Micki Grant obit

Micki Grant, Composer, Playwright and Performer, Has Died at Age 80

 

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BroadwayWorld is saddened to learn that Micki Grant, award-winning composer, lyricist, playwright, librettist, singer, and actress, has died at age 80.

Ms. Grant has been involved in the creation of some 18 theatrical productions, five of them on Broadway.

With the long-running Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope, in which she also starred, she became the first woman to win a Grammy Award for the score of a Broadway musical. She also received Tony nominations for book, music, and lyrics. Another Grammy nomination for the score (with Alex Bradford) of Your Arms Too Short to Box with God followed, as well as another Tony nomination for the score of Working. When Your Arms Too Short... and It's Nice to Be Civilized opened on sub-sequent evenings, Grant had the distinction of having two Broadway musicals running simultaneously.

She wrote the music and contributed lyrics for J. E. Franklin's Prodigal Daughter and contributed additional lyrics to Eubie! and Sweet & Hot: The Songs of Harold Arlen. For Jacques Brel Blues, she supplied the English lyrics for 20 songs by the Belgian songwriter.

Along with ...I Can't Cope and Your Arms Too Short..., she has an extensive list of collaborations with the dynamic Emmy-winning director, Vinnette Carroll. She has written songs for educational television's Infinity Factory, and one of her several commercial jingles garnered the ad industry's prestigious CLIO Award.

Her creative body of work has been celebrated in two Off-Broadway musicals, Step Into My World at Amas Repertory Theatre, and Looking Back at New Federal Theatre.

In her early days in New York City, Grant sought to supplement her income by working as a receptionist at a radio station. A meeting with a top executive at the station diverted her attention to working on the air. Readings and Writings featured Grant performing material that she compiled from research at a public library.

Grant was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Gussie and Oscar Perkins. Her father was a self-taught pianist and master barber, and her mother worked for Stanley Products. She began studying music with double-bass lessons at her elementary school. Grant first took piano lessons at the age of eight, and the next year took acting lessons with Susan Porché. After high school, her cousin, film actress Jeni Le Gon took her under her wing when Grant moved to Los Angeles.

While in Los Angeles, she was cast in Fly Blackbird by James V. Hatch and C. Bernard Jackson. The show was successful and it moved to New York City. She graduated summa cum laude from Lehman College. In the early 1960s, she appeared off-Broadway in Jean Genet's The Blacks (with James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson), and in Brecht on Brecht, in which she sang "Pirate Jenny". In 1964, Grant appeared as Ella Hammer in Howard da Silva's off-Broadway revival of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock, opposite Jerry Orbach and Rita Gardner.

As an actress, Ms. Grant has performed on and Off Broadway and in regional theatres around the country having made her Broadway debut as the ingenue in Langston Hughes' Tambourines to Glory. In the late '90s, a two-year National tour of the play Having Our Say took her to more than 68 U.S. cities and to Johannesburg, South Africa, earning her the Helen Hayes Award for her performance as Sadie Delany. She also appeared in the CBS movie of the same name.

The first African-American contract player on a daytime serial, she played the role of attorney Peggy Nolan on NBC's Another World for seven years, and has had continuing roles on Edge of Night and Guiding Light, as well as guesting on All My Children.

Directing credits include, among others, Ruby Dee's Two Ha Ha's and a Homeboy, starring Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee at Crossroads Theatre Company, and I Can't Cope for the Apollo Modern Black Classic Series.

A multitude of awards include the OBIE, NAACP Image, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Audelco's Outstanding Pioneer, AEA's Paul Robe-son, and the National Black Theatre Festival's Living Legend and the Sidney Poitier Lifelong Achievement awards. Grant was also the 2012 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dramatists