Chester Chapter Cheyney State Teachers College Alumni Association Presents The American Negro Repertory Players of New York City in Milton Wood’s Production of “Private Lives” Sophisticated Comedy by Noel Coward… [play program featuring an all-African American cast].

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Program for African American actor/producer Milton Wood’s production of Noel Coward’s three-act comedy of manners, Private Lives, with an all-Black cast.

Based in NYC, the American Negro Repertory Players “toured the South in 1949 [their plays] ‘drew large enthusiastic audiences’ and ‘proved…that Negro audiences [were] hungry for theatrical enterprises,’ no matter how ‘unrelated…they were to the Negro experience.’” (Peterson)

This play was staged at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in Chester, Pennsylvania. It was sponsored by the alumni association of nearby Cheyney State Teachers College, the first historically black college (HBCU) in the U.S.

Halftone portraits in the program include lead actor and producer Milton Wood plus his co-stars Jacqueline Levy, Geri Bryan, Roman Henderson, and Ann Flagg. Also seen are portraits of Cheyney alumni association officers and a portrait of Cheyney’s president, Dr. Leslie Pinckney Hill (1880–1960), who was himself a playwright, the author of Toussaint L’Ouverture, A Dramatic History (1928).

The program include 15 pages of Chester business advertisements, many for black-owned stores, clubs, and restaurants.

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