Productions

Hazel Scott was a musical prodigy, equally at home playing Bach as she was swinging jazz with Art Tatum and Fats Waller. She was a celebrated performer when, still in her teens, she became the darling of Café Society, and conquered New York and Hollywood by the time she was 21. Years before the Civil Rights movement, Hazel resisted social and political oppression, refused to play in front of segregated audiences, led a strike in Hollywood when a director tried to put Black actresses in dirty clothes. She was the first Black American to have her own TV show only to come under attack when the Red Scare took hold, silenced her and led her into exile. Hazel Scott is the embodiment of the paradox of the unsung hero, those winners of moral victories who sacrificed everything for their beliefs, trailblazers who never got to see the doors they kicked down swing open for those who followed. This is her story.