Theaters in the Black : Is African-American Trend Motivated by Art or Profit?

It looks as if San Diego may be experiencing a new wave--perhaps even an avalanche--of African-American theater offerings.

Most immediately, “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson,” the world-premiere Amiri Baraka-Max Roach musical about black gangster Bumpy Johnson, opens at the San Diego Repertory Theatre on Wednesday, followed soon after by “Two Trains Running,” the latest play by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson, which comes to the Old Globe Theatre in March.

Sushi Performance Gallery and the African-American Museum of Fine Art will co-produce black performance artist Rhodessa Jones in “Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women,” beginning Thursday. In April the North Coast Repertory Theatre will produce “The Blood Knot,” white South African playwright Athol Fugard’s story about dark- and light-skinned brothers born of the same mother, and this summer, the La Jolla Playhouse plans to present “The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin,” a new play by white playwright Eric Overmyer about a pair of black ragtime musicians.

Several other productions almost made it on the boards: The Bowery Theatre Company planned to present Bill Harris’ “Stories About the Old Days” in February, a play about an elderly black couple, but canceled because of a budget deficit. For its summer season, Starlight Musical Theatre tried but failed to acquire the rights to “Abyssinia,” a gospel musical that the company tested out in its staged reading series.

Is it coincidence that nearly every major theater in town is tapping into new material from black artists, a source seldom used before? Or is it more a matter of local theaters trying to expand subscription bases and funding sources by looking for new audiences?

Is it art, or is it profit?

Are companies simply responding to new government funding requirements that demand more evidence of integration?

It all depends whom you ask.

“Why, after 20 years, is there all this activity?” asks Floyd Gaffney, a longtime theater director and professor of drama who is also coordinator of the Contemporary Black Arts Program at UC San Diego. “Maybe I’m cynical because I’ve been here too long. But there are a lot of changes coming down the pike in terms of funding and criteria that have to be adhered to in integrating organizations from the top down. I’m not saying there aren’t people inside these organizations who are working for change. But you have to play the ballgame.”

Yet he was “cautiously optimistic,” enough, as he puts it, to join the San Diego Rep’s newly formed African-American Advisory Council. However, Gaffney, who is black, says he made it clear to the Rep that he doesn’t see it as his role to bring the African-American audience into the theater. What he wants is an artistic say in programming.

Last year, he pushed hard--but failed to succeed--in persuading the Rep to put August Wilson’s “Fences” into its season schedule. Gaffney still expresses frustration over this, and ultimately directed the San Diego premiere of Wilson’s first Pulitzer Prize-winning play for the Southeast Community Theatre at the Lyceum Space last May.

Sam Woodhouse, producing director of the Rep, who is white, acknowledges that the company has “not hired enough, and shared the talents of enough African-American artists.” But the Rep, he says, has one of the better local records in multicultural programming. It was one of the first companies in town to practice cross-cultural casting, picking Whoopi Goldberg, when she was just a local actress, to play in Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage.” In its latest production of “A Christmas Carol,” the majority of the cast was black and Latino.

Woodhouse stands by his choices: As for “Fences,” he said, “other projects interested me more.” But “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson” excited him.

“The play tells one of many untold stories of the Harlem Renaissance, which was an astonishing flowering of creativity, of economic ascension and the birth of a lot of political power for African-Americans in this country,” he said. “We have all heard the stories of Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello over and over again, but we never heard the story of Bumpy Johnson.”

But, although the inspiration and, perhaps, the funding pressures to mount multiethnic theater grows, theaters, particularly in troubled economic times, do attend the bottom line: Will these shows sell tickets?

So far, this year, the answer is an overwhelming yes, although no one in any of the theater companies can or will say how many of those ticket buyers are blacks. Without audience surveys it is impossible to tell whether it is interest in the multicultural aspects of the shows that is attracting the audiences, or simply the quality of the plays and players themselves. Whatever the combination, however, the equation surely is working.

Thomas Hall, managing director of the Old Globe Theatre, who is white, reports that “Two Trains Running” has the strongest advance sales of any play in the Globe’s winter season. This will be the third production of a Wilson play at the Globe, and Hall said the playwright has “a standing invitation” to have all of his forthcoming work produced at the Globe.

Woodhouse said he does not have the final figures on “Bumpy Johnson,” but the advance sales have been as strong as any show in the Rep’s season.

The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company did better with “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” which it cast interracially with black film star Pam Grier, than it did with any play all season. The Gaslamp is planning interracial casting for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” under the direction of African-American director Oz Scott in March, 1992.

Both the Rep and the Gaslamp are trying to rebuild a subscription base, having seen theirs fall dangerously low. Bringing in the black audience is not just a short-term, but rather long-term goal, for both.

“It is not born out of crisis, but it is connected to audience rebuilding,” said Adrian Stewart, the Rep’s managing director, who is white. “We feel there is a lot of potential growth and opportunity to build a broader audience for all the works of the Rep.”

But all the companies, including the Globe and the Playhouse, have worked aggressively to cultivate connections with the African-American community in the past few years.

Two names mentioned over and over again as bridges to that community are Shirley Day Williams, founder and executive director of the African-American Museum of Fine Art and Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson, cultural affairs officer at the Educational Cultural Complex, and commissioner on the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

Thompson, who understudied the part of the mother in Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at the Old Globe, and picked up a San Diego Critics’ Circle nomination for best actress for the part of the mother in “Fences,” has organized dialogues at the ECC for both the Globe and Playhouse.

She said she’s “glad to be a conduit” to the African-American community, but said she would caution these organizations, “If you’re going to use us, then help us as well,” she said.

“As a member of the arts commission, one of the things we’ve been trying to pump into the arts community is that there needs to be more outreach into the African-American and Mexican community with public dollars. What they’re seeing is that there’s a market for black dollars in the theater. They’re going after those dollars, and that’s fine in its way, but the market is also available when there aren’t black plays going on. Let’s get involved with the African-American community on a regular basis,” Thompson said.

Williams’ name is newer to the theater scene, but ever since she began her museum without walls two years ago, she has aggressively pursued a multifaceted partnership arrangement with a variety of theatrical and fine arts organizations.

The Gaslamp threw a benefit for her museum. The museum’s third annual show, “Images of Black San Diego: A Cultural Experience,” opens in the Lyceum Theatre lobby Thursday to coincide with the opening of “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson,” and she is discussing an exhibition at the Old Globe to complement “Two Trains Running.”

Williams also is a member of the San Diego Rep’s African-American Advisory Council as well as a member of Sushi’s board of directors and part of a three-way partnership with Sushi and the Centro Cultural de la Raza as a member of the National Performance Network.

Williams said she understands that part of her role in working with these organizations is audience development--sharing a mailing list and putting announcements in churches, beauty salons and bookstores. “Any time our name appears with other organizations, that’s a given,” she said.

“The larger organizations get benefit out of working with us in a collaborative way, and that’s fine as long as we’re clear about the benefits for the museum and other African-American artists as well. I’m hoping we’ll begin to see some changes in staffing patterns. I see opportunities opening very slowly. Obviously, we’re intrigued with the idea that there’s an increase in programming that is Afro-centric, or purports to be, because it’s a beginning. It’s long overdue, but it is a beginning.”

“There’s still a lot to be done,” Thompson agreed. “We’ve made some inroads, but we haven’t jumped any great hurdles, and we haven’t broken any records. There are some people within the organizations that are willing to try. We have to work with them and do better. And be glad we’re further along than when I came here seven years ago, and there wasn’t any black theater at all.”