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Pegasus Players Artists
David Barr, III
David Barr, III (Playwright) has been a playwright since his first full length work, The Death of the Black Jesus, was produced in 1986. The play received numerous awards and earned him a 1995 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship. Black Jesus was first produced at Kansas City, Missouri’s Unicorn Theatre and made its Windy City debut in 1996 at the Chicago Theatre Company. It was printed that same year by Dramatic Publishing Company.
David’s stage adaptation of the Walter Mosley novel, A Red Death had its world premiere in 1997, also at the Chicago Theatre Company. The play won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best New Play in 1998. His two-act drama Black Caesar, the story of a controversial African-American newspaper publisher, became the first piece published for the New Plays Series in PerformInk, Chicago’s foremost entertainment paper. He also received a second Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Playwriting/ Screenwriting and won the Unicorn Theatre Company’s National Award for Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit, a musical about the legendary American contralto Marian Anderson. That project had its Chicago premiere in 2000 with Pegasus Players and is also published by Dramatic Publishing Company. In 1999, David was fortunate enough to have two more productions make their world premieres in Chicago. The first, The State of Mississippi vs. Emmett Till, was written with Mamie Till Mobley and based on the life and tragic death of her son Emmett Till. Working again with Pegasus Players, its production in 1999 won wide-ranging acclaim, both regionally and nationally.
David’s other 1999 premiere was a work he co-adapted entitled The Journal of Ordinary Thought. Drawn from poems and monologues by authentic inner-city voices, Journal was produced by the Chicago Theatre Company and was named one of the Best Plays of 1999 by both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times.
His latest plays include, The House that Rocked! and was based on the musical legacies of Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard. It completed a successful run at Chicago’s Black Ensemble Theatre. David's most recent Chicago production, The Upper Room, premiered at Pegasus Players and it won the 2005 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Play. He is currently adapting Alex Kotlowitz’s award winning novel “There Are No Children Here” (for Pegasus Players) and Charles Johnson’s sweeping epic "Middle Passage" (Congo Square Theatre 2008). His next Chicagoland production will be Memphis Soul Stew: The Story of STAX Records (Black Ensemble—Winter 2007)
The JENA Company (New York, New York) produced his Civil Rights docudrama My Soul Is A Witness, where it completed two very successful national tours in 2005 and 2006. David’s most recent play with them is another theatrical docudrama titled Jackie, Vi, and Lena and is also produced by the JENA Company. Jackie, Vi, and Lena is also having a successful national tour throughout the first quarter of 2007.
David worked as a sports journalist/intern for the Daily Press-Virginian Pilot (Newport News, Virginia) during his college years. He also was a feature writer for Chicago’s own EM-EBONY Man Magazine from 1996-1998; a Johnson Publishing Company property. He has worked for EBONY Magazine since 1992 and was a consultant on the award-winning 2005 documentary Paper Trail: 100 Years of the Chicago Defender.