Episode Details

Original tape date: April 14, 2006.

Known best for her role as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren on the hit television show “Law & Order,” actress S. Epatha Merkerson admits that her true love is the theatre, particularly doing edgy, difficult roles in small theatres, in plays by such playwrights as Suzan-Lori Parks, Cheryl West, and August Wilson. Merkerson also laments the sizable community of Off-Broadway African-American theatre companies in the 1990s that no longer exist due to cuts in government funding. Here she worked with such noted Black actors as Mary Alice, Earle Hyman, Gloria Foster, Morgan Freeman, and Denzel Washington.

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