The African American Shakespeare Company

American Visions, June, 1999 by D.T. Lee

From a Midsummer Night's Dream to Reality

Since the summer of 1993, actress Sherri Young had envisioned productions of classical plays infused with the life experiences of people of color. She wanted to create a theater company that would challenge long-existing casting prejudices, expand the realm of dramatic storytelling, and provide new opportunities for African-American theater professionals.

As Young saw it, earning acceptance within presentations of European classical theater is important to actors--regardless of color--who take their craft seriously. For one thing, the Bard rules. According to the journalists who compiled the book 1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the Millennium, Shakespeare is the fifth-most-important person in this millennium. The Guinness Book of World Records lists him as the most filmed author ever, with more than 300 direct and 40 loosely based film adaptations of his plays. His impact on the world's art and culture is as far-reaching and as indelible as India ink spilled on cotton.

Within all of Shakespeare's works are parts of substance for which most actors would kill. Furthermore, throughout the world, classical theater is considered the barometer by which an actor's artistry and craftsmanship are measured. Regardless of the credits that an actor has accumulated--whether onscreen or onstage--industry executives inevitably ask, Have you done Shakespeare?

After auditioning and being passed over for Shakespearean roles many times over, Young decided that she was no longer willing to sit still or, worse, to beg for crumbs from the large theater companies. In the fall of 1993, she gathered a few close friends around a table to discuss an idea that had been haunting her like Banquo's ghost.

One of the friends Young summoned was Bonnee Stingily, a fellow trouper. When Young and Stingily were approaching the end of their studies at the American Conservatory Theater, in San Francisco, they started to consider the roles they might never be allowed to play, the challenges they might never be allowed to conquer.

"As graduate students, we were receiving training in classical material," Stingily says. "Sherri and I both really enjoyed it. And we started to ask each other, When will we ever get to do this material again?"

The prospects looked bleak. The two actresses had gained much from studying and performing classical material and believed that they had much to offer, but Stingily felt that a joke often repeated in the African- American theater community seemed to describe their fates: "The only way we will get to do Shakespeare is as one of the three witches in Macbeth." The quip grows out of a tragic truth: Directors and casting agents routinely turn away actors and actresses of color when they are selecting players for Shakespeare's major roles.

Like old King Lear, Young and Stingily were railing against closed doors. Seven months after the closing of George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum, a production in which both had starring roles, casting directors would not hire them. The idle time allowed them to begin daydreaming about how they could right this wrong. They mused that they needed their own company--a company imbued with color.

"It was just two actresses talking about impossibilities," Stingily recalls, "talking about a dream." But sitting at that table with her friends in the fall of 1993, Young declared that the doors of the African- American Shakespeare Company were now open. The time had arrived to make their dream a reality.

Young had always expected someone else to initiate such a company: It was a good idea, and the need was apparent. Yet Young's company would turn out to be the only African-American theater company dedicated to the European classics. Young felt no fear: "I didn't know enough about starting a theater company to be afraid. Anything had to be better than loving acting and not doing it month after month."

Young pulled out her checkbook and bought whatever she could afford for the fledgling company. Then she put pen to paper and started drafting proposals and funding requests. In 1996, the company staged its first play, Sophocles' Oedipus the King. From then on, there was no looking back.

The African American Shakespeare Company is now 5 years old, a significant milestone for a theater company. To date, the company has staged nine productions. One more--Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet--is scheduled for this summer. The group's first full season, 1998 to 1999, came about as a result of its board of directors' commitment to raising funds and amassing support.

The perennial questions remain: Why the European classics? Why not just start a company with fresh ideas and new scripts that emanate from the African-American experience?

Stingily responds from the perspective of an actress and student of the arts: "Shakespeare and other European classics were a huge part of our training. Believe me, I was resistant to studying European classical theater. 'How is this relevant?' I asked. But when I started to do the research and work through the texts on stage, I understood why those plays are called classics."