Event Location: Library Conference Room 14000 Jericho Park Rd

Contact Name: Dr. Adrian Krishnasamy
Phone Number: (301) 860-3706
Email akrishnasamy@bowiestate.edu

Description
Dale Madison graduated from Northwestern High School in 1976. Besides being an honor student, he was voted "Most Spirited" out of his senior class. Just four months prior to his graduation, Dale was asked to leave home by his father after discovering he was gay. Dreams of going to NYU and study acting seemed to fly out of the window, but he never looked back.
Determined to become a performer, Dale taught himself how to sew and started his own modeling troupe. Later he joined a company of actors doing pregnancy prevention-theater and helped co-found, Actors Against Drugs. The company became successful in doing live presentations in schools and various organizations demonstrating the dangers of substance abuse, eventually doing a live broadcast for the Social Security Administration that broadcast to their national staff. The company was approached by the Baltimore City Health Department to create short theater presentations on HIV testing and awareness. This led to productions funded by John's Hopkins Hospital & University to reach more audiences.
Dale left Baltimore in 1991 to become a host on the QVC Network. Dale was one of the first employees of the company who sought and received domestic partnership benefits for his lover. Dale was also the first host to produce an all-African themed shopping hour in the world of television shopping. His own line of handmade African dolls sold out in five minutes. He became a nationally recognized doll designer and traveled the country promoting African art. When his contract ended in 1994, he returned to Baltimore and opened the first Afro-Centric Gay themed gift store (some say in the country!)

Once again approached by the Baltimore Health Department, Dale was asked to coordinate a program called The Men of Color AIDS Prevention Project. He coordinated safe sex events and community forums bringing in gay writers like James Earl Hardy of B-Boy Blues and Keith Boykin of One More River to Cross. He wrote, produced and directed a PSA starring the then mayor of Baltimore Kurt Smoke and a cast of men including his father!

In 1995 Dale received a Maryland State Council Artist Award for his one-man show, FREEda SLAVE: Mask of a Diva. The show addressed masculine and feminine discrimination within the gay community. After winning a playwriting award in 1999, Dale took the show to Los Angeles and it won the critic's pick of the week in Backstage West.
After working in various television and film projects, Dale enrolled in college at the age of 47. During his college years he never slowed down, writing and publishing two books and producing two short films. DREAMBOY: My Life as a QVC Host & Other Hits won the Best LGBT film of 2008 at the San Diego Black film festival and The Panty Man was nominated as best short in the 2009 Pan African Film festival.

Dale graduated in 2010 with a Master's degree in education. His second one-man show debuted the following summer to a sold out audience, MY Life in 3 Easy Payments based on his memoirs. In addition, he became a mentor with LifeWorks, a LGBT enrichment youth program. While facilitating performance art workshops at LGBT youth conferences, Dale was asked to become a facilitator of a Black & Latino men's HIV empowerment program through The LA Gay & Lesbian Center, the largest LGBT organization in the world. Through everything Dale has stayed true to himself living life out and proud inspiring others to do the same.

Click here to view the flyer