26th ANNUAL BURIAN LECTURE ON LIFE IN THE PERFORMING ARTS

Ruben Santiago-Hudson

7:30 p.m. Monday, February 5, 2024

Recital Hall, UAlbany Performing Arts Center
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222

Free and open to the public. No registration required.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson is a celebrated American playwright, actor, and director who has won major awards -- Tony, Obie, Drama Desk -- in all three categories.

In 2021, he directed and starred in the Broadway production of his autobiographical play about growing up in a Rust Belt town outside Buffalo, Lackawanna Blues — marking the first time in Broadway history that an individual wrote, directed, and starred in a single play.

He directed the 2022 Broadway production of Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew, which received four Tony nominations including Outstanding New Play. He also directed the 2017 Broadway production of August Wilson’s Jitney which earned the Tony Award for Best Revival and five other Tony nominations.

In 1996, he received the Tony Award as Featured Actor for his performance in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars. His 2021 screenplay adaptation of another Wilson play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, received several Oscar nominations, winning two for costume design and makeup.

Santiago-Hudson was awarded the 2006 Humanitas Prize in writing for the HBO film adaptation of his play "Lackawanna Blues," and the 2009 NAACP Lifetime Achievement Theatre Award.

In 2013, Santiago-Hudson won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Director, an Obie Award for Direction, and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play for the Off-Broadway production of The Piano Lesson. In 2016, he won an Obie Award for Special Citations: Collaboration of the play Skeleton Crew. He also received an honorary doctorate of letters from Buffalo State College in 2006, and Wayne State University in 2015.

In 2014, The Ruben Santiago-Hudson Fine Arts Learning Center was named in his honor in his hometown of Lackawanna.

Watch: "Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom" is now streaming on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81100780

Presented by the UAlbany Theatre Program and the Jarka and Grayce Burian Endowment in collaboration with the NYS Writers Institute.