By Nayo Watkins

Nayo Watkins: Donna, what do you do here at Knoxville College?

Donna Shores: I’m an associate professor of English and head of the English Communications and Foreign Languages Department.

NW: And how long have you been here?

DS: Over a period of six years. This is my sixth year, but I started here in ’92. I’ve been here, left and been back, left and been back again.

NW: I’m doing research on community-based theater – or grassroots theater as they sometimes call it – and looking at what community-based theater means within its community and for its artists and for its audience. So, why don’t you start by talking about your relationship with Carpetbag – in terms of how many shows you’ve seen, or what you’ve seen of their work.

DS: I first saw Carpetbag some 20-25 years ago when they were just beginning. And I had students at the University of Tennessee at that time who found their big opportunity to act – and some of them had a great time, learned a lot. I couldn’t name the show for you right now but it was before "Dark Cowgirls and Prairie Queens." .Linda performed that here for us for Women’s History Month. It was a wonderful addition to our program. Just perfect. Last spring she did another play, in fact she did "Red Summer" again. And this fall she directed the production of "Paul Robeson," which was very good. Her leading man came to my literature class for an hour before the performance, and was challenging enough that some of the students actually showed up and stayed for the whole thing. She enriches everything here. That program gives us a component we’ve been lacking. We haven’t had a theater person since ’96, and when she came in last fall it really began to change things. We have one student who is very talented, and she has taken him under her wing and she has worked with him. I don’t know if he is going to graduate or not, it doesn’t look very promising, but I have seen him perform.

NW: He’s being drafted into the major leagues.

DS: You know, I think that if he would go on and learn some things he could go on Broadway. What she’s uncovered here is real talent. But it is also a talent that doesn’t want to be schooled.

NW: That’s Starr?

DS: Right. That’s Starr. Have you interviewed him? Okay, you know how dear he is. But my goodness, he doesn’t go to class. So, Linda tries to help with that and we try to keep him on task, but it is very difficult.

NW: So, the presence of a theater company on this college campus: Prior to that were you unable to have a college theater?

DS: We had college theater before, John Arthur House was here when I came in ’92 and he stayed here through the spring of ’96. But at that time, they did a major cutback on programs and they cut theater. That was one of the things they thought they could do without. I think it was a mistake, but that’s what was decided. He’s now down at Rusk, but he almost always did comedies. I think Linda gives us a little more range and presents students with some serious things to think about. Now, the one thing that was different when House was here was that it was entirely a student production, so more students performed. But I think that will come in time as this link with Carpetbag develops.

NW: What’s the exchange, what’s the give and take between Carpetbag and Knoxville College?

DS: I think Carpetbag provides some opportunities to do some community-service activities. That, really, I haven’t gotten much into, to be frank. I haven’t done much with that. But they also have set up a poetry-reading coffee house one night a month called Café Noir. Our students love that, respond to that tremendously, and I like to come just to see all the activity. It’s just all that lively stuff going on. That’s been their warmest connection, I think. Margaret Miller was here last year, and she organized that, and Linda has kept it going this year. And the students would miss it terribly if it went away now.

NW: What do you think being here gives to Carpetbag?

DS: I think there is some stability in having a theater, a stage to work on, to rehearse on. The facilities are really quite decent downstairs. I don’t know where they were housed before, but I would think that having access to a building like this one with fine acoustics would be a real help. I would think, but as I said, I’ve not really asked much about the side of it that has to do with their advantage, or about the community-service projects that they do here, which I assume also could make good use of the facilities downstairs. When they have large groups of children, which they have done in the summer – young people in fact, not all children, some of them are teens – this building has provided a place for them to gather those groups, gather them into groups and work with them, and the same is true for community organizing meetings that they do. The adults that are here. It’s good to have a variety of places.

NW: I had asked Linda to find me someone who had a little distance from it and didn’t know all the details.

DS: Well, I have a lot of distance. I like the people down there very much. It cheers me. Sonya Sanchez came here by surprise about a month-and-a-half ago. Our academic vice-president saw her at a meeting, and they went to school together, so he said, "Would you come over." And she did. And when I went to see Linda, immediate response, yes she would be upstairs as soon as she got here. And when Linda was asked, "Would you take her to the airport?", yes she would. That kind of cooperation and investedness is what we need here.

NW: You are a long time resident of Knoxville?

DS: I’ve been here about 35 years.

NW: Just as an audience member, as opposed to here at the college, would you talk about the impact of Carpetbag’s artistic work in the community?

DS: As a member of the community I would start with that one particular student where she’s found a talent and made really good use of that talent and helped that young man in many ways. And I think she’s had that kind of impact over the years, for a long time. The summer programs I’m sure have tremendous impact on the children that participate in those. For us here, our only other theater opportunities really, because nobody goes to community theater much from here – and I never have gone myself. But there’s, of course, theater over at UT. And for right now, given what’s going on at UT, I would rather be over here watching Carpetbag. And I encourage my students to do so. And I encourage my UT students when I teach part-time over there. And I encourage them to come over for performances because I know that they are going to see a good quality production. It is going to be a serious production, it’s not going to be a bunch of goofing off or having a good time. But I think they do have a good time, they just do it while doing a professional presentation.

NW: This kind of theater that Carpetbag is, that blends the professional performance with all the community programs – does that seem to work, in your opinion, from your distance?

DS: From my distance? Yes, it seems to be working. People go up here, ask for Linda, ask for Jeff downstairs. Periodically. And I think any kind of interaction like that with community, it enriches the college. Those folk who come here are potential allies of the college, potential supporters of the college – in that sense it is very good for us. It’s good for our students just to have access to different people, new people. And because they are around a lot they get some chance to talk with them.

NW: What do you think Carpetbag does best?

DS: That’s hard from my distance. It really is. From my perspective – productions. They do those extremely well. I don’t know how community folk would look at them. As I said, I haven’t participated in that part of it. They do the Cafe Noir very well. As I say, the productions – but I’m kind of an elitist.

NW: We need that perspective. Talk about the productions in terms of their quality.

DS: All right. Linda brought the group in to do "Dark Cowgirls and Prairie Queens" for Women’s History Month. Because some of our facilities in the auditorium are a little bit slow to pick up, she had to start a little bit late, but she handled that with grace, and has handled every little glitch and catch she’s found here with grace. And I think that alone is a good thing for our students to see. But the production itself, excellent. Simply excellent. It did everything a good theater production ought to do. It got the audience involved. I think theater ought to do more than just entertain. There was no slap-stick in it, but there was humor. It also had a very strong message about the people in the west. And it counters the whole 1950s western myth of all white men and all white women. She talks about some very strong black women in there.

NW: What do you know about the theater community in Knoxville as a whole?

DS: Not much anymore. I used to know quite a bit about Laurel Theatre, which is a community theater – was then – they did some productions then over there in Fort Sanders. But I haven’t kept up with a thing. I think I’ve been to one dinner-theater production with a theater company that has since gone out of business because they couldn’t keep it open. But it was a good production. It was a fine production.

NW: I know that two of the core cast members that have continued over the years, Jeffrey and Linda Hill, were Knoxville College students when the company first started. And have continued to be a part of that core of the group. As you indicate, Starr looks like he may come along the same way.

DS: I think so.

NW: I’m wondering about a college and its literature and drama departments having a partnership or relationship with a professional company – how do you see that, how important is that?

DS: I think it could be very important. I don’t think any of us has maximized the opportunity that we have here, because I feel very sure that Jeffery would be happy to come and talk with a class anytime we are discussing a play, in literature, for instance. And they do come to our Contemporary Issues program occasionally, and tomorrow, in fact, they are hosting one. They’ll do a program I saw on making environments toxic. There’s a poster out there. But they’ll come and do a program on that, which is good for our students. When they are in Contemporary Issues, which all students are required to attend, they have a huge impact.

NW: What do they do?

DS: I expect they’ll do some film and talk, but I don’t know for sure. I haven’t asked exactly what they’ll be doing. They have some widespread contacts in the community, which means they might be bringing in –for instance, there’s a man who set up the first recycling project in our local project – which is now gone. Everybody said he couldn’t do it, but he set up – and they may bring him. Because so much of their work is original work that they write and have to do the research on, I would imagine that what they bring to a presentation is more than a performance. All that information. All the things they’ve pulled together. In "Dark Cowgirls," our students were completely stunned by the information. I was not stunned, but I was surprised there was as much as there was. To me that play had a tremendous impact, and to carry that weight of history with it. "Red Summer" also really carries the weight of local history. And it’s possible to take students downtown and say, "This is where this happened. And this is where this happened."

NW: You saw "Red Summer" here on campus?

DS: I saw it here. I saw it years and years ago, when I think it was maybe at a theater downtown, but I’m talking 20 years ago.

NW: What was the value of a piece like that with such a terrible history in it about the local area, and being presented to the local area – what happens to the community in presenting a work like that?

DS: Well the group that came out to see that play was largely a group of people interested in seeing the furtherance of integration, and the improvement of race relations in general, so they were quite positively effected by it. And, in fact, at the end there’s a situation in which each of the actors talks about contemporary history and they mention names and somebody from the audience called out a name just pitching in – that’s good theater when the audience gets that invested in what they are doing.

NW: Are you aware of critics? Do you have critics in your local newspaper, theater critics?

DS: We have theater critics, they do not pay much attention to Carpetbag.

NW: Why do you think that is?

DS: I don’t know. I have some suspicions but I don’t know.

NW: Do you care to share your suspicions?

DS: Carpetbag has been around a long time. I think during the ‘70’s it was the hot thing to talk about and there was more reviewing then. And I may be wrong. There may be more reviews than I see. The newspaper, that’s not the place I go looking for literary commentary. I think probably it’s a combination of the troubles the college has had in the past 10 years or so, and the fact that we all selected a George Bush. And we may have elected a George Bush. The fact that diversity, or understanding something not in our culture, is simply no longer in style, I guess the morality gets lost. So, it comes down to a fairly small group of people who remain committed to the idea.

NW: Do you think that Carpetbag may be seen as a sort of contradiction – is it a theater or is it a social-action group?

DS: I don’t see it that way at all. There may be some who do. But I think that the community things they do make the theater stronger. That’s the only way I can see it.

NW: When you have seen the critical writings in the newspaper, what do they usually cover? What kinds of groups do they usually cover?

DS: It may be something on the Oakridge Playhouse, but they will always do productions at the University of Tennessee.

NW: What kind of productions does the university put on?

DS: A theater range. I try to send my Women’s Studies class to something, and there wasn’t a thing worth them seeing as a Women’s Studies class last year. And so I’ve just been out the whole season, didn’t go to anything.

NW: What’s your favorite, of their productions that you’ve seen what’s your favorite?

DS: "Cowgirls," so far, of the recent ones. I’m very interested in the history of women. It’s been so excluded from everybody’s lives that it just cheers me to see that focus. The way they make you feel in "Cowgirls," they make you start singing. Very, very fine. Very fine. Even though they use that wagon – they haul this wagon across the stage – it conveys what needs to be conveyed. The migrations that took place. It’s good. It’s done well.

NW: I know you deal with young people at the college level, but I wonder if you could comment on that kind of piece as an educational tool for the community in general.

DS: I think it could be a wonderful thing. We have a fairly strong senior-citizens organization, for instance. I think some of those people would simply be delighted. And it might be worthwhile for Carpetbag to contact senior citizens and see if they would like to do a workshop. I’m guessing that they would.

NW: Okay. I appreciate this time you spent.

DS: I’m glad to do it. And of course I only done it for Linda. It’s simply that I know I can count of Linda to help me. It’s important that I help her.

NW: Gee, it is interesting how she really is identified as the leader. And you have said it several times, you have identified Carpetbag as Linda.

DS: That’s right! That’s true, I do.

NW: What does it mean – a woman taking that kind of leadership role?

DS: I knew her husband many years ago, back when she started the theater. And part of what it says is that she has been able to negotiate a marriage, a family and a career all this time and keep their support. And I think that in itself is a profound statement about what women can do if their family is cooperating, which her family does, or seems. And yes, I think she says things to women, the community of women in general if they all get to hear. I’m beginning to feel more intensely how slow we’ve been to pick up on all that we can do with Carpetbag. I feel sure that we could make some more women aware of her presence.

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.

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