MICAL WHITAKER
ACTOR
Sixty-one years ago Mical made his theatrical debut as a student at Howard University’s Ira Aldridge Theatre in Lorca’s Blood Wedding. During a 20-year distinguished career in New York City he founded his own theatre company East River Players, co-founded the Everyman Street Theatre Festival at Lincoln Center, directed the 1979 Black Theatre Festival at Lincoln Center and was Artistic Director of the legendary Richard Allen Center.
On radio, he produced the nationally syndicated Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Story Hour. In 1981 he returned to his native Metter, Georgia and began an academic career at Georgia Southern, teaching and acting/directing over 100 productions in 23 years, most notably James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner, GSU’s first black production. In “retirement” since 2005, he has devoted his energies to the Averitt Center which in 2015 named its black box theatre in his honor.
With Sunshine Boys’ co-director Carol Thompson, he acted in Driving Miss Daisy and The Gin Game, and directed her in The Glass Menagerie and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He was the founding director of the Statesboro Youth Theatre and curates two on-going events designed especially for the Whitaker Black Box: ONE, an interview-performance series, hosted by co-director Ressie Fuller, spotlighting a single artist and BEHOLD, HERE COMETH THE DREAMER, annually focusing on the legacy of MLK, Jr. through poetry and the spoken word. In 2013, he was inducted into the Georgia Theatre Hall of Fame. He is the proud father of Mical Anthony and the grandfather of Messiah, Elijah and Jazzaniah.