Black Theater Teaches
Black Theater is as important as the sun because not only does it shed light, it provides energy and nourishment for growth and development. In the late '50s and early '60s, Black Theater was germinating from the soil of the black community throughout this country. An awakening pushed forth upright and bloomed into the Black Power Movement.
"Black Theater was basically used as a platform," said New Orleans actor Anthony Bean, who founded the Ethiopian Theater with his brother Monroe Bean in 1973. "It was used to voice and to educate the black community about the system and what it was doing to us. Black Theater was known as a message theater. We never did theater as art for art's sake. It was basically a political-social platform to educate the black community."
Today black folk no longer talk about and are interested in integrating lunch counters, Bean said. "Now we're on a whole 'nother thing. Like with what Jesse Jackson is talking about! We're now on economics and power-sharing."
Bean is 29 years old. He is about six feet tall, slim, and as black as the night is dark. Picture Sidney Poitier or Howard Rollins and your imagination shows two characteristics about Bean: his looks and his acting ability. The young man is intense.
Bean said that Black Theater must continue to address issues and educate blacks and raise political and conscience levels. "Black Theater has to serve these purposes. There is no other avenue. Who else is going to talk about it? The white theaters are not going to talk about us. Black Theater has to talk about us. If anybody is going to set forth a positive image, it has to be us, ourselves."
Langston Hughes, Bean recalled, said: "'One day somebody is gonna write about us, black and beautiful tell the truth about us.' He ended by saying, 'and I guess that somebody will be me, yes it will be me.'"
Bean put a pen to paper and wrote a play, "We Love You William." It premiered here at the Contemporary Arts Center in August 1984. Bean played the leading role, directed the production, and financed it ($5,000) from his pocket. Allen Toussaint wrote the music score for the dramatic musical. Toussaint is known nationally as a composer, and he is important because he is one of the last solo piano players of the distinctive New Orleans style.
The play is about William, a black actor who left the U.S. for Europe in the '50s because white Americans rejected black actors and black involvement in general. That scenario is similar to many of the black 1920s Harlem Renaissance painters who went out of their way artistically to get acceptance from whites. William finally reached an awakening. He found himself. He decided to return to the U.S. and spread the word that he was a black man and was proud of being black.
Bean said he created William because, "I was tired of sitting back and waiting for white America to change its mind about how they feel and think about us. I think that we should take upon ourselves to do things for ourselves."
His first starring role on film is in a movie titled "The Click," scheduled for release to theaters in April 1985. Bean said that he will move to Los Angeles in the summer of '85 to pursue an acting career in Hollywood.
"It's all right to reach for that higher star. If you want to go commercial, there is nothing wrong with black commercial theater. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be on top - but don't forget where you come from.
"I want to be a household name. I'm gonna be a big name, but my thing is not to be that star for star's sake. My thing is to be a force, a force to be reckoned with."