The Vine: HBO sings series 'Blues'

January 10, 2007 After making the leap from the stage to the small screen as an HBO Films movie, Ruben Santiago-Hudson's autobiographical one-man play "Lackawanna Blues" is ready for another transition. Both were executive producers on the 2005 film, which explored Santiago-Hudson's experience growing up in the early 1960s in Lackawanna, N.Y., amid a thriving black community in that Great Lakes city under the care of a large, maternal woman everyone calls Nanny (S. Epatha Merkerson). Merkerson has not been approached to reprise her role, which garnered her Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG awards, a difficult prospect given the actress' regular gig on NBC's long-running crime drama "Law & Order."

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