I was born in Alabama. My mother and I moved to Detroit. I went to elementary school, junior
high and high school in Detroit. I went to drama school in Detroit, a very famous school
in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, called Willoway School of Theater, and I graduated from that
in 1961. But what happened is, in that school, which was 9% white, it was really only maybe
three black people in the whole school. But I got a scholarship, and they sort of looked
out for me, but you could not act on stage with white actresses. You could do monologues,
you know, from Othello, Ember Jones, Green Pastors, stuff like that, you know. So a group
of us started our own theater, downtown Detroit. The theater was called Concept East, and that
was started in 1960. It was a huge success. One of the plays that we did at the theater
was called Study in Color by the Reverend Malcolm Boyd, and that play toured across America
as a benefit for the Episcopal Society for Racial and Cultural Unity, which was sponsored
by the Episcopal Church. That play in 1963 ended up in New York to a very successful
kind of run here in New York at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery. As a result of that,
I said, wow, I produced it. I co-directed it with my now chairman, Cliff Frazier. Wow,
if I can make this kind of money on the road, I can make this kind of money in New York.
However, that wasn't the case. I got a job in my chosen field of drafting, and as soon
as they saw the reviews from the play, I was fired. So it was my lesson. 1965 until 1970,
I ran a cultural arts program called Mobilization for You. It was on the lower east side. It
was a part of the poverty program, the real great society, the great society that was
formed by Lyndon Johnson, and it paid young people the sturdiness. And these young people
that I ran in the cultural arts program was in theater, dance, music, art, and they got
paid. So it was a sort of a way to curtail juvenile iniquity, if you will. We were able
to make an arts program, and that arts program became very, very well known throughout America
because of the art that we created, films, dance companies, artwork. It's an unbelievable
array of development with young people, 16 to 21, actually creating their own art. When
the director of that program, overall program, moved to Henry Street, he asked me to come
to Henry Street. That's when I thought it would be a good idea to form a theater company
rather than just a training program by itself. Now, once I got here, I studied acting with
my mentor, Lloyd Richard, and I studied from maybe 1964, 65, 66 until I got a job as cultural
arts director with Mobilization for Youth. In those days, it was very few actors working
off-Broadway of color that had degree, and so that helped me tremendously, really tremendously.
So I acted, and my last big, big acting stint was 1968 when I did The Great White Hope as
an actor on Broadway with James Earl Jones and Hector Elitondo, J.N. Alexander. It was
just a great, great experience, but I was taking more notes on how to produce than I
was concentrating on the acting, and that play went on and on and on, and you got to
understand, 1968, The Riots in America was changing America. The Riots and Watts had
happened in 64, Newark, 66 and 67, Detroit, 66, 67, and the American landscape was changing.
The new medium was television commercials, and I jumped into that with all fours. I,
sometimes I would be doing three or four commercials a month. I mean, it was like unbelievable.
I could not believe that that kind of money could be made from doing a one-minute commercial.
They flooded television like that with those kind of funds. I said, well, I can buy me
a house. I can produce. I don't smoke, but I did dozens of TV, cigarette commercials
because you learn how to, being an actor, you learn how to do all those things and make
it look very real. And so that's what I did. But by 1973, the new federal theater was then
three years old, and I had these huge hits in the theater, which was making as much as
I was making it in commercials, you know what I mean? So it was like, it was like a no-brainer.
So that's how my early career started in Detroit. It was just an amazing kind of experience.
Well, I mean, when I started out, black people were very, very glad to have images of themselves
reflected back. So they were very, very pleased to have messages that were truthful and not
stereotypical. So we had an unbelievable array of different backgrounds and blackness deal
with what we were doing. At the same time, the playwrights, the actors and the directors
did not have an outlet. So they were very glad to be a part of something called the
American Theater because they had been denied access to mainstream theater. How it has changed
over the years, of course, is it has been usurped in a sense by white American theater,
and some of the larger white theaters will do one black play every three or four years,
get tremendous funding for it. One black actor or actress will be nominated for a Tony Award
for working in their theater, while they won't even come to see the kind of work that's
been done at black theaters, radical theaters. Those kind of theaters are rare. Political
theaters are rare because the system won't fund those theaters, and those theaters cannot
pay artists and directors and well, artists in general. So I see that as a major change.
So you understand, in the 60s, blackness inculcated itself into the American system. Really, whether
it was through black studies, whether it was through the riots, we were constant. We were
in front of that public. So now, 30 years later, young blacks are graduating from major,
major drama institutions, major, major universities, specializing in theater. Whether they have
their MFA in theater from NYU, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, or their BFAs from schools like
Purchase or Juilliard, these young black artists are coming out well, well trained. They can
work in any kind of theater they want, and some of them are able to transcend color. Some
of them are able to deny that color is a major issue in their work. So I don't know how that's
going to play out on the wider landscape, because it's all about the writing, where
the writing will be going. You will see some plays, for example, they had just done Death
of a Sales when at Yale, and Willie Lohman came in, and it's all black version. He came
in, and he is losing his job because people are not buying. His sons are going through
all kinds of stuff, but you cannot tell whether it is because he is black. So I think those
are kind of things. You will see plays where the problems have nothing at all to do with
the color of the person's skin, but you are sitting there knowing all of the problems
are due to the person's color of their skin, or their gender, because they are women, because
they are whatever, or because they are in a class where they are not recognized for what
they are about and what they do. So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history
of involvement with black artists. Lawrence Fishburne started here. Lade Gilbert Moses
directed three or four shows for us, because at that time, really the 70s, there were not
a lot of outlets for black artists. So the New Federal Theater was one of those outlets
that so they gained a lot of visibility, and that visibility led to careers in Hollywood,
careers in television, and careers as directors in other theaters around America.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
So the New Federal Theater has an unbelievable history of involvement with black artists.
