In its 15-year history as a production company, African Continuum, which has had 16 Helen Hayes Awards nominations and three Helen Hayes Awards, has produced more than 35 stage plays and seven world premieres. This fall, its production of “The Legend of Buster Nea” played to sellout audiences. “Blues for an Alabama Sky” last spring received good reviews for the cast and crew and was extended after nine sellout shows.
“It is not like there is no demand,” Williams said. “ . . . But this is an extremely expensive business.” And Washington audiences will pay only so much to see shows by smaller companies.
Black theaters across the country increasingly have found themselves competing with mainstream stages, which began targeting black audiences and producing plays by and about African Americans, according to theater directors. The bigger companies also receive grants from corporations and government aimed at increasing diversity.
Williams said black patrons must understand when they see plays at “mainstream theaters,” they are supporting mainstream theaters, not black theater. “We need African Americans who have the potential to support us to continue to support us or we are going to disappear,” Williams said. “And you will have theater that will be filtered and sanitized and it won’t be the essence of what black theater is.”
This controversial issue of disparity in funding was argued famously in 1996 by playwright August Wilson. In a speech entitled “The Ground on Which I Stand,” Wilson made an impassioned plea for the survival of black theaters. “Black theater in America is alive. It is vital. It just isn’t funded.”
Wilson blamed donors for sending money to white regional theaters for producing plays about blacks, while neglecting black theaters.
The speech outraged some critics, who responded that theater should have no color. Robert Brustein, a white theater critic, wrote that Wilson was advocating for a “reverse form of the old politics of division, an appeal for socially approved and foundation-funded separatism. . . . I don’t think Martin Luther King ever imagined an America where playwrights such as August Wilson would be demanding, under the pretense of calling for healing and unity, an entirely separate stage for black theater artists.”
In Washington, Jane Lang, founder and chair of the Atlas Performing Arts Center, said she thinks black theater in this city is no longer considered a separate entity. “I believe if there are black playwrights, black directors, black actors, I don’t care who owns the theater. To me, I’m interested in black theater,” said Lang, who has funded and produced a number of plays by black playwrights, including “Spunk: Three Tales by Zora Neale Hurston.” “Out of five shows we have produced, three have been black theater. . . . I think race is the most critical issue we face in our country. To me, the subject is really compelling. I don’t see why it matters that I’m white.”
Still, D.C. Black Theater Festival director Glenn Alan argues that there is a demand and a need in the District for a black resident theater company. When the Black Theater Festival debuted in 2010, it received 300 submissions and staged 127 performances in one week on 15 stages throughout the city.
“D.C. needs a black company with its own theater,” Alan said. On some mainstream stages, he added, “If it doesn’t sing and it doesn’t dance, it doesn’t play. We need a house that will speak to the African American story without editing.”
Loading...
Comments
Read about the changes to comment thread appearance, moderation.