African Continuum Loses New Artistic Director
Ambush Quits Before Starting Full Time; Struggling Troupe Cancels Its Fall-Winter Season

By Jane Horwitz
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The financially troubled African Continuum Theatre Company has lost its new artistic director, Benny Sato Ambush, before he was to begin the job full time.

Ambush stepped down as acting artistic director Oct. 30 but did not speak of his decision until after the board announced it last week. With the company suffering from what its chairman called a "cash flow crunch," the board also had recently decided to postpone its fall and winter shows and present a shortened spring season.

"The theater had announced a season it couldn't afford to launch without having a significant influx of new cash beyond the grant money it was expecting for the year," Ambush told Backstage, saying that it was he who called the problem to the board's attention. "That grant money was coming in too late. . . . It was a cash flow crisis, you bet."

Ambush, who said his relationship with African Continuum was always amicable, praised the board for doing "some really good and hard work" in coming to an understanding of the financial troubles.

He said he became aware of the problem last summer, when he began working part time for the company while still doing freelance directing gigs. If he had known about the finances before signing on with African Continuum, he said, "I would have stayed clear of the job."

He presented a proposal for "a different way of doing business" that he felt could solve the nonprofit company's financial woes, but the board did not act on it, Ambush said.

Board Chairman Rubie G. Coles said the proposal remains among alternatives under consideration. The board will announce "something definitive" about African Continuum's path by the end of the month, she said.

Although the board is disappointed about Ambush's resignation, Coles said, it remains convinced it can attract other qualified candidates.

"Our number one priority is to make sure that we are managing our finances well," Coles continued. "I think that we will survive this and that we are an important piece of the theater community here, and I still think it will be an attractive place for those artists in black theater."

"Losing Benny is a setback, because everybody was really excited about having him come to town," said African Continuum's original artistic director, Jennifer L. Nelson, who stepped down in August after 11 years. But, she added, "whether or not he's here is I don't think going to determine whether the company survives."

Nelson thinks the board's cancellation of the fall season was precipitous. The company weathered similar financial problems on her watch, she said, but it would cut budgets and keep producing -- though it sometimes involved her not taking a salary. "This is not an unusual situation, but for the people on the board who are essentially businesspeople . . . I think, frankly, they kind of panicked," she said.

"I have to be optimistic about it," Nelson added. "If the community wants this organization to survive, if we're really serving a valuable function in the community, then there's a way out of it."

Ambush said he hopes African Continuum "can recover from the current situation and I hope they'll be around for a long time, and I wish them well."

'Tollbooth' Stop

Famed Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick is in town to tweak the stage adaptation of "The Phantom Tollbooth," Norton Juster's 1961 kid-lit classic. In the mid-1990s, Harnick collaborated with Juster on adapting the fable, and the late composer and violinist Arnold Black wrote the music. Harnick and Juster have been polishing it ever since.

"I hope that this gets done and people get to know Arnie's music," he says during a rehearsal at the Kennedy Center, where the world premiere of the show, using seven actors, runs in the Family Theater Friday through Dec. 16.

The award-winning wordsmith ("Fiddler on the Roof," "She Loves Me," "Fiorello) speaks fondly of the "quirkiness" of his friend's "Tollbooth" score. "There's incidental music that is unusual for a musical. It is whimsical, but sometimes odd," Harnick says.

Black, a onetime assistant concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony and the National Symphony Orchestra, liked to add witty annotations, such as "stealthando," recalls Harnick, smiling.

The piece began as an opera for kids, but Harnick says the co-creators decided it would work better as a musical. He set about simplifying lyrics and cutting out recitative (sung dialogue). After Black's death in 2000, Harnick got permission from the composer's widow to pare the score and narrow the vocal ranges for music theater styles.

"If there is an American equivalent to 'Alice in Wonderland,' 'The Phantom Tollbooth' is it," Harnick says. In Juster's fantasy, a little boy, Milo, shakes off the doldrums when he rides his toy car through a magical tollbooth in his bedroom and travels to cities full of folk who are mad for math or wowed by words. Milo must escape demons and rescue the princesses Rhyme and Reason.

Writing lyrics for a children's piece requires a "more slender" vocabulary, Harnick says, but not one devoid of unusual words or ideas. When Milo encounters the lazy "Lethargarians," they sing, "From 4 to 6 we dawdle and delay, and put off 'til tomorrow what we could do today. At 6 we loaf, at 8 we dine, then it's off to bed at 9. Another vigorous, rigorous, rich full day in the dol-- , in the dol-- , in the doldrums!"

Says Harnick, "Kids are sharp; anything that's overwritten or unnecessary bores them."

Follow Spots

¿ Shakespeare Theatre Company Managing Director Nicholas T. Goldsborough announced he will step down next month to start a consulting firm. Goldsborough guided the capital campaign that led to the recent opening of the $89 million Sidney Harman Hall. Before coming to the Shakespeare in 2002, Goldsborough was CEO of the Music Center in Los Angeles and managed projects at Carnegie Hall, New York City Opera and Lincoln Center Theatre.

¿ The Helen Hayes Awards organization is seeking "well-versed and knowledgeable" volunteers to serve three-year terms as judges. The application deadline is Monday. Visit http://www.helenhayes.org or e-mail William Spates at wspates@helenhayes.org.

¿ The deadline for writers to submit 10-minute plays to be considered for the Source Festival (June 21-July 13, 2008) has been extended to Dec. 7. Submission fees have been waived, with new underwriting from the Kennedy Center's National Playwriting Program. Fees already received will be refunded. The plays selected will be announced April 7. Visit http://www.sourcedc.org.