26 Facts About Shauneille Perry

Shauneille Gantt Perry Ryder was an American stage director and playwright.

Shauneille Perry was one of the first African-American women to direct off-Broadway.

Shauneille Perry was born on July 26,1929, in Chicago, Illinois, to a prominent African-American family.

Shauneille Perry is the only child of Graham T Perry, one of the first African-American assistant attorneys-general for the State of Illinois and his wife, the former Pearl Gantt, one of the first African-American court reporters in Chicago, who studied business at Morris Brown College.

Shauneille Perry is the niece by marriage of Carl Hansberry's brother, Africanist scholar William Leo Hansberry.

Shauneille Perry acted at Clark Atlanta University and Lincoln University under Thomas Desire Pawley, III, as part of the HBCU's Summer Theatre Program.

Shauneille Perry eventually had to buy one herself in Oslo.

Shauneille Perry continued her studies at the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received an MFA in directing in 1952 with a production and thesis of the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.

Shauneille Perry later commented about her time in London that she was "always doing Cleopatra".

Shauneille Perry went to New York to start work in theater in New York, but returned to Chicago to care for her mother.

Shauneille Perry made use of the $4,000 prize money to take a three-week trip to Paris with her husband in 1959.

Shauneille Perry plays the pregnant girl with such quiet, innocent strength and apparent unawareness of the character's pathos that we almost forget it, too.

Shauneille Perry hoped that the success of Black Girl and the play's important theme of self-determination would have a more far-reaching effect.

Shauneille Perry was reunited with Franklin in 1974 when she directed the musical Prodigal Sister, with book by Franklin, music by Micki Grant, and lyrics by both Franklin and Grant, first at the New Federal Theatre's Henry Street Playhouse in July 1974, and then at Theatre de Lys in November 1974, where it was warmly reviewed by Clive Barnes.

Shauneille Perry wrote Sounds of the City, a 15-minute daily soap opera that aired on the Mutual Black Network in the mid-1970s.

Shauneille Perry continued to teach as associate professor of theatre at Lehman until she retired in 2001.

Shauneille Perry and her cousin Lorraine Hansberry were born less than a year apart and were very close.

One summer when they were little girls, Lorraine's mother took them to Columbia, Tennessee where she and Shauneille Perry's father had grown up.

Along the way, her aunt pointed out the Kentucky hills where her father George Perry had hidden after he escaped from slavery.

Years later, Shauneille Perry was there when Lorraine had cancer and supported her.

Aunt Shauneille Perry had a love and understanding of the arts that launched her to become one of the voices of her generation.

Shauneille Perry became a prominent director, writer, and actor, and her home at 444 Central Park West became a cultural mecca, the unofficial headquarters of the Black Arts Movement.

Aunt Shauneille Perry's enormous living room housed a tall avocado tree, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, paintings, and gorgeous African masks that mesmerized me.

Shauneille Perry had gone to college with Mom and Aunt Shauneille, where they were part of the theater group the Howard Players.

Shauneille Perry died on June 9,2022, in New Rochelle, New York, at the age of 92.

Shauneille Perry is the recipient of a Broadcast Media Award, a Fulbright scholarship, a New York State Council of the Arts Young Audiences Play Commission and a Black Rose of Excellence from Encore Magazine.