Capathia Jenkins to Play Hattie McDaniel in Off-Broadway Show

Capathia Jenkins, recently featured on Broadway in Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, will play Oscar-winning actress Hattie McDaniel in Emerging Artists Theatre's premiere of misUnderstanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story by Joan Ross Sorkin. This play with music will be part of the company's second annual Triple Threat, which premieres three full-length plays by emerging playwrights. MisUnderstanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story will play a four-week off-Broadway engagement at Theatre 5 from February 7 through March 4, directed by David Glenn Armstrong.

MisUnderstanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story reveals a side of Hattie McDaniel's life that few people knew. She achieved stardom by becoming the first African-American to win an Academy Award, but by playing a succession of maids and cooks, most notably Mammy in Gone With the Wind, she became the target of a campaign against "Mammyism" led by Walter White of the NAACP, who thought her roles were shameful and degrading to their race. Despite her own efforts to bring dignity and humanity to her roles, within seven years of winning her Oscar, McDaniel's film career was virtually destroyed.

The play is set in 1952 at the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Woodlands Hills, California, where McDaniel is battling breast cancer. In her weakened state, she imagines that Walter White has come to visit her and possibly reconcile their differences. For the first time, she confronts her most vocal critic to prove to him that she was in fact a credit to her race. In recounting her miraculous life story as the daughter of a slave who became a world-renowned movie star, she proudly illuminates a life that was too often misunderstood.

In addition to her show-stopping turn in Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, Jenkins has appeared on Broadway in Caroline, Or Change, The Civil War and The Look of Love. Off-Broadway credits include Godspell, The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea and After Hours. National and European tours include Dreamgirls, Bubblin' Brown Sugar, Sophisticated Rhythms and Uptown Saturday Night. Television credits include The Practice, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, The Sopranos, 100 Centre Street, Third Watch, Corn, Mari X and America's Most Wanted. Jenkins just released her debut CD with composer Louis Rosen entitled South Side Stories.