A Benefit Performance of AUGUSTA!

Performed and written by Renée Flemings

About AUGUSTA!

Augusta! is a celebration of the life and victories of the artist, educator, and activist Augusta Savage, who was an active member of the Harlem Renaissance. Written and performed by Renée Flemings, this solo play journeys from her beginnings in rural Florida, navigating the battles with her strictly religious father, who was a minister to her accomplishments throughout the world. Augusta after painful losses arrives in New York and seeks to establish herself as a successful artist, “in six months.” She completes her studies and discovers that an opportunity promised to her is denied because of her race and the influence of others. Yet, she manages to fulfill many of her dreams despite the opposition she faces from nature, from society and even at times from herself. Augusta! is the telling of real-life odyssey of a talented and determined Black woman in a time when that wasn’t often appreciated. Breaking barriers, going beyond surviving to thriving Augusta Savage was an amazing woman, an amazing artist and her legacy, though somewhat deferred still lives on.

About Renée Flemings

Renée Flemings: Plays include Strange Weather, (O’Neill Finalist; Readings at Roundabout Theatre Company, New Federal Theatre, The New Professional Theatre’s, Centenary Theatre), With All Deliberate Speed, We RIDE! (Libretto & lyrics), empty spaces (2023 O’Neill Semi-Finalist & workshop reading @ Bag & Baggage Theatre, Portland, OR); The libretto/lyrics for Love, Rose (Readings @ 92nd St. Y; Transgressions Festival of New Works @ HB Studios). Additional play productions: The Brotherhood, Rendered, Daddy’s Home, Coyote Calls, Monsters, Secondhand Smoke, Legend, BFFS, Good Old Days, Scars (Sam French Finalist), The Box (B2 Theatre, Phoenix Arizona, Chain Theatre One-Act Festival, NYC) and The Jam, (Reading as part of the Genesis Festival @ Crossroads Theatre; Workshop @ The Blank Theatre in Los Angeles). Publications include Bounce &Roll, Bel Canto, Rewind and The Visitation (Bechdel Plays) and monologues within the Best Men’s Stage Monologues (2007) and Best Women’s Stage Monologues (2021). As an actor, includes roles on (Film & TV) Law & Order: SVU; Boardwalk Empire; Time Out of Mind; (Stage includes) Hamlet; Macbeth; Monsters, along with several commercials. Solo theatrical shows: The Bible Belt, …secrets, and Women, Power and The Bard. As an author: Linear Manhattan. She is also the author It Started with A Kiss. Recent recipient of an Architects Fellowship (Houses on The Moon Theatre), LMCC Grant and a residency with ART OMI (2022); Age Legacy Grant (2022) and 2020 Quick Silver Theatre Company POC Summit. Renée is a member of the Dramatist Guild, Honor Roll, SAG-AFTRA and NPX.

About Cheryl Wills

Cheryl Wills is an Emmy award-winning journalist for Spectrum News New York 1. As the first African American woman to host a prime-time nightly newscast for the cable network, Cheryl anchors the Emmy-nominated broadcast Live at Ten, weeknights. Cheryl has been with NY1 since its launch in 1992 and is one of the station’s most recognizable journalists for breaking news and special coverage. She is also the talk show host of the weekly public affairs program, In Focus with Cheryl Wills where she interviews the most powerful newsmakers and celebrities in the country.

Cheryl is also the acclaimed author of a series of books about her family’s transition from slavery to freedom in the United States. Die Free: A Heroic Family Tale, The Emancipation of Grandpa Sandy Wills, Emancipated: My Family’s Fight for Freedom and EMMA all chronicle her 3x great-grandfather’s heroic service as a member of the United States Colored Troops during The Civil War.

On March 25, 2011, Cheryl Wills made history as the first journalist invited to speak at the United Nations General Assembly Hall for The International Remembrance of Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade which was broadcast live around the world on UNTV.

Cheryl has been honored numerous times during her 35+ years as a journalist. In 2024, Cheryl was awarded the Mickey Leland Humanitarian Achievement Award from NAMIC (National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications) during their annual conference. In 2023, Cheryl was awarded the prestigious Gracie Award from the Alliance for Women in Media. Cheryl has also received awards from The New York Press Club, The Newswomen’s Club of New York, The Associated Press, and she received a special medal from the United Nations Correspondents Association, personally presented to her by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. City & State Magazine hailed Cheryl as one of New York’s most “remarkable women” and Cheryl is one of the women profiled in the award winning 2020 book: “She is Me: How Women Will Save the World.”

Cheryl is most proud to be the Commander and Lifetime Descendant Member of the New York Chapter of the Sons and Daughters of the United States Colored Troops – a national organization of Civil War descendants who raise awareness about 200,000 black soldiers who bravely served during The Civil War. She is a graduate of the prestigious S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. www.CherylWills.com

About the Bowen Center

Based in Harlem, the Emma L. Bowen Community Service Center provides mental health and addiction treatment as well as providing advocacy and connections to needed services such as physicians, nutrition, entitlements and benefits, food stamps, legal services, and supportive services to more than 5,000 clients annually to Harlem / Upper Manhattan residents and individuals/families from all five boroughs.

Established more than three decades to help combat the stigma of mental health illness in the Harlem community, by ensuring that the community had a local resource where they would feel comfortable, the Bowen Center has become a beacon for all those in need, but especially the city’s most vulnerable, many of whom are low-income individuals living below the poverty line.

Bowen’s broad array of programs and services allows this important nonprofit to work with individuals of all ages—from infants to senior citizens, both in-person and through telehealth, as appropriate, in accordance with a client’s needs and preferences. www.bowencsc.org

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