A Six-Day Bash Celebrates Black Theater (original) (raw)
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- Aug. 6, 2005
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Aug. 3 - An estimated 60,000 people, nearly all of them black, descended on Winston-Salem this week for the six-day National Black Theater Festival. The event, held every two years here since 1989, is a showcase for black theaters, a networking opportunity for black performers and playwrights and an extended-family reunion of sorts for the fans and celebrities who return time after time from New York, Los Angeles, Newark and Dayton, Ohio.
As the festival, which has a budget of 1.5million,hasgrowninthiscityofnearly200,000,sohasitsaudience,andorganizersestimatedthat1.5 million, has grown in this city of nearly 200,000, so has its audience, and organizers estimated that 1.5million,hasgrowninthiscityofnearly200,000,sohasitsaudience,andorganizersestimatedthat15 million would be pumped into the local economy. Visitors and local residents could choose from 40 productions, ranging from musicals like "The Jackie Wilson Story (My Heart Is Crying, Crying )," about the Detroit rhythm-and-blues singer; to an after-hours show, "Herotica," performed by 3 Blacque Chix, a trio of middle-aged women who talk about sex; to the Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Topdog/Underdog" by Suzan-Lori Parks; to a variety of solo shows.
For a few days, downtown Winston-Salem is transformed, its streets echoing from drum circles and choked with limousines. There are African art vendors and midnight poetry jams, open-mike talent shows and nightly celebrity receptions at which the dance floors are packed until nearly dawn.
"It's incredible; everybody's energy is so high," said Daniel Beaty, 29, a New Yorker whose one-man show, "Emergence-See!," imagines the sudden surfacing of a slave ship in the harbor of modern-day New York. "We long for moments to celebrate ourselves, to have experiences that are completely positive," he added "We have a history of collective consciousness and a collective spirit."
On Mr. Beaty's opening night, he got a whooping standing ovation from an audience that included the poet Sonia Sanchez, the playwright Lynn Nottage, the actors James Avery and Ruben Santiago-Hudson and the actresses C.C.H. Pounder and Tonya Pinkins, who whispered something in his ear about mentioning him to her agent. Also present was his mentor and producer, the venerable Ruby Dee, who had first seen his show at a tiny alternative space near Times Square. These notables and others -- Malik Yoba of "New York Undercover," Antonio Fargas of "Starsky and Hutch," the actress Janet Hubert -- mingled easily, without bodyguards or V.I.P. sections, giving the festival the feeling of a private celebration despite the number in attendance.
"I would not want to see it in a larger metropolis," said Sandy Lindsay, a school nurse from New Jersey who drives down with her girlfriends every two years. "It would lose its intimacy." That afternoon, Ms. Lindsay and her 15-year-old granddaughter had seen a play starring Kim Fields, still best known as Tootie on "The Facts of Life," who at one point invoked the name of a famous blues singer: "Linda Hopkins, can I sing?" Ms. Fields ad-libbed.
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