Stephen Henderson
Mr. Henderson’s eight Broadway plays include two Tony winners for Best Revival; A Raisin in the Sun and Fences. Both productions were directed by Kenny Leon and starred Denzel Washington. Stephen received a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actor and a Richard Seff Award as Bono in Fences. His second Tony Nomination was for Best Leading Actor as Pops in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer Prize winning drama, Between Riverside and Crazy. Other personal Broadway favorites are Torvald in the replacement cast of A Doll’s House Part 2 led by Julie White; Slow Drag in the first revival of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom with Charles S. Dutton and Whoopi Goldberg; and Van Helsing in Dracula, The Musical with an outstanding ensemble directed by Des McAnuff.
Off-Broadway as Pops in Mr. Guirgis’ play Stephen received an Obie and Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding lead actor. Other Off-Broadway roles include Pontius Pilate in the LAByrinth Theatre Company’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and Turnbo in August Wilson’s Jitney which transferred to the National Theatre of Great Britain earning Mr. Wilson the Olivier Award. Henderson has also been part of several productions at Kennedy Center, most notably as a member of the acting company for Kenny Leon’s historic 20th Century Cycle Readings. In the fall of 2013 Stephen served as Ruben Santiago Hudson’s associate artistic director for audio recordings of Wilson’s Cycle which were live streamed throughout the cyber world from WNYC/NPR’s Greene Space.
In Yale Repertory’s production of Death of a Salesman, Stephen played Charley to Charles S. Dutton’s Willy Loman. Early career regional roles for various companies include Azdak in Caucasian Chalk Circle, Bynum in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Creon in Antigone, Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor, Sizwe in Sizwe Bansi is Dead, Sitting Bull in Indians, Solyony in Three Sisters, and Winston in the Irish premiere of Athol Fugard’s, The Island for the Dublin Theater Festival.
In fall of 2016 Stephen was the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair at Fordham University. He is a Fox Foundation Fellow, a Master Teacher for The Lunt-Fontanne Ten Chimneys Fellowship Program, and Distinguished Alumnus of Purdue University Graduate School (MA) College of Liberal Arts.
Stephen delivered The Juilliard School’s commencement address and was conferred Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, May 19, 2017. He received the University of North Carolina School of the Arts’ Honorary Doctorate when he delivered their combined 2020/2021 commencement address. During his 30 years as faculty for the Department of Theatre and Dance, State University of New York at Buffalo, Mr. Henderson served periods as Head of Performance and Department Chair. He retired as Professor emeritus in 2016.
Stephen’s work appears in six Oscar nominated films: Denis Villeneuve’s, DUNE; Denzel Washington’s, Fences (for which Stephen received a Virtuoso Award from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival); Greta Gerwig’s, Lady Bird; Steven Spielberg’s, LINCOLN; Kenneth Lonergan’s, Manchester by the Sea; and Stephen Daldry’s, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Noteworthy television work includes Halle Berry’s directorial debut, BRUISED for Netflix; the FX/HULU series, DEVS; WU TANG: An American Saga; and NEWSROOM for HBO. He may be seen this year or next in DUNE, Part 2; Ari Aster’s, Beau is Afraid; Lila Neugebauer’s, Causeway; and Alex Garland’s, CIVIL WAR.
Michael Feingold of the Village Voice wrote in his eloquent obituary for playwright August Wilson:
“To think of the great characters and scenes in August’s plays is to think of an epic parade of great African American actors who have seized their moment to make theater history: James Earl Jones and Mary Alice in Fences, Charles S. Dutton in Ma Rainey and The Piano Lesson, S. Epatha Merkerson confronting him in the latter, Roscoe Lee Browne sagely ironic in Two Trains Running, Stephen McKinley Henderson oozing malice in Jitney, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Lisa Gay Hamilton glaring a skyful of weaponry at each other in Gem of the Ocean.”
In 2023 the Off-Broadway League honored Stephen with the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. That same year the Drama Desk presented him with the Harold Prince Award, “recognizing an individual’s lifetime of outstanding contributions to the theatre.”