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PEOPLE Terrence Spivey Energy Source By Yuko Kur ahashi T Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain, directed by Spivey at Karamu House in 2006. errence Spivey first encountered Karamu House as a subject in his Acting 101 class at Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, Tex., in the early 1980s. Founded in 1915 in Cleveland, Ohio, Karamu was one of four iconic African-American theatres, young Spivey learned from his textbook, along with the Negro Ensemble Company, New Federal Theatre and Freedom Theatre. Karamu was the oldest of the four. So it was with an acute awareness of his forebears and the weight of history that—more than 20 years later, in 2003—Spivey took the reins of Karamu House himself. Now he’s in his sixth season as the venerable but notalways-prosperous company’s artistic director. In September ’08 he opened Tony Kushner’s musical Caroline, or Change (in collaboration with neighboring Dobama Theatre); the following month he directed Waitin’ 2 End Hell, William a. Parker’s family comedy; and on the heels of Karamu’s holiday production of Langston Hughes’s Black Nativity, the theatre is currently featuring Spivey’s staging of Thomas Gibbons’s A House with No Walls. In July he will direct the revue It Ain’t Nothin’ but the Blues and assist education and cultural arts director Sheffia Randall Dooley with Karamu’s annual summer theatre camp, where 100 to 150 children from 5 to 15 years of age are trained in acting, dancing, singing and mime. That’s a schedule and a half. But Spivey walks, talks, teaches, directs and laughs with enormous energy—as the challenges arise, as they have throughout his artistic career, he simply keeps going. His tireless efforts were most recently recognized when he received the Kuumba award at the second annual Nguzo Saba awards ceremony in Cleveland this past December, and this year he was invited to become a member of the prestigious National Theatre Conference. Born in Kountze, Tex., as the eldest of five siblings, and raised by his single mother and great-grandparents, Spivey was introduced to the blues in a juke joint next to his greatgrandparents’ house; in elementary school, he got his first theatrical role, as a turkey, in a Thanksgiving play. Later, when the family was living in Houston, his mother took her children to the Majestic Theatre every week—it was there that Spivey began to develop his love of “show business,” watching Pam Grier, Ron O’Neal and Jim Brown in the action-packed “blaxploitation” films of the 1960s and ’70s. After high school (where he played a cattle rustler in Oklahoma!) and his years at A&M (which became the first traditionally black college to be invited to the American College Theater Festival at the Kennedy Center in D.C., with a production of Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope featuring Spivey in the cast), he moved with friends to New York City. He was to live and work there for the next 18 years. Spivey acted Off and Off-Off Broadway in such plays as Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty and Waldo Pagune’s The Crime of This Life, studied the Meisner technique with William Esper, directed when the opportunity arose—and, in 2001, founded a nonprofit company in East Harlem called Powerful Long Ladder, for which he staged a critically acclaimed production of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls…. Spivey’s one-on-one relationship with Karamu began in 42AMERICAN THEATRE FEB09 courtesy of karamu house His tireless efforts are aimed at restoring Cleveland’s Karamu House to its historic and artistic mission YUKO KURAHASHI: Karamu House has an important history that not many people know about. How did it start? TERRENCE SPIVEY: Karamu means, in Swa- courtesy of karamu house hili, “a place of joyful gathering.” It was founded by Russell and Rowena WoodhamJelliffe, Oberlin graduates, as the Playhouse Settlement for the city’s multiracial community. The Jelliffes wanted this settlement house to provide artistic, recreational and educational activities to improve the lives of the underprivileged in Cleveland—originally it was located in the Roaring Third district. Spivey spring 2003, when executive director Gerry McClamy invited him to come to Cleveland to guest-direct Carlyle Brown’s The Little Tommy Parker Celebrated Colored Minstrel Show for the financially troubled company, which, despite her best efforts, was on the brink of closing. Tommy Parker was a smash. Karamu’s subsequent resuscitation, as Spivey revealed in an interview, is more or less history. FEB09 AMERICANTHEATRE So Karamu is one of the oldest AfricanAmerican theatres. Yes and no. I see Karamu as a multicultural company that produces African-American theatre. That is what makes it so unique even today—flexibility within diversity. In the beginning, it was a community theatre for diverse races and cultures—its identity as an African-American theatre was first formed in the 1920s, when Charles Gilpin encouraged them to transform it into a professional Negro theatre focusing on contemporary AfricanAmerican plays. But in my view, it continued to keep its identity as a multicultural theatre company until the 1960s. The 1940s, 1950s—and even the 1960s—were the growing years of Karamu. A fire in 1939 completely destroyed the original theatre—it was rumored that somebody set the fire since some residents did not like a theatre of mixed races. Karamu utilized other venues to rehearse and perform before moving to the current location at East 89th and Quincy. During the years of the Civil Rights Movement, Karamu received national attention when two internationally acclaimed German directors—Benno D. Frank and Helmuth Wolfes—staged Macbeth, The Devil’s Gold and Foolish and Fickle at the theatre. Karamu’s production of The Medium went to Broadway, and the theatre mounted the musical Jamaica after its Broadway run. The “joyful place” was rocking back in the day! What caused the changes in the 1970s? Like many other small theatres, Karamu suffered from a heavy revolving door in the aftermath of the ’60s. There was a change in infrastructure. The Black Nationalist Movement echoed throughout the country 43 courtesy of karamu house courtesy of karamu house PEOPLE Left, Caroline, or Change, a co-production between Karamu and Dobama Theatre this past fall; right, Purlie Victorious, directed by Spivey in 2007. as more African Americans moved into certain districts—including where Karamu is located. The Black Arts Movement pushed the grassroots theatres, like Karamu, to become black-only theatres, and in turn, Karamu lost its grassroots audience. Also, mainstream theatre companies began to receive funding to produce ethnic plays, and that contributed to Karamu losing its multicultural audiences. How do you see the current status of African-American theatre? Should we compare it with the 1960s? We cannot compare the current status of African-American theatre to that in the 1960s, when it was represented by revolutionary playwrights such as Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins and Douglas Turner Ward. I think playwrights today have diverse ways to address social and political messages. August Wilson, Pearl Cleage, Bridgette Wimberly and S.M. Shepard-Massat use realism. Suzan-Lori Parks, like Adrienne Kennedy, uses abstract dramaturgy. The problem we face in the 2000s is that some black playwrights have to depend on commissions from non-black theatres for their support, due to the lack of funding. So their work tends to get done at more mainstream theatres, then recycled for Black History Month slots, or finally validated enough to hit the local black theatre companies. Yet, whether an African-American play is done at a black or mainstream theatre, it still keeps the African-American artist working. That’s what August Wilson talked about in his controversy with Robert Brustein. Wilson wanted to grow an African-American theatre that spoke to black audiences. I would like to see Karamu grow as a multicultural theatre, like it used to be—a company that speaks to multicultural audiences. For that purpose I collaborate with other theatres in the Cleveland area, to broaden the network and bring visibility. A great recent example is Caroline, or Change, a collaboration with Doboma—my primary goal is to direct Karamu toward embracing different ethnic cultures beyond the African-American community. Still, I think Karamu is important in the history of African-American theatre. Right. I also see Karamu, along with Crossroads Theatre Company and the Negro Ensemble Company, as one of the few “revived” black theatres. Crossroads was founded in 1978, closed in 2000, and recently 44AMERICANTHEATRE FEB09 revived. The Negro Ensemble was resurrected, after many years of financial struggles and lack of a permanent theatre, when it found a home at the Harlem School of the Arts. In a way, Karamu was also reborn. In 2004 and 2005, we won a spate of awards, from such organizations as the Cleveland Theater Collective, the Black Theatre Network and the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education. With a new executive director, Greg Ashe, who is doing an exceptional job, we have been able to raise funds through different venues. The past three shows in 2008, in spite of the economic crunch, managed to generate enough money to cover expenses. The Youth Theatre Program has become one of the most vital arts programs for youth in the Cleveland area. What was your motivation to develop this program? In talking to my son, I realized that too many important historical moments are no longer taught in schools. Creating a venue for kids to learn black history and theatre has been one of our goals. In the past, the selection of plays was less educational and did not address serious issues. The Youth Theatre Program totally changed focus by staging The Little Boy Who Shook Up the World: The Emmett Till Story, Breaking Barriers: Little Rock Nine and Footsoldiers for Freedom: The Birmingham Children’s March, which are all part of Nicole Kearney’s 10-play cycle. We also added the Young Adults Series for high school teens to do full-length plays—last year we presented A Raisin in the Sun with an all-teen cast, and this year we will stage Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector-General. We also have the Cultural Arts Program with after-school classes, and the MU Troupe, a mime troupe going out to the schools. The programs compensate for the fact that many schools are eliminating drama clubs and arts programs. When you’re not engulfed in Karamu’s schedule, what do you like to do? I like spending time with my wife, Shari, and our children, Cinque and Malikah. I also like to collect movie posters from the black films of the ’70s and to watch indie films. I’m also finding time to teach an African-American theatre seminar at Kent State—as a colleague of yours. Yuko Kurahashi is an associate professor in the school of theatre and dance at Kent State University. FEB09 AMERICANTHEATRE 45