Abena Joan Brown, Founder and Producer ETA Creative Arts Foundation Chicago, Illinois Curtains Rise in the Ramada at Lake Shore Afaa M. Weaver May 20, 2010 I sat on the edge of the bed in my room at the Lake Shore Ramada as I waited for the meeting to begin. My play "Elvira and the Lost Prince" had won the Playwrights Discovery and Development Initiative, or the PDI Award. It was a few months before my 42nd birthday, and I had just had my first professional production a few months earlier in Philadelphia of a full length play of mine, a two act I named "Rosa." It seemed I had officially entered the world of professional theater after six years of trying. As I sat there peeping out the curtains at the parking lot, I saw two figures walk out of the pages of black theater history, Woodie King and Ron Milner. It was a stunning moment for me. I had read Woodie's well known "Black Drama Anthology" years before, and Ron's play "What the Win...