TURNING 15 ON THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom tells the inspiring, true story of Lynda Blackmon, who celebrated her 15th birthday on the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965.  Jailed nine times before the march and badly beaten on Bloody Sunday, Lynda and her neighbors fought alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to secure the right to vote for African Americans. She believed that “a voteless people is a hopeless people,” and put her life on the line, non-violently, to prove that anyone can change history no matter how young or powerless they seem. The show features an ensemble of African American actor-singers who bring the 1960s to life on the stage through the soul-stirring music of the Civil Rights Movement. 

This show was developed at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City. Ally Sheedy, known for her performances in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire, as well as more recent leading roles in High Art, Psych, and The Little Sister, directed the powerful young actress Damaras Obi, who originated the role of Lynda, and adapted Lynda Blackmon Lowery’s book into a theater production, which was performed as a workshop at LaGuardia.

As a one-woman show, Turning 15 toured upstate New York and New York City. In the summer of 2018, Director Fracaswell Hyman, Music Director Joshuah Brian Campbell, and a gifted ensemble of young actors joined the company.

From Fall 2018 through Spring 2020, the musical has been seen across the United States in cities including New York, NY; Huntington Station, NY; Riverdale, NY; Newark, NJ; Maplewood, NJ; Millburn, NJ; New Brunswick, NJ; Arlington, VA; Clearwater, FL; Miami, FL; Delray Beach, FL; Wilkes Barre, PA; Columbus, OH; Little Rock, AR; Millersville, PA; among others. Turning 15 is currently available as a streaming video for theatres, schools, and community groups.

In 2020 Voza Rivers/ New Heritage Theatre Group, the oldest African-American non-profit NYC theater organization, joined Producers Lynda Blackmon Lowery, Miranda Barry, and Amy Sprecher, as a producing partner of the musical. A limited run in a New York theatre is planned for 2022. With management by Gary McAvay of Columbia Artists Theatricals, the live musical is being booked for the 2021-22 season.

About the Loire Valley Theater Festival

The Loire Valley Theater Festival, Inc. (“LVTF”) is a non-profit 501(c)3 company. Founded in 2004, LVTF sought to bring together young theater artists from around the world to create and perform multi-lingual versions of classic English and French plays in a 1,000-year-old abbey in the Loire Valley. LVTF presented performances in France for three years and then moved to the United States with The Tempest Project, a workshop for girls in New Orleans who had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina. In New York’s Hudson Valley, LVTF worked with a gifted singer-songwriter to create a multi-media project, Crealitation, and in 2015  LVTF began developing Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom for the stage. LVTF’s core belief is that theatre is a powerful way of bringing together people of all ages to walk in each other’s shoes, promoting insight, mutual respect, and understanding among people of different backgrounds.

NEW HERITAGE THEATRE GROUP (‘NHTG”)

Celebrating its 56th anniversary, is the oldest Black non-profit theater in New York City. Founded in 1964 by the late Roger Furman, a revered playwright, director, actor and lecturer, who began his theatrical career in the 1940s alongside Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Gertrude Jeanette and others as part of the American Negro Theatre in Harlem. New Heritage has provided professional theater opportunities for artists  as well as presenting compelling, thought provoking content for diverse audiences. Voza Rivers assumed leadership of New Heritage as Executive Producer upon the passing of Roger Furman and enhanced the theater’s production to include training, experience and international exposure to and for veteran and emerging artists. NHTG presentations reflect the historical, social and political experiences of African and Latino descendants in America and abroad. In 1997, Columbia University Professor  Jamal Joseph, an award winning playwright, author, director, documentary film maker and educator, partnered with Voza as the  Executive Artistic Director of the theater and added New Heritage’s youth group - IMPACT Repertory Theatre. In 2008, IMPACT was nominated for an OSCAR and GRAMMY for their original song “Raise it Up” used in the film August Rush.

Recent NHTG productions include Celebrations of South African Day, The Harlem Shakespeare Festival, an all female multi-cultural production of Shakespeare’s Othello, Prayer of Love & Peace with the Inamori Group Project Japan, the annual Kwanzaa Celebration at the American Museum of Natural History, and Celeste Bedford Walker's play Black Wall Street, the story of the Tulsa, Oklahoma race riots. New Heritage was also an Executive Producer of the film Chick Webb: The Savoy King & the Music that Changed America,  which received rave reviews and was featured at the 2012  New York Film Festival. In 2018 New Heritage co-produced an encore performance of The Audelco Viv Award-winning production of The Fannie Lou Hamer Story, the one-woman play starring Mzuri Moyo Aimbaye, celebrating the unsung heroine who became a catalyst to the passage of the Voter's Rights Act of 1965. In 2020, New Heritage became Theater in Residence at The City College of New York. In 2021, NHTG will co-produce in London with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Warwick University, UK, A Black Girls Journey: Becoming Othello, starring award winning actress Debra Ann Byrd.

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom will be a New Heritage Theater Group co-production for the 2020-2021 season.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, SEE Wikipedia.

For more information about LVTF
or school performances of Turning 15,
contact Miranda Barry at Miranda@sheedylit.com
or (646) 919-0440