Support Junebug Productions 8/28-8/31/20!

Photo by Melisa Cardona

OUR MISSION

Junebug Productions emerged from the Free Southern Theater in 1980 with a mission to create and support artistic works that question and confront inequitable conditions that have historically impacted the African American community.

Photo by Mariana Sheppard

OUR VISION

Junebug envisions a world that is abundant with authentic and captivating stories that reflect the vast complexities of Black lives. Junebug will expand both the environment where such stories are developed and platforms where cross-discipline artistic productions are seen in all modalities - from city parks to community theaters and Broadway. From handheld mobile devices to YouTube, Junebug aspires to reach the world.

John O’Neal, Founder of Junebug Productions

OUR FOUNDING

Junebug Productions is the organizational successor to the Free Southern Theater (FST). In 1963, Field Secretaries John O’Neal and Doris Derby along with student leader Gilbert Moses co-founded FST to be a cultural wing of SNCC. FST went on to become a major influence in the Black Arts Movement. In 1965 FST moved its base from Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi to New Orleans. The theater’s first professional tour was of Freedom School Project sites. It continued to use arts to support the Civil Rights Movement through a community engagement program and training opportunities for local people interested in writing, performing, and producing theater as well as touring.

In 1980 FST produced Don't Start Me to Talking or I'll Tell Everything I Know, the first solo piece was written and performed by John O’Neal featuring Junebug Jabbo Jones, a character created by SNCC members to represent and symbolize the wit and wisdom of common folk. This was the last production of the FST and the first production of Junebug Productions. In 1985 the “The Funeral of the Free Southern Theater, a Valediction without Mourning” celebrated the work of FST.

Over the years Junebug Productions has toured with three volumes of solo pieces written and performed by founding Artistic Director John O’Neal featuring Junebug Jabbo Jones including Trying to Find My Way Back Home, a new solo performance featuring John’s son, William O’Neal, as Junebug Jabbo Jones, the Younger. O’Neal has also written, produced, and toured two pieces for small ensembles, Like Poison Ivy and Ain’t No Use in Going Home, Jodie’s Got Your Gal, and Gone. JPI’s national touring program has also included four cross cultural collaborations: Junebug/Jack, the product of a long term collaboration with the noted Appalachian theater company, Roadside Theater; Crossing the Broken Bridge, with Naomi Newman, a principal of A Traveling Jewish Theatre; Ballad of the Bones, a quartet by O’Neal and Michael Keck with Brenda Wong-Aoki and Mark Izu of the Asian American company, First Voices; and Promise of a Love Song, a three-way collaboration with Roadside Theater and the Puerto Rican company Teatro Pregones; Uprooted: The Katrina Project, a multi-disciplinary production written and performed by a diverse group of 11 Gulf Coast artists which aims to draw attention to the need for persons who have been displaced by the disaster to organize; and most recently Lockdown, written and performed by teachers, teaching artists and an attorney working in the New Orleans public school system.

 Photo by Melisa Cardona

As a leader in the progressive arts movement for the past four decades, Junebug Productions has worked in over 500 communities throughout the United States and has participated in several national and international festivals. Central to our community engagement work has been our National Color Line Project, a multi-year organizing project in which we use the Story Circle Process to collect stories from people who were involved with or who recognize that their lives have been significantly influenced by the Civil Rights Movement. JPI has led Color Line Projects in Dayton, OH; Glassboro/Camden, NJ; Mississippi; Flint, MI; West Palm Beach, FL, and Akron, OH. In 2002, O’Neal and Theresa Holden were awarded the Ford Foundation Leadership for a Changing World Award for their work on the National Color Line Project.

The Story Circle Process is central to JPI’s art-making and community engagement work. The Story Circle Process was invented by FST members as a way to engage with audience members following performances.

For more information, please visit our website: https://www.junebugproductions.org/