A List
1/20/03

SLU PROF'S RESEARCH FORMS BASIS OF FOUNDATION HONORING ACTOR

CANTON - A park honoring actor Richard Berry Harrison is to be 
dedicated in his hometown of London, Ontario, on January 31, and 
St. Lawrence University Associate Professor of Speech and Theatre 
Andrea J. Nouryeh, who has conducted extensive research on his 
life, has been invited to participate.
	Harrison played the role of "de Lawd" in Marc Connelly's 
play The Green Pastures, a 1930 play written in black dialect 
and depicting black life, that ran for over a year and toured 
the world for three more. Harrison performed the role over 1,000 
times in the course of his life. The descendants of Harrison's 
family determined that 1982 research done by Nouryeh on his life 
was the most definitive and accurate to date. Based largely upon 
that research, the family created the Richard Berry Harrison 
Scholarship Foundation.
	The city of London, Ontario, has renamed the lot where 
the family's house stood Richard Berry Harrison Park and it is 
to be dedicated on January 31; the home that once stood on the 
site was burned, in a hate crime. Nouryeh, currently on sabbatical, 
has been invited to participate in the event.
	A St. Lawrence faculty member since 1991, Nouryeh is a 
graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with a master's 
degree in English from Columbia University and Ph.D. from New 
York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She is completing work 
towards a second master's degree from Columbia, in African-American 
studies.

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