Local Playwright Harold Ellis Clark named co-Sherri Marina Grant awardee

New Orleans playwright and award-winning radio host Harold Ellis Clark has been named a co-awardee of a Sherri Marina Memorial Grant for his play, “Back in the Day.”

“Back in the Day,” which is set in present-day Algiers, La., chronicles the life of a recently released ex-offender as she reunites with the woman she rescued from a sexual assault 16 years earlier. Clark was named a finalist for the 2020 Trustus Playwrights’ Festival (Columbia, S.C.), an award that comes along with a $6,000 grant to help support a world premiere production of the play. That premiere is tentatively scheduled for a June 2023 showing at Dillard University’s Samuel DuBois Cook Hall Theatre.

Launched in 2021 by Ambush Magazine theater reviewer Brian Sands, the Carol Sutton/Sherri Marina Memorial Grant alternates annually, honoring each of the late veteran actors, both of who died in December 2020. Sutton appeared in more than 100 films and TV shows, including “Queen Sugar,” “The Help,” “Ray” and “True Detective.” Marina, who appeared in the hit 2017 film, “Girls Trip,” in addition to a bevy of stage productions, taught theatre at both Dillard and Loyola universities.

The annual grant supports new plays featuring Black actors, primarily Black women, in lead roles. In a 2021 interview with Gambit magazine, Sands said that he hopes works supported by the grant will ultimately partner with New York-based theatre companies in the future. Grant committee members included Sands, award-winning singer Wanda Rouzan and veteran actress Gwendolyne Foxworth.

Clark currently serves as the vice president of communications, external affairs, and fund development with DePaul Community Health Centers. Over the span of his career, Clark has worked in both radio and public relations. From August 2002 to January 2020, Clark served as a host/producer of the public affairs show, “Sunday Journal with Hal Clark,” on WYLD-FM’s and has been a five-time winner of the Best Radio Talk Show award from the Press Club of New Orleans during its annual Excellence in Journalism Awards Gala.

He was named one of two finalists for the Stanley Drama Award an unprecedented three times for his plays Tour Detour (2013), “Uncle Bobby ’63” (2015), and “Madame Thames’ Spirit Bar” (2016), during award ceremonies held at The Players Club in Manhattan, NY.

This year’s other awardee is actress, playwright and Loyola University New Orleans adjunct professor Ann Mahoney for her play, “God Help Them if We Wake Up,” and Goat in the Road Productions’ immersive play, “The Family Line,” which is currently playing at the Beauregard Keyes Historic House and Gardens through January 29.

This article originally published in the December 26, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.