Shauneille Perry
| Shauneille Perry | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 26, 1929 Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Occupation | Theatre director, playwright, actor |
| Years active | 1950s–present |
| Spouse(s) | Donald Ryder (1957–present) |
Shauneille Perry (July 26, 1929 –) is an American stage director and playwright. She was one of the first African-American women to direct off-Broadway.
Shauneille Perry was born on July 26, 1929, in Chicago, Illinois, to a prominent African-American family. She is the daughter of Graham T. Perry (1894–1960), one of the first African-American assistant attorneys-general for the State of Illinois and his wife, the former (Laura) Pearl Gant (1903–1957), one of the first African-American court reporters in Chicago. She is the niece by marriage of real-estate broker and political activist Carl Augustus Hansberry (who married her father's sister, Nannie Louise Perry) and his brother, Africanist scholar William Leo Hansberry. She is also the first cousin of playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Carl Hansberry's daughter.
Perry attended Howard University, where she was a member of the Howard Players under the direction of Owen Dodson. In 1950, she received a B.A. in drama from Howard. Her studies followed at the Goodman Theatre Art Institute in Chicago, where she received an M.A. in directing. She also studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
In 1957, Perry married architect Donald Ryder in Chicago. Several months later, she received national exposure as the second-place winner in the 1958 Picturama Contest, an essay competition sponsored by Ebony Magazine. She took advantage of the prize with her husband, which was a $4,000, three-week tour of Paris. By the end of the decade, the couple relocated to New York City, where it did not take long for her to establish herself as an actress.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, she acted in various productions on the New York stage including The Goose (1959), Dark of the Moon (1960), Talent '60 (1960), Ondine (1961), Clandestine on the Morning Line (1961) and The Octoroon (1961). Her work as Lilly Ruth, a pregnant girl in the short-lived off-Broadway production of Clandestine on the Morning Line received particular notice.
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