From J. Holtham, guest blogger
October 2nd, 2009 marked four years since the death of August Wilson. Like I mentioned here a couple of days ago, the thought of that sent me reaching out to other black playwrights to get a sense of the community and the field. It’s so easy to feel disconnected from other writers, to feel like you’re the only one pounding your head against walls, to feel alone.
At the Black Playwrights Convening, I found the answers to a lot of those questions and feelings, and many others there did as well. At the end of the weekend, six of the participants read sections of their works-in-progress for a packed auditorium. The excerpts were funny, passionate, smart, engaging and all radically different, in tone, style, voice, subject matter. Each told a vital story, stories we haven’t heard, stories that were powerful and human, and all very black. (Whatever you think that means.) After a long weekend of passionate discussion, some argument and a fair amount of frustration, it was a great finish.
In the final session of the convening, David asked each of the participants to come up with ideas for moving forward. The responses were wide-ranging and comprehensive, from editorials to festivals to the very personal commitments to each other and our own work. It was a powerful list of ideas and a swirl of energy, that may be best summed up by advice Robert O’Hara got from a mentor: “Do what you do and if they run you out of town, lead the parade.”
Some of the other ideas and questions were:
- How to connect black theatres to black wealth? With stars like Usher, Jay-Z and Will Smith providing support for Broadway shows.
- Lobbying African-American art museums to accept plays as art (It was noted that there are 254 African-American art museums in the country).
- Build bridges between black theatres and help figure out ways to connect the theatres to new work
- Encourage a publisher like TCG to do an anthology of black plays of the 20th Century to introduce them into the “canon.”
- More critical and scholarly writing about the work
- Look at what is working in terms of black theatre and try to emulate that
- Cultivating black directors by choosing to work with them as often as possible.
It was an incredibly fruitful and exciting weekend and I was glad to be there.
This was my second straight MLK weekend in Washington, D.C. On Monday, I went into the city and, for the first time in my adult life, went to the Museum of American History. I went to an exhibit on African-American culture in D.C. as photographed by the Spurlocks and then, in the next room over, saw the flag that inspired The Star-Spangled Banner. I watched the crowds, walking the Mall, the sea of human faces, all colors, all races and kinds. After the weekend, I don’t know if I ever felt more a part of it all.
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