International Courant
Lynda Gravátt, the Harlem-born actress who starred on New York phases in such productions as 45 Seconds From Broadway, Doubt, Cat on a Scorching Tin Roof, The Outdated Settler and Intimate Attire, has died. She was 76.
Gravátt died Friday at a hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, her son David Gravátt instructed The Hollywood Reporter.
A founding member of Robert Alexander’s Dwelling Stage on the famed Washington-based Area Stage firm, Gravátt acquired a 1999 Theater World trophy for her efficiency as Nineteen Forties Harlem resident Quilly McGrath in The Outdated Settler and an AUDELCO prize in 2004 for her flip because the bossy landlady mrs. Dickson in Intimate Attire.
On Broadway in 2001, she stood by for Leslie Uggams as Ruby in August Wilson’s King Hedley II and portrayed Bessie James in Neil Simon’s 45 Seconds From Broadway, then appeared as Mrs. Muller in 2016 within the unique Broadway manufacturing of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt.
Her last Broadway look got here when she understudied the function of Large Mama in Cat on a Scorching Tin Roof reverse James Earl Jones in 2008.
“If I am employed, I am joyful,” she instructed Backstage in a 2019 interview. “I all the time wished to be the ingénue, however I am normally forged because the pragmatic grandmother, even after I was younger.”
She additionally had a giant fan in Oscar winner Viola Davis:
Gravátt was born in Harlem on Might 24, 1947. Her delivery father was faucet dancer and comic James “Stump” Cross, however she was raised by adopted dad and mom.
She appeared on Broadway at age 4 within the unique Broadway manufacturing of The King and I, starring Yul Brynner and Gertrude Lawrence, and carried out in recitals at Carnegie Corridor when she was 9.
Gravátt attended Fairmont Heights Excessive in Capitol Heights, Maryland, after which Howard College, the place she appeared in quite a few productions earlier than graduating in 1971. Whereas in school, she additionally acted on the Dwelling Stage, which launched in 1966.
Her stage résumé included productions of A Raisin within the Solar, Crowns, Miss Witherspoon, The Little Foxes, Skeleton Crew, The Home That Will Not Stand and, in her last theater look in 2018, The Revolving Cycles Really and Steadily Roll’d at The Duke in New York.
For tv, Gravátt was a daily on the 1999-2000 Showtime sequence The Hoop Life, guest-starred on three Legislation & Order sequence and appeared on Intercourse and the Metropolis, The Good Spouse, 30 Rock, Elementary, Madam Secretary, Ramy and East New York.
And he or she may very well be seen on the massive display in The Bounty Hunter (2010), Supply Man (2013), Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017) and The Exterior Story (2020).
Gravátt was a founding college member on the Duke Ellington Faculty of the Arts in Washington, and she or he taught at Howard and Rutgers College as properly.
Survivors embody her sons, David (a former journalist at NBC Information) and Oge; her grandchildren, Josephine, Lucas, Ishmale, Ishana and Isabella; and her half-sister, Peabody Award-winning documentarian June Cross.
Esteemed New York Stage Actress Was 76
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