LYNDA BLACKMON LOWERY (Producer/Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom Memoir Author) began her civil rights activism in Selma, Alabama, in the early 60s, when the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activists organized Lowery and other area children and teenagers to participate in the civil rights movement. She marched on “Bloody Sunday” and “Turn Around Tuesday,” and is the youngest marcher to walk every step of the successful March from Selma to Montgomery. Mrs. Lowery’s early involvement in the struggle against prejudice has been the foundation for her civil and human rights work throughout her life. She retired as Senior Case Manager at Cahaba Metal Health in Selma and is the author of Turning 15 on The Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March as told to Elspeth Leacock and Susan Buckley.
MIRANDA BARRY (Producer/Executive Director Loire Valley Theater Festival) has produced TV, film and theatre. Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom is now touring with Columbia Artists Theatricals. Previously, she was Global Creative Director for Sesame Street, Supervising Producer of Ghostwriter, founder of Loire Valley Theater Festival/Festival de Jeune Theatre, an international youth theatre festival in France, Director of Program Development at American Playhouse, where she developed over 100 feature films and movies for television, many from plays. She was Dramaturge at the National Playwright’s Conference, Story Editor at Sundance, and taught screenwriting at the Film School at Columbia University.
AMY SPRECHER (Producer/General Manager) is a multi-award-winning/Emmy-nominated producer. Since 2000, Amy has led The Sprecher Company, a multi-media entertainment company offering producing/management services in all media areas, with a specialty in family/kids content. She has worked extensively in live entertainment, programming, production, development, gaming, acquisitions, home entertainment/digital streaming, licensing, marketing, community outreach and education. In addition to her passionate involvement with Turning 15, other live theater productions includes Little House on the Prairie, The Musical, licensed to Broadway Licensing (2019) for Stock/Amateur market. Other associations: PBS Distribution; Discovery Kids; Sesame Workshop: PolyGram Video; Lifetime Television; USA Home Entertainment; WGBH; Global Angel Ventures; Ohmland Holdings; etc.
VOZA RIVERS (Co-Producer/New Heritage Repertory Theatre) founding member of Harlem’s New Heritage Repertory Theatre (“NHRT”), (est. 1964), is one of the country’s leading African American theater, music, and events producers, and documentary filmmakers. Voza has produced and/or co-produced theater, television projects, film festivals, and the historic HARLEM WEEK FESTIVAL now celebrating its 46th year anniversary. He has also produced tributes in Japan, South Africa, British Columbia, and the UK. Highlights include the TONY and GRAMMY nominated hit Broadway musical, “Sarafina!, by award-winning South African playwright Mbongeni Ngema, The OBIE award winning Woza Albert!; and the TONY nominated Asinamali! (also by Ngema) , as well as The Tragedy of Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet, (featuring leading Black actors from the Royal Court Theatre Company and National Theatre of Great Britain), Emergency and Through by the Night by AUDELCO AND OBIE award winning playwright and actor Daniel Beaty, Savior by international journalist/playwright Esther Armah, and the OBIE award winning play The Huey P. Newton Story at the Schomburg Center For Research In Black Culture in Harlem. In 2020, Voza joined the producing team for Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom, with Lynda Blackmon Lowery, Miranda Barry, and Amy Sprecher, which will be a New Heritage Theater Group co-production for the 2020-2021 season. More about NHRT on the About page.
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 filmmaker, 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.