Creative Team

Meet the Creative Team for No Fear and Blues Long Gone: Nina Simone

Performer, Yolanda Rabun

Yolanda Rabun is a wife, mother, award-winning corporate lawyer and professional AEA* actor, motivational speaker, accomplished music entrepreneur, and acclaimed recording-performing artist. Regional: Newsies, Mary Poppins, Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, Drowsy Chaperone, Little Shop of Horrors, Beehive, the 60s Musical, Dreamgirls, Ragtime, Big River, Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Avenue Q, Violet the Musical, Ain’t Misbehavin’, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, Member of the Wedding, Twelfth Night, and I Love My Hair. Studio Recordings: So Real, Christmastime, Hold on to Your Dreams, and the YOLANDA album available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and Pandora. BMI (songwriter), BMI and ASCAP (publisher), Voting Member of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (the Grammys). Education: BA with Honors, College of the Holy Cross; Juris Doctorate, Boston College Law (New York and Georgia licensed). Yolanda is 30 years married with two grown children. www.yolandarabun.com | @yolandarabun

*Yolanda is a proud member of Actors Equity Association

Yolanda was transformed in the role and transformative in her performance!
Theatre Patron

Powerhouse actor/singer Yolanda Rabun can belt out a song with the best of them!
Triangle Arts & Entertainment
Pamela Vesper and Kurt Benrud

Playwright and Educator, Howard L. Craft

Howard L. Craft is a father, husband, playwright, poet, essayist and arts educator. He is the author of two books of poems, Across The Blue Chasm (Big Drum Press 2000), and Raising the Sky (Jacar Press 2016). His poetry also appears in Home is Where: An Anthology of African-American Poets from the Carolinas, edited by Kwame Dawes. His essays have appeared in The Paris Review and have been included in The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre (Routledge Press 2019). He is the author of several plays including Freight: The Five Incarnations of Able Green, a New York Times Critic Pick for March 2015; Calypso and the Midnight Marauders, Orange Light, and The Jade City Chronicles Volume 1: The Super Spectacular Badass Herald M. F. Jones. He is the creator of the first African-American superhero radio serial: The Jade City Pharaoh. Craft is a recipient of the North Carolina Playwriting Fellowship and a two winner of the NCCU New Play Project. As an arts educator, Craft works as a creative writing instructor for Mike Wiley Productions and is the current Piller Professor of the Practice at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for the Writing for the Stage and Screen program. Craft lives in Durham with wife, young son, and Beagle, Shazam.

The Script left an impression of an immortal powerhouse, complete with the mix of [the] after-effects of her [Nina Simone’s] legacy
Theatre Patron

Director, Kathryn Hunter-Williams

Kathryn Hunter-Williams is a Company member for 20 seasons of Playmakers Repertory Company. Recent and highlights include directing No Fear & Blues Long Gone, plus acting in Everybody, Life of Galileo, Skeleton Crew, Leaving Eden, Tartuffe, Count (as Director), Dot, Intimate Apparel, The Crucible, Trouble in Mind, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Metamorphoses, The Tempest, Love Alone, A Raisin in the Sun, Imaginary Invalid, Henry IV & V, The Parchman Hour, Angels in America, Fences, Doubt, Yellowman, among others. New York/Regional: Living Stage, The Negro Ensemble Company, Manhattan Class Company, New Dramatists, Archipelago Theater. Education/Other: BFA, UNC School of the Arts; MFA, UNC-Chapel Hill. Kathryn is on the faculty of the Department of Dramatic Art, UNC-Chapel Hill, Company Artistic Associate for PlayMakers Rep and is Associate Director of HiddenVoices, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing life-changing stories into a public forum.

Howard Craft’s script moves from monologue to song and back again, guiding us through the odyssey of Simone’s life, Director Kathryn Hunter-Williams ensures that the journey is smooth and seamless.
Triangle Arts & Entertainment – Pamela Vesper and Kurt Benrud

Musicians

The show features the music of an onstage trio of accomplished musicians (Russell Favret on guitars, Brevan Hampden on drums and percussion, and Christian Sharp on bass) that blends perfectly with Rabun’s voice as she delivers Simone’s music (of multiple genres) in various settings during various stages of her career.
Triangle Arts & Entertainment – Pamela Vesper and Kurt Benrud