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Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture

A searing and heartfelt story of family, legacy, and the weight of history, Dominique Morisseau’s Sunset Baby follows Nina—a sharp, guarded woman carving out her path in present-day Brooklyn. When her estranged father, a former Black Panther, suddenly reappears seeking redemption, their collision sparks a reckoning over grief, betrayal, and the generational scars of revolution.

Directed by Artistic Director Margo Hall, Sunset Baby confronts the tension between dreams and survival, the fight to define identity on one’s own terms, and the quiet, radical power of forgiveness.

THE CAST

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THE CREATIVE TEAM

Margo Hall | Director
Lauren Quan | Stage Manager
Carlos-Antonio Aceves | Scenic Designer
Quinton Barringer | Scenic Builder
Michael Combs | Lighting Designer
Alex Fakayode | Sound Designer
Heidi Button | Props Designer
Jenn Stephens | Costume Designer
Jeunée Simon | Intimacy Choreographer

Dominique Morisseau is the author of The Detroit Project (A 3-Play Cycle), which includes the following plays: Skeleton Crew (Atlantic Theater Company), Paradise Blue (Signature Theatre), and Detroit ’67 (Public Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem and NBT). Additional plays include: Pipeline (Lincoln Center Theatre), Sunset Baby (LAByrinth Theatre); Blood at the Root (National Black Theatre) and Follow Me To Nellie’s (Premiere Stages). She is also the Tony-nominated book writer on the new Broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations (Imperial Theatre).

Dominique is alumna of The Public Theater Emerging Writer’s Group, Women’s Project Lab and Lark Playwrights Workshop, and has developed work at Sundance Lab, Williamstown Theatre Festival and Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. She most recently served as Co-Producer on the Showtime series Shameless (3 seasons).

Additional awards include: Spirit of Detroit Award, PoNY Fellowship, Sky-Cooper Prize, TEER Trailblazer Award, Steinberg Playwright Award, Audelco Awards, NBFT August Wilson Playwriting Award, Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, Obie Award (2), Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship, Variety’s Women of Impact for 2017-18, and a recent MacArthur Genius Grant Fellow.

BIOS

MARGO HALL is an award-winning actor, director, playwright, educator, and the Artistic Director of Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. She was recently awarded the 2021 Kenneth Rainin Fellowship in Theater and listed as one of the YBCA 100 honorees for 2020. She debuted as a Theater Director with The World Premiere of Joyride, from the novel Grand Avenue by Greg Sarris, which was the Bay Area Critics Circle Winner for Best Original Script; the SF Weekly Black Box Awards for Best Production, Best Ensemble, Best Director; Drama-Logue Awards- Northern California for Best Production, Best Ensemble; the Backstage West-Garland Awards- Northern California for Best Production, Best Ensemble, and the Bay Guardian GOLDIE Award Winner for Stage. She recently directed Garuda’s Wing for Campo Santo and Nollywood Dreams for SF Playhouse. Hieroglyph by Erika Dickerson-Despenza was a co-pro for LHT and SF Playhouse. The play was filmed live onstage and streamed virtually. Other LHT credits include Soulful Christmas, Thurgood, and Rejoice! Other directing credits include How I Learned What I Learned for Lorraine Hansberry Theater, Ubuntu and MTC-Co-production, Barbecue, Red Velvet and The Story, an SF Playhouse/Lorraine Hansberry Theatre Co-Production. Prior directing credits include Sonny’s Blues, a story by James Baldwin, for Word for Word, which toured France. She co-directed Bulrusher with Ellen Chang, In the Red and Brown Water, and Polaroid Stories for UC Berkeley, and Once on This Island, Hamlet, Blood in the Brain, SPUNK, The Trojan Women, It Falls, Ragtime, and A Streetcar Named Desire for Chabot College. Margo completed her first writing project in April 2005 with the World Premier of The People’s Temple at Berkeley Repertory Theater, which won the Glickman award for best new play in the Bay Area for 2005. She was part of a collaborative team of four writers who used interviews of survivors and archival material to form a play exploring the People’s Temple movement and the tragic ending at Jonestown. The play went on from Berkeley Rep. to The Perseverance Theater in Juneau, Alaska, and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Margo is also part of the acting ensemble. In 2013, she premiered her semi-biographical piece, Be Bop Baby, a Musical Memoir, at Z Space, featuring the 15-piece Marcus Shelby Orchestra, which chronicled her life growing up in Detroit with her jazz musician stepfather who was with Motown. The lyrics and book are by Margo Hall, with original music composed by Marcus Shelby. She recently co-created and directed the world premiere production of In The Evening by The Moonlight, a play by Traci Tolmaire about Lorraine Hansberry with Nina Simone and James Baldwin for LHT. She was last seen onstage in Josephine’s Feast by Star Finch for Campo Santo and Magic Theatre. Other acting credits include Black Odyssey*, Fences, Twelfth Night, A Raisin in the Sun, A Winter’s Tale, American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose and SPUNK for the California Shakespeare Theater, JAZZ, Skeleton Crew, Gem of the Ocean, Fences and Seven Guitars for Marin Theater Company. Ah! Wilderness, Once in a Lifetime, and Marcus or the Secret of Sweet* at The American Conservatory Theater. Exit Strategy and Trouble in Mind*, at the Aurora Theater, Marcus Gardley’s A World in a Woman’s Hands for Shotgun Players. Barbecue* (also directed), and MF with a Hat at SF Playhouse. Some of her acting credits for Campo Santo** include Dennis Johnson’s Nobody Move, Chinaka Hodges' Mirrors in Every Corner, Jessica Hagedorn's Fe in the Desert and Stairway to Heaven, and Naomi Iizuka’s Hamlet: Blood in the Brain, 17 Reasons (Why) and Polaroid Stories, floating weeds, a world premier by Philip Kan Gotanda, References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, by Jose Rivera, Bethlehem by Octavio Solis, and Hurricane, by Erin Cressida Wilson. She has toured France with Word for Word as Missie May in The Gilded Six-Bits by Zora Neale Hurston and Oceola in The Blues I’m Playing by Langston Hughes. Margo’s recent film credits include Louise in Bottled Spirits, a one-woman short, Leslie White in All Day and a Night, Nancy in Blindspotting, and the voice of Melba in Pixar’s SOUL. TV credits include Nancy in Blindspotting- STARZ, Helen in Chances- Hulu, Marsha Watkins, and Blind Witness on Nash Bridges. **She is a founding member of Campo Santo, a multicultural Theater Company in San Francisco *Theater Bay Area, best actress recipient

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COURTNEY GABRIELLE WILLIAMS is so grateful to perform with LHT! She's an actress, voice artist and arts educator originally from Oakland, CA. She has a colorful background working in the downtown New York theater scene where she developed and performed in new works with Daniel Alexander Jones, Kaneza Schaal, Mike Iveson, Tea Alagic and other artists who have enriched her collaborative process. Select theatre credits: Crumbs from the Table of Joy (Aurora), Fat Ham (SF Playhouse), Scientific Method (Rivendell Theater), Go Forth (PS 122), A Walrus in the Body of a Crocodile (Clubbed Thumb), Tania in the Getaway Van (The Flea Theater), The Tear Drinkers (The Kitchen), Ruined (Fordham Theater). Select TV/Film credits: Blindspotting, Empire, Chicago Med, Edendale, Civic (New Orleans Film, IFFR, Clermont-Ferrand Int'l). She is a graduate of Fordham University with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater as well as an alumna of the Steppenwolf Conservatory. She thanks God, her family and her friends. Leave people better than ya found em. Instagram: @letcourtneytellit

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LAMONT THOMPSON is delighted and honored to be making his LHT debut in this beautiful and very urgent play. Lamont has worked all over the country on stages and screens big and small. He considers it an honor to have reached "that guy in that thing' status. Other stages: Memphis in Two Trains Running (Marin Theatre Co.); Montrellous in Clyde's (The Studio Theatre DC); Deus in Black Odyssey (Cal Shakes); Antonio in Twelfth Night (Milwaukee Rep); Buddy in Black Eagles (Penumbra Theatre Co.) The Ghost of Christmas Present (San Diego Rep and The Indiana Rep.); Brutus in Julius Caesar (Jomandi Theatre Inc.). Those are highlights. Other stage work is a long list of original works (the backbone of theatre arts). Lamont has managed to carve out a career in film and TV as well. Recent credits include a very fun run as Wanda Syke's husband in The Upshaws and Judge Stanton in The Lincoln Lawyer (Both for Netflix); The Resident; Dynasty; Snowfall; The Miracle Workers; NCIS:Los Angeles; 68 Whiskey; Rizzoli&Isles; MIke&Molly. Those are also highlights. As always, I dedicate my performance to the ancestors on whose shoulders I stand, whose ghosts I am honored to be haunted by and whose stories I'm honored to tell. And The One, Nadia Chu. Nadia, I will be forever grateful for helping me see, and reminding me that life without joy and true art is not a life at all for me. I'd particularly like to thank The LHT for giving me the opportunity to bring Kenyatta to life. Men such as he, even with all their flaws, have played a very important but oft misunderstood role in the centuries old fight for freedom, justice and dignity in these, to quote James Baldwin- "yet to be United States".

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TITUS VANHOOK (he/him) is thrilled to be making his debut with Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. He is a multi-hyphenate artist born and raised in Oakland, CA. He attended Pomona College where he earned his BA, followed by matriculating to Columbia University for his MFA in acting. Since then, VanHook has worked across different mediums including television, voice over, commercial and social media. His most recent stage productions include “Buttercup” at the Marin Shakespeare Company and Paradise Blue at Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley. He is currently a professor of drama at the Academy of Art University. VanHook would like to send his gratitude to his loved ones for their love and support. You can keep up with him on Instagram: _vanhook_ , where you may or may not find a well written skit or two.

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