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WINSTON-SALEM — It has been two years since Larry Leon Hamlin passed away. But his presence pervaded Monday’s opening of the biennial event that he founded, the National Black Theatre Festival.

His photograph in signature dark glasses flashed on a screen, looking out over stage and screen stars gathered for the opening news conference at the downtown Marriott Hotel.

They gave standing ovations to Hamlin’s wife, Sylvia Sprinkle-Hamlin, and mother, Annie Hamlin Johnson, who fought back tears as she showed a childhood photo of Hamlin and his late brother, Richard.

And they quoted the superlative that Hamlin coined to describe the festival, now celebrating its 20th anniversary.

“It is going to be ...” Sprinkle-Hamlin said as the crowd joined her in finishing the thought, “marvtastic.”

Among those attending were Ted Lange (Isaac on the sitcom “The Love Boat”) and Wendy Raquel Robinson (“The Steve Harvey Show”), the festival co-chairmen; Kim Wayans (“In Living Color”), Ella Joyce (“Roc”), Aloma Wright (“Scrubs”) and Charlene Tilton (“Dallas”).

Several will appear in shows during the six-day festival.

Hamlin and his North Carolina Black Repertory Company started the festival in 1989 so that actors and theater companies could showcase their work for a national audience and help black theater survive.

This year will offer 116 performances by 40 theater companies from across the country, and one from Cape Town, South Africa.

The festival honors Hamlin in another way this year: a new solo performance series bears his name. Its eight plays tell stories of famous and lesser-known African Americans.

It was the brainchild of Joyce, who is performing in a return engagement of her acclaimed 2007 one-woman show, “A Rose Among Thorns.”

She portrays Rosa Parks, who made history in 1955 when she refused to give up her bus seat for a white passenger.

Her actions sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama.

She has performed the role more than 70 times across the country, often in schools interested in bringing history to life for their students.

“We all learn so much about our own history through this solo art form,” Joyce said.

“It comes alive for us and for our youth, who crave to know who we are as a people and not as we are portrayed through the media.”

Joyce hopes that school representatives will see these solo performances during the festival and book them.

Others in the series include “Speak of Me As I Am,” in which K.B. Solomon plays actor Paul Robeson, and “Zora,” starring soap opera actress Kim Brockington as Zora Neale Hurston, famed author of the Harlem Renaissance.

In addition to honoring historical figures, the festival celebrates living legends such as Broadway star

André De Shields. De Shields got the crowd on its feet to sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

Later Monday, De Shields was among 19 honored at a gala at the Benton Convention Center.

Others included Juanita Moore, most famous for her role in the 1959 remake of “Imitation of Life;” Woodie King Jr., stage and screen director and producer and founder of the New Federal Theatre in New York; Vy Higginsen, New York radio talk show host and the first black woman to produce a drama on Broadway; and LaChanze, Tony Award winner for her role as Celie in Broadway’s “The Color Purple.”

The crowd then moved to the Stevens Center for the musical, “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope,” which the N.C. Black Repertory Company presented at the first festival in 1989.

Contact Dawn DeCwikiel-Kane at 373-5204 or dawn.kane@news-record.com