumbra Theatre Company and the Friends of the University of Minnesota Libraries are pleased to present “Backstage with Bellamy,” an evening of performance and celebration marking Penumbra’s 30 year history and the recent acquisition of Penumbra’s archive by the University Libraries. Free and open to the public, “Backstage with Bellamy” takes place Wednesday, May 16, 2007, at 7:30 p.m. at Willey Hall Auditorium, 225 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, on the University’s West Bank campus.

The evening’s festivities offer a look behind the scenes in the making of award winning theatre. Bellamy will share personal and artistic highlights and memories and Penumbra favorites Benny Cannon, Shawn Hamilton, T. Mychael Rambo, Dennis Spears, and J.D. Steele will perform live as “The Doves,” smooth crooners of soul, from Penumbra’s upcoming show, Get Ready. Sanford Moore will accompany on piano. A special exhibition of materials from Penumbra’s archive will be on display in Elmer L. Andersen Library on the University campus. This exhibit will be up through May 25. A desert reception will follow the performance.

Background:
Since August 2006, Penumbra’s institutional archive has been part of the University’s Givens Collection of African American Literature. The archive includes the historical documentation of the theatre (photographs, scripts, press clippings, and other material from Penumbra’s history) as well as Bellamy’s personal and artistic papers. Once the Penumbra archive is fully catalogued and processed, it will be available for research and study by the general public as well as University students, faculty and staff.

“Marking the path is important,” Bellamy said of the significance of Penumbra’s archive. “So many people have given so much of themselves to build and maintain Penumbra. It is crucial to impart the knowledge we have gained on building community to future generations. This effort must ensure their access to the documentation that shows what we have done, that we were here, that we marked the path. It is our history.”

Penumbra, founded in 1976 by Artistic Director Lou Bellamy, was born of the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movement and the tenet that an artist’s ethics and aesthetics must be one. Out of this comes mission driven art, art for social change, art that is critical, forceful and demands response - art that creates and sustains a community. Under Bellamy’s continuous leadership, Penumbra has garnered critical acclaim for creating an authentic voice and style for African American theatre and achieved national recognition as a pioneer in cross-cultural dialogue. Penumbra’s mission is to create professional productions that are artistically excellent, thought provoking, relevant, and illuminate the human condition through the prism of the African American experience.

The University of Minnesota Libraries are among the University’s and the state’s greatest capital and intellectual assets. With a collection of more than 6.2 million volumes, the University Libraries rank as the 16th largest research library in North America. Located in Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota, the Givens Collection includes rare books, literary manuscripts, correspondence, pamphlets, photographs, playbills, ephemera, magazines, audiovisual media, and the like. It consists of over 5,000 items dating from the late 18th century to the present and covering such literary periods as the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement. The collection is available for research by students, faculty, staff, and the general public.