By Raymond Dean Jones
The next dramatic presentation of Shadow Theatre, Waitin’ 2 End Hell, by playwright William A. Parker, is set to begin on Thursday, April 6, with an 8 p.m. curtain. This is the next-to-last play in the current season, and will run every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday through May 6. The cast will be a delightful combination of what we have come to enjoy about Shadow, veteran actors and some skilled newcomers, along with nationally known actors who just enjoy working with a truly competent community theater. Shadow Artistic Director Jeffrey Nickelson heads up the cast, along with local favorites Hugo Jon Sayles, Jada Roberts and Damion Hoover, Westword’s 2006 Best Actor in Community Theater. Newcomers are Yukako Doi and Simone St. John, a recent Harvard graduate who tested her dramatic toes in the last Shadow production, Visions: A Tribute to August Wilson, and the much loved and highly regarded Harvey Blanks, as Larry. The play is directed by Charles Weldon, whose play-acting Denver audiences have enjoyed for many years. Weldon won the 2006 Westword Award for Best Supporting Actor (DCPA) for his work in August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean. He is also the director of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York City.
Waitin’ had a successful run off Broadway, and is now ready to meet the rest of the country, what New Yorkers consider that small sliver of America west of the Hudson River extending a short distance to the Pacific Ocean. Its appearance in Denver is the regional premiere and will garner a lot of attention in Denver and around the country. It is a dramedy (drama/comedy) focusing on relationships between men and women, men and men, women and women, friends and “not-so-friends.” You wondered what was on the other side of Waiting to Exhale -- well this may be it. It is all about the human condition. It can be brutal, has dramatic parts that will truly test the abilities of the cast, and as befits any presentation about a group of mostly Black friends is imbued with wonderful humor. But someone must go down (yes, that kind of going down too), and that is never pretty, and generally hurts everyone involved. But I believe audiences will enjoy the colorful exchanges that almost always attend the give-and-take of men and women together and trying to stay that way. There is also warmth and philosophy a’ plenty, along with realities that will touch anyone who has ever been in a relationship.
After the April 6, 8, 15, 22, 29, and May 6 performances, there will be an interactive post-production discussion on healing and relationships, facilitated by Dr. Anthony P. Young, who is the past president of the National Association of Black Psychologists. From reading the script, I believe there will be much to discuss.
I know, you thought I forgot to tell you where the play is being produced. No, but therein lies the rub. Waitin’ is playing at the Ralph Waldo Emerson Center, in the small home playhouse of Shadow. The theater seats only about 75 people. Therefore, the economics of the run make it essential that the house sell out every night. But the question is why another theater space would not seek a creative collaboration with Shadow, in order to assist it to make the play available to large groups of theater-goers. The Denver Metro area is alive with people who love good theater. There is enough audience for any stage that presents good theater; there is plenty to go around. Shadow, which was voted by Westword Best Drama -- Small Theatre Company for Topdog/Underdog, can bring luster to any stage in America. So why is this regional premiere playing in a 75-seat house, while other houses are dark? The “theater community” needs to review itself and consider the truism that when one theater company is doing well, all have a better opportunity to succeed. Every success generates a more sophisticated theater audience for all of the houses to share. And Shadow has done more than most of the theater companies to educate that audience, and certainly has carried its share of the load.
Shadowdeserves this kind of consideration from the general theater community because, more than most theater companies, it serves as an “incubator” for the theater world. Audiences go to Shadow because it is excellent, takes on top of the line challenges in terms of its productions, and leaves people wanting more -- more theater, that is. And so people begin to be educated and venture out to more pretentious theater companies. The overall effect is of a synergy that benefits theater all across the spectrum of society. Maybe it is time for other theater companies to reach out and extend a helping hand in terms of making stages available. They will benefit just as Shadow will.
The other part of the equation involves the Black community. The community needs to take stock of whether it is time to bring resources to bear to develop and build a Black arts institution that can serve the community and Black artists alike, such as Shadow. That institution could serve as the incubator that educates the community because it presents to, and is in the best interests of, the Black community, as well as the broader community.
Such an institution would have stages for presenting plays, dance, music, and other performance art, as well as studio room for visual artists to do their creations, studios for writing and presenting written work and exhibition space so that the work can be shared with the entire community. Should Shadow, Cleo, other performing arts groups and individuals, visual artists, poets, singers, writers, filmmakers, and audiences have to go begging for a place from which to enrich other people’s lives? Should people have to leave their community to seek entertainment, even by their own artist? Should people of the community have to suffer the looks and attitudes of pretentious venues that have little interest in them other than the money they leave at the box office?
The Denver Black community is blessed with artists and arts that small countries would welcome. We have riches galore when it comes to art resources. The Denver Black community also has a bounty of economic resources that, if carefully brought to bear in a synergistic way and with careful management and consideration for its purpose, could build and maintain an Arts Institution that would rival some of the best in the country. The time is right – the time is now.
When you go so see Waitin’ look around at the other 74 people and think about how it could be in a 550-seat house in the community, a house that you are not only welcomed and loved in, but that you own – and, if not actually, then by virtue of the fact that it’s in your community and you are participating. You and your children would learn things of a positive nature concerning the arts and yourselves. Art will be created, giving birth to creativity before our very eyes while growing that creativity, and maintaining it.
Artistic Director Jeffrey Nickelson, a 2005 Mayor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts recipient, knows the value of an institution such as this. It would have real dressing rooms, exits from either side of the stage, storage for your sets and costumes and lighting that enhances the performances
Most importantly, people will care for the artists and for the audience. Learning will happen there. We will get there, because, as with so many things in our history, we will just get sick and tired doing of first class things with second class stuff. We must get up off our butts, and make it happen.
Go see Waitin’ and experience the wonders of Shadow which has thrived in its current location because it is not begging anybody. It’s just presenting excellence every time it lights the stage. Talk to Nickelson, and then, let’s all talk and begin the work
It begins with Waitin’. |
