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Thursday, June 26, 2003

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Editor

Busy actor, award-winning playwright and servant of society -- John Henry Redwood was all that and an honorary Pittsburgher, too.

	John Henry Redwood at a Pittsburgh social event in 1999. (Tony Tye, Post-Gazette)

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., with strong family ties to Halifax, N.C., and long a resident of New Jersey, Mr. Redwood was really a citizen of the American theater. Age 60, he died June 17 at his home in Philadelphia -- according to the medical examiner, of a heart attack.

Mr. Redwood was an imposing man, 6 foot 4, with a warm, deep rumble of a voice. Reserved, a shade courtly and of gentle demeanor, he warmed quickly. His passions about theater and life were never far from the surface.

Pittsburgh came to know Mr. Redwood in starring roles in August Wilson plays at the Public Theater: as an imposing Troy Maxon in "Fences" (1989), boardinghouse owner Seth Holly in "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" (also 1989), Toledo the piano player in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" (1992) and Troy again (1999). He also starred in Athol Fugard's "Playland" at City Theatre (1993).

"I love Pittsburgh," Mr. Redwood said in 1989. "But I've had to get used to people: [They] stop me on the street to thank me for 'Fences.' I never heard that before."

Once here as an actor, he returned as a playwright: The Public staged both his "A Sunbeam" (1991) and his "The Old Settler" (1998).

Mr. Redwood also touched the heart of Pittsburgh in private ways. He taught at a Bible school at Metropolitan Baptist Church on the North Side and was a volunteer reader at the former Divine Mercy Hospital. He returned as 1994 national honorary chairman of the Race for the Cure, a commitment undertaken because of his mother's 1992 death from breast cancer. He was on the board of the Hill District library and of the Martin Luther King Cultural Center, where he performed as Paul Robeson.

He was last at the North Side church in 2000, to help celebrate its 150th anniversary. Among his friends there were Dr. Bobbie Turner and Marva Scott-Starks, whom he considered his Pittsburgh sisters, sharing in family occasions.

	John Henry Redwood in "Fences." Click photo for larger image.

For Pittsburgh he also wrote social service plays, including "What If You're the One" for Saltworks and Allegheny General Hospital and "Write It Out" and "Funky Chicken" for City Theatre and Knoxville Middle School.

"He was very, very fond of Pittsburgh," said his daughter, Rhonda T. Redwood-Ray, of New Jersey. "He never had enough to say about it. He called it his home away from home."

But his home was really on the road. For the past year and a half, he traveled countrywide in James Still's "Looking Over the President's Shoulder," a one-man play about Alonzo Fields, White House butler under four presidents.

He appeared on Broadway in "Guys and Dolls" and "The Piano Lesson" and off-Broadway in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" with Danny DeVito and William Devane. His film credits include "Mr. Holland's Opus," "Passion Fish," "Big," "Gordon's War" and "Porky's."

Mr. Redwood's other plays include "No Niggers, No Jews, No Dogs," "Mark VIII: xxxvi" and "Acted Within Proper Departmental Procedure." He was especially proud of "What if You're the One," which encouraged mammograms, and "We Never Knew Their Names," in remembrance of Sept. 11, 2001.

Born in the tough Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Mr. Redwood said he "came up from the streets." He escaped to the University of Kansas via a football-basketball scholarship, which he almost lost in 1960 when he joined a sit-in. He remembered playing in the same backfield as Gale Sayers. Later, he played semipro basketball with Connie Hawkins and Billy Cunningham.

He did lose his scholarship when injured in his sophomore year. Next came the Marines, then the civil rights movement: "I was at Birmingham, I was at Selma," he said.

He finished college at Fordham on the GI Bill, studying finance. Later, he earned master's degrees in history and religion at St. John's and did all the course work for a doctorate in religion at Drew.

For a while he worked for a brokerage firm and as a systems analyst for a steel company, but he said, "I hate the corporate world. I get sick just seeing a person in a suit with an attache case." His first acting job was in a TV commercial.

"I got into acting by way of film," he said, "but I just love the stage, the immediacy of it. Walking out on stage is like jumping out of an airplane -- you can't go back."

In addition to his daughter, Mr. Redwood is survived by his three other children, Kevin Michael Redwood of New York City; Juma L. Redwood, in the Navy, stationed in Spain; and Shashu A. Redwood of New Jersey.

Services will be at noon Sunday at First Baptist Church, in Halifax, which he attended as a child. His cousin, Wayne Welch, will officiate.

Christopher Rawson can be reached at crawson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1666.