The first question I want to ask is, you know, hey Doug, you've been out of the day-to-day
activities of the NEC and the Black Theater in general since around 1995, so tell me,
what have you been up to between then and now?
Well, in the mid-90s, I basically went back to my own writing primarily for maybe five,
sixty years into the turn of the century.
I was involved in finishing up my major work, you know, the Haitian Chronicles, and during
those years, every summer, I went back to my hometown New Orleans after my father died
and kept his old raggedy sack for the summer, and I would go there and work primarily for
a couple of months on the trilogy, the Haitian Chronicles, and edited a lot of my other plays
that I had already finished, you know, the Clarence Thomas plays, which I wrote basically
in the early 90s.
As you know, the first acts, the first plays of the trilogy, Toussaint Louverture, the
first one, and the second one, both of those two plays were so epic and massive, I mean,
the constitute about damn their twelve hours of theater between them, but the third play
of the trilogy was Dessalines, which, you know, I did a few hundred and fifty to return,
and after writing these two massive plays with thousands of characters, I then went
the opposite way, there was one man in place, Dessalines, who was my favorite of the Haitian
Revolutionaries, and, but it was a play I knew I had to do as a natural by myself.
Because it would be so controversial that I had to do it at least first.
I tried to get a production of that done, and I was close to getting that video tape,
but I came down with serious illness, just at the point I was ready to really commit
to shooting it.
In fact, right now, it's like I'm coming up on the second year after my major operation,
I had a major operation for throat and neck cancer, and thankfully, I had wonderful surgeons,
and between the surgeon and the care of my family and friends and so forth, I've recuperated
now over, you know, the second year, I'm, you know, I've been cancer-free, so I'm fine.
But that's, that's sort of in a nutshell where I've been doing, so I concentrate mainly
in my own writing.
Let's talk about something that has always been your mantra, as long as I've known you,
the NEC days and beyond, and that is the term Black Theater Autonomy.
I think I know what you mean by it, but how would you define what you mean by that, one,
and do you think it has been achieved?
And if yes, when, by the NEC particularly, and now?
Well, basically the term autonomy simply connotes independence, you know, being in charge, personally
or organizationally, being in charge, and without the imposition from outside forces
and so forth, so it's within, autonomy comes from within, on a personal level, and organizationally
it means that the organization is in charge of making independent decisions about what
it does.
Now, of course, in theory, artistically that means that the organization is in total charge
of the decision-making process of what it chooses to do and how it does it and so forth
without any, you know, imposition from outside.
Of course, I used it in terms of the creation of an independent Black Theater, which became
in historical terms the creation of the Negro Ensemble Company, and thankfully at the time
that we created the Negro Ensemble Company, which was in 1967, the time was right and right
for, to get the support that was necessary to run a, you know, a major company dedicated
to doing creative Black work in theater and also training, and thankfully at that time
I wound up writing an article in the New York Times called Black Theater for White's
Only?
American Theater.
Yeah, American Theater for White's Only, Question Mark, and then I proceeded to illustrate
my analysis of our place at that moment and ultimately proposed what should be and how
it should happen and the form of the organization itself and what it could accomplish.
But I knew that Black's involvement in cultural movements was lacking, and even then, that
the only thing that would solve the lack would be our own independent activity.
I don't think I was even using the word Alzheimer's in, but I was using the term independent.
It was already that we had to do for ourselves, and the only way that we would be able to
change the situation would be to be in total control of our own destiny.
You've always stated that you considered the Black Theater audience to be the most sophisticated
audience in the theater and in the world, so I'm hoping that you could explain, A, what
you mean by that, and B, expand on it in some detail, okay?
Yes.
The Black audience, in terms of my comment about the best audience in the world, comes
out of my observation, especially now historically, because at the time of the creation of the
Alzheimer's come that period, you know, 60s and even earlier, there was no Black, quote,
legitimate theater audience in terms that we know of.
Yes, Black, there was a Black audience, and it was culture, and it went to, you know,
Black cultural events, but as far as conventional serious Black theater, playwriting, live theater,
and so forth, except for, you know, amateur work, YMCA, YWCA, sort of activity, so there
was no professional outlets, the theater was not about them, the plays were not about them,
the issues were not about them, presented in the plays, the aesthetics were not about
them, you know, we had a wonderful, as you know, we had a wonderful popular audience
for popular venues, music, and vaudeville, vaudevillian type of thing, but there was
no legitimate theater audience.
So those of us who aspired to be legitimate writers, legitimate theater writers, so there
was no public, what made me, freed me as a writer, was coming to the realization that
I wanted to write for a Black public that didn't exist, and I consciously wrote for
a Black public as if they existed, and I could imagine them as an audience, and I could write
as if they were there, this wasn't just a social idea, this was an aesthetic idea, because
once I decided that I was writing directly for them, I didn't have to over, be over explicit,
I could be suggestive as a writer, I could imply, I could suggest, they would feel in
the blanks, once I wrote for them as if they existed, I had to go out and get them, and
make the long story short, so I did, see we're happy in the day of after, when we opened
the show, it wasn't enough for me just to have a show open up on convention or off
Broadway, I had to say, okay, the audience that I need for this, I have to go get them,
and I proceeded to use my organizational smarts to do exact exact, I went to where the Black
public was, trade unions, social clubs, churches, and so forth, to get them, I wasn't satisfied,
I don't care if the New York Times or Post or whatever the conventional opinion makers,
mainstream white opinion makers, whatever they said, they could have loved to play,
I wouldn't have been satisfied if only white people showed up to see the work that I had
consciously addressed, first and foremost to the Black audience, as I said, everybody
is willing, you can come, and it's not like other people can't experience our experience
through us as creators, but what I found out is that once they came, the question you asked
me is the most wonderful thing about it that I discovered is that they came with no preconceptions,
they came with no educated sensibilities, in the same way that we know that a bourgeois
white audience comes after being taught what to think, how to think about different aesthetic
styles and so forth, or to be intimidated by their opinion makers, what the opinion
makers are saying, and to sum up a black audience, I said, the only thing that's unacceptable
to them is if you put them to sleep, if you bore them and they go to sleep on you.
Other than that, they don't come in saying, oh, this is out on guard, this is so forth.
Now we also have found out that the mass black public once exposed a dragoon or manipulated
to the superficial aspects of their own cultural lives, like the urban, what is now called
urban theory, that appeals to the lowest common denominator of instincts and social appreciation
that they can be lazy, too, they can be not challenged and they will go for the bad jokes
and the conscious manipulation of their religious forever and all that shit.
So they can be used also, but what I'm talking about, the question you asked me, is a serious
public that is exposed to us as artists in our most serious intentions, where we intend
to challenge them with whatever our aspiration of their own lives and their own culture,
challenge them by content and style.
And as you know, even with silver work, Gus, I've done a couple of plays like I've done
what we've done for me, of yours.
It turns out there's not a positive character in the whole play, that's for you.
And even I was wondering, I said, okay, maybe you're going to get upset with this so-called
on the surface negative view of this black family existence.
But no, the audience came in and they accepted the over expression of the play, but they
realized that there was a subtext underneath the play, that despite its so-called negativity,
that it was a valid viewpoint and a statement that you were making without being explicit
about it, you were making a particular statement that, hey, right through the life, and even
the brother, sister, aunts, that's all that stuff, they knew that, hey, that the specific
details of the play that you were using had truth to it.
The bottom line is that public, which had no preconception when they walked in the theater,
and as I said, they would accept style, content, anything else as long as the shit went through.
If today someone asked you to recreate another theater company, this is 2012, like the NEC,
that you created with Jerry Cron and Robert Hooks in 1967, what advice would you give
them about going ahead to do that?
What would you emphasize?
And what would you promote even, okay?
The irony about that question is that sitting here in what, 2012, unfortunately, I almost
would have to do the same thing I did before in 1967, nah, there'd be major differences.
There are things that we'd accomplish, you know, that Black Theater accomplished, and
we'd accomplish, and what Black Theater accomplished, and there's by us, we have a body of work
that we didn't have when we started in 1967, so now we have a body of work, we don't have
to emphasize, let's say, the body of work.
We have a wonderful, broad, spacious body of work, so thankfully, that exists, however,
the question of an institution that was crucial and independent as you asked me, autonomous,
the first question you asked me, an autonomous institution is required to sustain the permanent
continuity, 100% exclusivity, focus on the creation and continuation and duplication
and replication of Black words, is we don't have that.
Now, there are a host of communities, groups, and Black theaters, you know, and so forth,
all over the country, however, there is no flagship institution operating on the same
level of the New York Insarm Company.
New York Insarm Company, not just because I don't mean it subjectively, personally,
as you know by now, even when I talk about what I do, it's never subjective, there's
always an objective component to it, when I talk about what we achieved, what we didn't
achieve, not just a personal thing, it is an objective viewpoint.
New York Insarm Company functioned almost as a flagship of the Black theater movement
because it was operating on such a 100% temperature of Black creativity, skill-wise, result-wise,
crack-wise, challenge-wise, it was functioning, and therefore, and that was confirmed by its
public, by its audience, and even the critical creative fraternity, confirmed the fact that
what was being done was A-class creativity on the level of A-class creativity, and it
was regular and continuous, at least three or four players a year, season-wise, so whatever
was happening in terms of what was considered to be Black theater, hey, there was a flagship
institution that was always there.
Now, when I talk about autonomy, I was the autonomy of that institution, and all I mean
is they're not public, not subjective, this means a person that has to be final decision-makers,
selectors, who makes the final decision about what that institution does, how it doesn't,
because what happens is they always say, somebody has to take responsibility for the failures.
See, people think that you want to be in charge of a theater because you want the power to
final say so, no. That responsibility is a measure. Who's going to take responsibility
when something fucks up, or when something doesn't work, and is a failure? We have lost
that autonomous institution, and if it has to be done all over again, there's no better
road map or blueprint than what I laid out before. The training component I would still
keep, even though we know now that the body of work, that we have a cadre, we have a
wonderful cadre of performers out there. However, the negative aspect of our present
time is that the young, black actors, and even others aspiring to careers, are doing
out of an ignorance that is stupendous. We were self-motivated with some idea, some sense
of what we need to do to develop our own chops out of our own background and culture. Today,
if you ask them about whether they are auditioning or learning from black material, it's obviously
a blank. They're ignorant of their own material. They're ignorant of the body of work I talked
about. When I talked earlier about the body of work, the body of work is there, but they
aren't even positioned to find out about it. So many of them want to become actors once
again starting 50 degrees before they even get to material, dealing with their own lives
or characters, wonderful characters that have been created for them to learn from. It's
almost like we have to retrain the new generation in attitude, the same attitude that we took
towards creating an autonomous black theater in the first place has to be always recaptured,
refrained, because they're going backwards. Now, the other thing I would emphasize now
to support that institution would be a full-scale, all-out attempt to develop a subscription
in black audience. There's nothing that can sustain a black institution independently,
but a stable black subscription audience. So that's the only thing that can allow us
to create as a freedom, not of a daily, not of a single ticket, not people coming for
every show, waiting for an individual show, but a subscription audience that can support
a season of four players, let's say, and sufficient enough, big enough, wide enough in a mass
that we don't have to rely financially on what was available to us that's no longer
available. The black wealth, the individuals with black wealth have proved very disappointed.
If they had come in to support an institution like the NEC, when I tried to get them, when
the NEC was on the ropes, we would still be active on the same level that we did. No,
they're disappointed, and they will still be disappointed, because their priorities
tend to be different. Even those who are in the entertainment field, I tried to get those
in. I said, look, I know you're supporting the colleges and you're supporting your churches
and all that, but just give back to your own field. But at the same time, the greatness,
the great positive thing about what we did is that's there. We don't have to re-do that.
We have a body of work. We have living playwrights that still exist. So all we have to do is
utilize them in a new institution.
