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Performing Communities
Table of Contents

About Performing Communities

 
 
Carpetbag Theater Company

Telephone interview with Linda Parris-Bailey, company artistic director

Nayo Watkins: You told me before a little bit about the history of Carpetbag, about why you do what you do, about how you got to the place that guides Carpetbag’s vision now.

Linda Parris-Bailey
Linda Parris-Bailey, Executive Director of The Carpetbag Theatre [image gallery]

Linda Parris-Bailey: Well, you know, in looking at all of the people that are celebrating anniversaries – this is our 31st year – and doing the "Voices" project, we were really looking at the fact that so many cultural organizations that had notions about social change agenda developed in the late ’60’s and early ’70’s. You know, there was a lot of activity around that time, and there were some new funding opportunities and some new ways that people were thinking about the artistic work outside the major social centers, major cities where people were doing work. And looking at how that decentralization was taking place, how black organizations were developing these theater components.

The people that founded Carpetbag: Wilmer Lucus who came to Knoxville as a writer in residence at Knoxville College, had been involved in the development of a theater company in Philadelphia. Wilmer is a playwright, writes short stories and prose. While he was here at Knoxville College, his wife, who was a visual artist and a history professor here at the college, they began to really talk about what the community needed culturally. And that it didn’t have a cultural center and voice, and a way for young artists to develop. There wasn’t a way to train young artists and have activities in the community because there was no organized effort. So, they got together with community activists and community artists and historians. And you know, all of those people were talking together. They were all working together at the time, if you could separate out the cultural part from all the other activities. They came together and they decided to develop an organization and to make it a legal entity that had longevity, that was an umbrella for the development of all of the allied arts. It wasn’t just to be a theater. It was to be a place where publishing could happen. It was to be a place where there was dance, you know all of this activity in the arts. And it was to be umbrellaed under this organization.

So, that’s how things got started. And Wilmer after the kind of initial meetings, began to put together the legal entity with some help from the guy who became the chancellor at UT. He helped with all the legal development in terms of getting the organization incorporated and filing for the 501C-3 and all of that kind of thing that happened. That all happened in ’69. The organization was founded. A board of directors was put together. Programs began, and in 1970 the organization got its 501C-3 [nonprofit] status. From the very beginning, the role of developing young artists, the role of doing new work was a primary focus. From the very beginning, the organization was designed to develop new work. As an organization, we’ve done performances and what-not of scripted material, but I think the connection with our ongoing ensemble and operation and all those things is really rooted in that desire to create work and to have a voice that is uniquely from this community. And to strengthen that voice and to move it beyond being just a generalized community theater, but to be something specifically with a voice and a particular view about culture and art.

I came along in ’74 and during those years that Carpetbag was forming I was a college student. First at State University of New York at New Paltz and then at Howard University. The same kinds of things that were happening here in the community were happening in Washington. The New Colony Theatre, and things that were developing around the country. Things we were reading about, studying, like the Free Southern Theater and all the theater companies and practices that we were becoming aware of and experiencing in one way or another. All of those things were shaping how I was interpreting and how I was moving forward individually as a theater artist. My first kind of theater experience was trying to put something together in high school for what was referred to as the "African-American Club." My whole notion of theater and ideas about what could happen through theater were tied to action and activism. There was that mood. There was that support. There was that education about what was going on in the country. So, when I came to Carpetbag in ’74, I came with all of those notions. I came with a desire to put together an ensemble.

As a senior college student, we were asked to put together our dream company on paper. When I developed my company it was a company that did original work. It was a company that toured and had training and all of those things. But I think the like-mindedness of the organization and my personal goals and interests really served us. I think that is why I am still with Carpetbag. That’s why I am still guiding us in that direction, I think, because it is very deeply rooted. I think that what keeps the members of the ensemble together is that rootedness. It is that desire to do theater, to perform, to be an ensemble – but also to have a broader impact on the community. Not just our community, but all the communities that we come to. The average is something like 12 some-odd years for an ensemble member. On those occasions when people are disgruntled and trying to work things out, and you begin to wonder – if things are so bad then why are you still here? And I think it’s that fundamental desire to use your artistic work, to use your expression. To be able to act, and sing, and move, and drum for something. That it’s not just an individual expression. That it is to move something.

NW: In the way that you all create your work, can you describe that process? And who is involved in that process?

LPB: It varies. In some ways it may be different phases, and I’m not saying that in a linear way or a progressive way. What phase of the work, what time of the work are we in? When we first began to develop the ensemble I think there was a really unique and high level of collaboration and collective work and investment. We sought out stories and ideas for productions, for script development, collectively. And we would sit together and talk about what our ideas were for our pieces.

When you look at "Dark Cowgirls," we were essentially trying to develop an idea. And I came across some material and brought it to the group and said, "This just really looks exciting and appealing. Do you guys think this is something we should do – kind of work on this?" And everybody agreed. Everybody did research. I wrote the script. Basically the process was that we would agree on telling a particular story. I would go and develop that into some kind of piece that seemed to make sense to me in terms of what the message was. I would bring it back to the group. We would read through it. We performed for one another and then we would critique and say, "That’s working. That’s what I want it to say," or "That’s not what I think the story is about." And that was our process of editing and developing and putting that together. Later in the process, in fact, after we had been performing it – and it kind of developed in stages until we figured, "Okay, we are finished" – then we brought an outside director in. That was much later in the process. Tom Bullard, in fact, was the person that came in did the dramaturgical work, tweaked it, etc.

You take a piece like "Red Summer," which had a different kind of development. It started with a collective idea again. People said, in the Knoxville community, "Black folks don’t own nothing. Black folks don’t control nothing." I kept seeing pictures of all of these businesses and people began to talk to me about, "Oh yeah – I remember such and such." And then I came across a conversation with somebody about the Knoxville riots. We began to look at what instigated this "riot." But also, what was it about the times that was significantly different from now, and it seemed to be connected to control and ownership and all those kinds of things. So, initially three of us sat down – myself and Joe Crump and I believe it was Danny – we tried to collectively put the story together and to actually write it together. And we tried that and tried that and we just couldn’t agree on a singular vision. We couldn’t tell one story. So, what happened with that piece is that we commissioned someone to come in and develop a story based on all the research we had done, all the interviews we had done. Because I did interviews. Joe did interviews. Danny did interviews. And we had collected quite a bit of material. So, we brought in a young writer and basically what she had done –we asked to read some of her work. She submitted scripts. We interviewed her. We sat down with her and commissioned her to write the script. She developed a script and when we got it, it really was a kind of domestic drama. It didn’t really speak to the issues that we wanted to speak to.

So, we brought in Steve Kent and went through a whole restructuring process, a whole redevelopment and reworking of the material. Steve then directed the production and we performed it. And all of us had input. All of the ensemble members were involved. We describe Steve’s post-it process, where we talk about what it is we want to say. Where is that information? Where are the important things? And basically, literally took the whole thing apart and then put it back together. So, that was the ensemble process there.

"Ce Nitram Sacul" I wrote as a playwright. I just wrote it because I needed to write it and then brought it to the company and said, "Is this something that we want to do? Is this something that the company wants to be engaged in?" It has four women and no men. It doesn’t involve everyone in the company. I didn’t really write it for the company, but is the company interested? And enough people in the company said, "Yeah, we’re interested and let’s do it." So, it had an entirely different process. We rehearsed and developed a performance of it and then worked with Diablo Mundo from Argentina and re-did the whole visual element of the piece, on the movements. They have a commedia background, and within their company they had a designer. They had a director. They had people who were engaged in movement and music. And you know, all of our work has music, a cappella singing in it. It started out as an accidental thing and then it became a signature thing. Something that really works for us, and something that everybody in the company wanted to do. Something that we enjoy tremendously as a group, so we began to develop that. We worked with Diablo Mundo for about three months and completely restructured the work. Mostly the visual elements and the movement elements, which are so much a part of "Ce Nitram," because there is a chorus that doesn’t speak. It sings and it moves and it creates this environment for the two main characters. So, that had an entirely different way of working together.

The ensemble work happens in a variety of different ways, but the core of it is that the company members have an investment, first of all, in terms of the research, the choices of materials, the way the material is presented and moved forward. The ensemble has essentially made decisions about selection and approval. We work together with outside artists almost as partners. For instance, based upon the work of "Ce Nitram ...," we have internal and external directors. I think that is kind of the underpinning of the work. We engage, we try to engage – or have been recently trying to engage – young artists. Newer artists. And again, there is not a lot of room for that as long as the ensemble stays the ensemble. But we have had movement in and out and really have been deliberately trying to bring in new, younger artists as we have all gotten older. I told you the joke about looking up one day and realizing we didn’t have an ingenue –we didn’t have anybody to play young parts. You just can’t get away with doing that. There’s a dramatic difference between 45 and 20. And one of the issues is, how do you bring a new artist – a person who really doesn’t know about the ensemble process – how do you bring them in? How do you give them what took you 10 or 12 years to build as a group, and incorporate them? Help them to feel the same kind of investment in the process and the product and all of that?

NW: So, have you all figured that out?

LPB: No. We haven’t. You know one of the things that we did figure out is that we had to involve them from the beginning on all levels. I think one of the mistakes we made early on – and well, we continue to make the same mistakes – was that we had people who came in for a particular production and did not incorporate them in all the other activities of the organization. Then when we began to say to them, "You really need to do such and such and such and such –" they didn’t have the background, they didn’t have the experience. The one lesson that we have learned is that if you are going to maintain an ensemble, you have to involve people into all of the work.

NW: When you were speaking about "Red Summer" you talked about having to search for what was it you wanted the play to say. Can you talk a little bit about how you all figure out what it is you are trying to say, and what are the things that guide you in trying figure out that?

LPB: I think there are a couple of things. Our good friends kind of referred to me as "the cheerleader for the revolution," and I think that one of the things that seems to guide us is: How do we change the balance of power internally and externally? And how do we get individuals in the community as a whole to understand what power they hold? And that was a very central theme in "Red Summer," because one of the things we observed in our community was a lack of sense of ownership, and certainly a wide-spread feeling that people can’t do anything. That’s the way it is. It’s always been that way. And nothing is going to change. People had a very defined sense of territory – very clearly understood in their own minds where the boundaries were. What we wanted to say through "Red Summer" was, first of all, that was historically incorrect. And that you have lost your memory of what actually was in the community and who held power where. Maybe if we just remind you of the history, of what has been here before, you can see some possibility for the future. So, what we were trying to do is to get people to change their minds about what was possible.

And I think that is fundamental to our work. We do a kind of celebratory theater in terms of the historical pieces we do. We talk about people who take control. Who become empowered. Who empower themselves. Because I think we just see a lot of – I mean in young people, in old people – disillusionment, disheartened. There’s just an inability to envision something different. So, a lot of our work deals with that. We deal with issues, but we still keep that at the core. We deal with all kinds of issues, some of which come to us, some of which we seek out. It’s probably a fairly even balance between the two.

An example is the piece, "The Punishing of Willy Jake Giles." We had no intention of doing a piece about the death penalty. We as an organization had different views – I mean, as an ensemble we had differing views about the death penalty and it was surprising. So, our internal work didn’t say, "This is a subject we want to talk about and we want to go and kind of develop a piece that discusses this issue in our community." It was something that came to us. And as we began to research it and began to understand the issues – particularly the issues around race and the death penalty, we said, "Oh yeah. This is something we should talk about." The first thing was confronting our own differences. I had not taken an active stand about the death penalty. I had not made any kind of public pronouncement or that kind of thing about the death penalty issue. I understood the issue. I had certain feelings about it, you know. But to then open the ensemble, the organization and say we are choosing to discuss this, and we know that this is controversial, and we know that even within the context of our community it is not something we agree upon as a community. I mean, you can say that as a community we want to produce antiracist work. And the consensus in the community will be, "Yes. We want to end racism." But when you take an issue like the death penalty, you can’t get the community to go, "Yes. We want to end the death penalty." So, we kind of discovered within the context of the community what kind of discussion this was going to be in the community at large. So, one of the reasons that we agreed to take it on was that it was a controversial internal issue. And that if the community would have to deal with it, then we would have to deal with it as an ensemble. So, that’s the reason we decided to do that work. And that work doesn’t reside with us, we don’t keep it in our rep – that wasn’t the intent. The intent was to develop it as a viable piece that could be performed by any group. To have it in our rep for a certain period of time, and then to build a script for other people to use. So, that’s a whole different way of working, but again, everybody in the ensemble had to agree to tackle this and say, "Yes. We’ll do this work."

NW: Among the projects that you all have done, which have been the most satisfying in your mind in terms of fulfilling your mission? Has the mission changed because of any of the work?

LPB: I don’t think that the mission itself has changed. I think it keeps getting reinforced by the work that we do. My most immediate response to what was the most rewarding in terms of the work – and I’ll start with performance and then maybe do project – in terms of performance, oddly enough the most rewarding experience that I have had was with the initial full production of "Red Summer" in this community. It was sponsored by and co-produced by what was then SICK (Solutions to Issues of Concern to Knoxvillians), which is a grassroots activist organization, a multi-issue organizing group. And each year they brought something and developed an ad book, which is where they made their money for the year. And we sat down and decided that that event would be a production of "Red Summer." And we talked about the work. We talked about collecting stories and telling them through theater. We talked about returning those stories to the communities that they come from. And we talk about returning them to the audience for which they are intended. The production of "Red Summer" we did at the Bijou fulfilled all of those components of the mission. I will never forget looking up into the packed house, 750 full seats, and watching people on their feet standing and shouting and understanding that it was their story that was being told. That was one of those really goose-bump moments. One of those moments when I felt we had absolutely and completely fulfilled our mission.

NW: Wow, that’s a wonderful story. That’s a wonderful story.

LPB: Yeah. It’s one of the ones that really – I can still feel it, you know what I mean? I feel that moment when I talk about it. The absolute best. We’ve had some other, you know fun, critical "successes," but that really was the most.

NW: Do you know why that was the most? Can you put your finger on why that was so meaningful?

LPB: I think, for me personally, it was what I mean when I say "giving something back." I’m an artist, and I know something about the limitations of my contributions to the world. But to really feel that moment, to really say that this is what I give you from the work that I do, from who I am – that was it. What was interesting was that I instigated the project. I brought it to the company and we all got so invested in doing it – but I didn’t write that one. So, it’s interesting that the one that was most rewarding is the one that I didn’t write. But the overall investment and all, it just – it was the one thing that was for us a perfect moment.

NW: Let’s talk about partners, or ways that you intercept or interact with other groups, whether in your immediate community or outside your community. And how those may have led to your work?

LPB: That’s an interesting question, because what I find is that a lot of our collaborations, at least in the community sense, are with (and this is currently, too, I should say that) – are with nonarts organizations. And the artistic collaborations that we have engaged in have been really varied. They’ve just been a lot of different types, different circumstances, different types of artistic organizations working together. So, that’s kind of a two-leveled question. Because we have been tied to the activist community here, many of the requests that come, come from activist organizations or organizations that serve particular constituencies. The constituencies being, obviously, African-American children, adults, seniors. But also for instance, we had a partnership with AIDS Response Knoxville, Sexual Assault Crisis Center. We have partnerships with the East Tennessee Coalition Against State Killing. You know, Moses Teen Center, the Service Providers Drug Rehabilitation Institute. Various kinds of people who are doing work for constituencies or are promoting social change. So, those partnerships have really informed us, brought us knowledge, specific knowledge around a lot of issues, brought us to examine our own artistic work and to look for other ways of engaging with them. We’ve been doing a lot of cultural community-development workshop work lately. And that really grew out of our interaction with a lot of groups and their desire to work with us in a different way. And it is something that we found pretty exciting and want to do more of. I think that we are often used as a tool, and that is not a bad thing. It is something that we see ourselves as facilitators and a group of people who help people look at things slightly differently. At least, I hope that’s what we do.

NW: What are the obstacles to that kind of work when you’ve been able to do it? And what are the most satisfying kinds of projects?

LPB: I think one of the first obstacles is describing the work. It really is. When you are working with someone who has an agenda, a particular thing that they want to accomplish, and they don’t necessarily have a notion of how to accomplish it and they come to you from some prior experience with you or with someone else who has talked about you or whatever, you begin to explore what it is that you two can do together. And in some ways it is so experiential that it’s difficult to really articulate that. And we’ve made some attempts. We’ve brought Dorothy in to try and help us to do just that. To look at what we do and say: A-#1, these are the things that we do. This is how we do that, and this is how they can be used by you. That’s going real slowly. One thing that I like about the way that we work is that the work is really tailored. We don’t have a package that we give you. You work with Carpetbag. We talk to you. We sit down and spend literally hours talking with the team and looking at what it is that people are trying to talk about. We developed this activity for SRDI and it literally took us two and a half weeks to get it together. And it was – people were just in love with it, but it was for SRDI.

NW: Would you say what SRDI stands for?

LPB: Southern Regional Development Initiative. Those folks based out of North Carolina. That’s one of the difficult things. Articulating what it is and trying to at least package it enough so that people can understand it and take advantage of what it is. That’s one thing that is difficult. Now what was the question I was answering?

NW: In working with the partnerships, what are the obstacles? And then, what are the most satisfying things?

LPB: The other obstacle is that we are artists and we approach things from a certain point of view and sometimes people think that they have enough time to do the work that they say they want to do, and they actually don’t. And you know we have to work in partnership where we understand that ultimately our work may not be the most important work that the organization has to do. So that we have to either take it up on our own and move forward, or we have to say that maybe we need to not do this work right now. Sometimes that is hard to identify. And sometimes you don’t identify it until everybody is mad at each other. I think that is an inherent problem. We’ve certainly seen it in our organization and other places. Then there is the good part. There is the part of working in Duck Hill, Mississippi. Actually having an opportunity of working with every student in the elementary school. And actually learning about the real lives of people. Everybody thinks that we are operating in the same here and now, and that is not true. Those of us who do the community work need to learn a whole lot about a community before we start jumping around in it in our black clothes and big boots.

NW: Is there a story behind that?

LPB: There are probably several. I think the lesson sometimes is – well, the first lesson is: Assume nothing. And the second lesson is that whatever you do in communities everybody else still lives there and you go home. You have to think and choose – and I’m not saying don’t start fires, you have to start fires with some notion of who the fire department is.

NW: Let’s move to a section on organizing. You might even go back to the point that you started with, where you came into Carpetbag and sort of talk about the leadership and structure kind of changes and how that has evolved.

LPB: I think that in terms of the structure, I think that the founders of the organizations came with a fairly traditional notion that you have an executive director, that you have an artistic director, you have a board of directors and they do x, y and z. That somehow it all gets directed in a fairly linear structure and model. I think that the interest that I have, the interest in forming an ensemble, the interest in working in a less linear way took the organization in that direction. And I think that I was allowed to do that. When I came to the organization, you know it had been struggling along for four years. In some ways I think that the enthusiasm of having someone who really wanted to do it, who really wanted to take it in a particular direction, who had some kind of vision that was in line with the original – I think it was well received. And I think that I understood that the scoop of work we wanted to do couldn’t be done with one or two people at the lead. You know, just hiring actors for this show and that show. There was just too much in terms of the development of the organization that had to be done, so that the collaboration, the collection of people as artists and ultimately and eventually as artists and staff and administration and all those things that I think were pretty common developments during that time were happening. They became a part of the organizational structure. And I have to say that our associations also shaped how we saw things. Back when Alternate ROOTS was forming and we were examining structures and learning from other companies about operations and how you can operate in a slightly different way, you know, all of that shaped us as an organization. It was that kind of intense interaction with partners and started, you know from the Southern Black Cultural Alliance, from Alternate ROOTS, from all of our associations in the region and the kind of historical background of black theaters during that time. All of those things that came together and shaped the way that we do things.

NW: In your process, in the organization, are you always the one who provides leadership or are there times when other people assume other kinds of leadership pieces?

LPB: I think other people assume leadership based upon project work. This business of whether I am always the leader is kind of difficult for me to talk about, because I think my inclination is not to be that, but I think that it’s hard for me to really say that’s not true based upon –

NW: Based upon the fact that it sits upon your shoulders. Excuse me for butting in.

LPB: Well you know, every time I –okay, here’s a kind of example. Whenever I talk about the theater, no matter what it is, no matter what’s been done, I say "we" – whether I did it, or somebody else did it – and most of the time I’m talking about things that I initiated, but I’m always in the "we." And I guess it was Margaret who kind of called me on that a few times and said, you know, "We didn’t do that. You did that." And I mean for positive and negative, but I’m just saying that I have a sometimes unrealistic sense of the collective. And that I probably make more decisions than I think I make. I like working, you know, in the group. But it’s like that point that I talked about when we talked before about coming to understand that everybody is not equally invested and that you take certain responsibilities that nobody else takes. That’s the truth of it. We fight hierarchical process and thinking, but you ultimately have to come to the understanding that there is a place where when all the things that go wrong, go wrong – it is you. And when the things that go right, it may be you. But you can be sure that if it’s going wrong, it’s you. It does kind of shift, and shift the way that you have to honestly talk about it. I think that I am probably a little more accepting of that.

NW: Let’s talk about how you evaluate and critique your work and by whom. Whose critique do you listen to?

LPB: I think that we definitely listen to the critique of our community partners. I think that’s really where it begins. And because many of them are either activist organizations or service organizations in terms of partnership, we rely upon them to critique the work. It may or may not be really good because they are invested in it. I think, for instance, when we are working with the Center for Literacy Studies and we are doing a project like the Summer Institute and we’re taking people through culture, through a process about education and about becoming an advocate for your own education – I think we really need to listen to people who have done research in the field. The Center for Literacy Studies does participatory education and research. They have some sense of what you are trying to do and they are giving you feedback on whether or not you are getting there, or you’re way off the mark. Some of that is important in terms of the way we evaluate. We try to get community feedback, but you know our mechanisms are not good. They are not formal enough. I don’t think they are expansive enough. We get feedback – it’s like when you go to schools for performances and the teacher says, "Why don’t you write a letter to the actors." You know what I mean? We haven’t really developed the depth in terms of the actual audiences, participants in the processes that we develop to get more direct and critical feedback. Working for organizations, for instance, the kind of cultural facilitation we’ve been doing – working for those organizations and foundations and whatnot – they are very good at giving feedback. When something is working they talk about how it is working, and when something is not working they let you know. There is a very direct feedback from that. I think that really comes out of whatever business practices that they use in terms of evaluation and critiquing. That’s a part of their habit as a company. I think what I would like to do is to build that as a habit of our community, but I have not figured out how to do that. So, we’re not as good at that.

NW: Within the company how do you all critically evaluate your work?

LPB: Ahh – well, sometimes we just fight. Sometimes we critique one another and then we just fight. That’s difficult – and to do it in a controlled way. I’ll tell you one thing about the process. Everyone feels very comfortable in talking as the director. And sometimes that is the way that we do our critiques. The process itself is very open to input. Sometimes it’s so open to input that people really do assume the role of the director. And sometimes we have to say, "You have to take that hat off," because it calls for a willingness for everybody to listen to everybody else. There’s not always the sense that you have the authority to tell me that this work is not good, or could be approached differently, or all those kinds of things. Part of that is built into the process, but not always in the most constructive way. The thing is that everybody feels comfortable doing it. There’s not going to be a repercussion because you did it, there may be a response from the person that you critiqued but that process is not going to be squashed or stopped.

Where we are, in fact kind of pushing the envelope a little bit is a development of collaboration. I think in some ways that the people, and the issues, and the processes that we are putting together in these collaborations are in fact pushing the edge. So. I thought about that. I thought about leadership development, and how we are looking at that, and how we are trying to do that across generations and with our partners and those kinds of things. And I thought, you know, I think we are pushing a little bit there. The new stuff we’ve been doing with culture and community development – you know I think that is pretty good stuff. The fact that we are working so much with adult learners and trying to look at alternative ways to keep people kind of self driven and in control of that process, the education process – I think that is something we are doing.


Nayo Watkins is an arts and community consultant who lives in Durham, N.C. She is sole proprietor of Bodacious Consulting and Organizing. Her work has included helping to build collaborations and partnerships between artists and communities that explore the relationship between art, culture, activism and empowerment. She served as coordinator for the Mississippi American Festival Project and for the N.C.-based Alternate ROOTS Community Artist Partnership Project. She was writer/facilitator for "Parables to Policy," an Internet project of Southern Rural Development Initiative and was consultant to the Mississippi Young Person’s Cultural Exchange. Prior to becoming an independent consultant, she served as executive director of the African American Dance Ensemble (Durham), At the Foot of the Mountain Theatre (Minneapolis), and the Mississippi Cultural Arts Coalition (Jackson), and as program assistant for the Afro-American Studies Program of the University of Mississippi. As an artist, Watkins is a poet, essayist, playwright and performer. Her poems and essays have appeared in literary anthologies and journals. As a playwright, she draws upon oral histories and participatory research to create plays rooted in place, people, culture and community. Productions of her commissioned plays have been staged in Port Gibson, Itta Bena and Oxford, Mississippi, and in Durham and Wake Forest, North Carolina. Her work is included in the repertory of actors John O’Neal, Cynthia Watts and Yolanda King.


 
 

AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK FROM NEW VILLAGE PRESS! Performing Communities
Performing Communities
Grassroots Ensemble Theaters Deeply Rooted in Eight U.S. Communities

By Robert H. Leonard
and Ann Kilkelly
Edited by
Linda Frye Burnham
with an introduction by
Jan Cohen-Cruz
Published by
New Village Press
Paperback: $15.00

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