Oni Lampley

Oni Faida Lampley, award-winning playwright and actress, died April 28, 2008 in Manhattan, New York City, after living twelve years with breast cancer. She was born Vera Anne Lampley in Ogden, Utah April 15, 1959 and brought to Okla. City as an infant. She graduated from Corpus Christi Grade School and Bishop McGuinness High School. She received a Bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in Ohio, earned a graduate degree at New York University, and was in Juilliard's playwrighting program. Ms. Lampley leaves a body of work that includes her play Mixed Babies, awarded the prestigious Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play in 1991 - the top playwriting honor in the Helen Hayes Awards in Washington, D.C. At the same ceremony, she was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress for her performance in Rebel Armies Deep Into Chad. In 2000, she was nominated again for the Charles MacArthur Award for her play The Dark Kalamazoo. In 2005, her play Tough Titty was featured at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her acting credits include Broadway performances in the Ride Down Mt. Morgan, Two Trains Running, and Mule Bone. Off Broadway, she appeared in Zooman and the Sign, The Destiny of Me, and Boesman and Lena, among many others. She performed at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre as ''Helena'' in Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well in Peters Sellar's Biblical Pieces in Amsterdam and in 2001, she wrote and performed Shame the Devil at Carnegie Hall. Her television work includes all three Law & Order shows, Homicide: Life in the Streets, Oz, The Sopranos and others. She appeared in the movies First Do No Harm, Lone Star, Money Train, Dragonfly, and others. Ms. Lampley was honored in 2001 with Oklahoma's BLAC Artists of Distinction Award. And, she received the Project Woman Coalition's Breast Cancer Companion Award in 2001 here in Oklahoma City. Ms. Lampley leaves her mother, Vina Showers of Oklahoma City her sister, Vicki Lampley Dallas of Oklahoma City her brother, Michael Lampley of Dallas, TX, and her step-brother, Ted Haynes, Jr. of Houston, TX. She lived in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with her husband, Tommy Abney and their two sons, Olu and Ade. A scholarship fund for her sons is established at: www.theonifund.comThere will be a memorial serice for Ms. Lampley at 11:00 AM Monday, May 26, 2008, at Faith, Hope & Love Church, 2727 S.E. 59th Street, Oklahoma City.