Affirming the tradition, transcending the condition: ETA Creative Arts Foundation

American Visions, June-July, 1996 by Mollie West

"Why, given the African holocaust, are we still on the planet Earth? The answer has to be that we're a strong and resilient people. And if we are resilient, then we want to look at the nature and depth of that resiliency," proclaims Abena Joan Brown, the indefatigable president, producer and cofounder of the ETA Creative Arts Foundation in Chicago. "ETA is a theater that is affirming; we are not focused on the deviant model of behavior, the deficits, but rather the strengths. And we have found that this kind of work has resonated with our audiences. They want to see the mirror, as I do, of our best selves."

But ETA does more than mirror our best selves: it nurtures them, each year training hundreds of children, youths and adults not only in the performing arts, but also in the technical aspects of stagecraft - in acting, music, dance, lighting, playwriting, stage management, directing, audition techniques and videotaping. ETA is also Chicago's largest contractor of black artists, each year employing 200 or more actors, musicians, directors, dancers, choreographers and stage managers.

This is quite an empire, and the woman who helped build it and who has run it for 25 years is emphatic, strong and persistent, just the kind of person to take a fledgling cultural institution from humble beginnings - when it moved productions from space to space on Chicago's South Side - to its current home, a magnificent performing arts complex, still on the South Side.

It's been a long haul, and Brown has been there every step of the way. Back in 1969, she and collaborators Okoro Harold Johnson, Al Johnson and Archie Weston sought to increase exposure for blacks by booking black acting talent for white agencies. This was when the black power and black arts movements of the 1960s and '70s were creating a burgeoning demand for black actors. "We brought 35 people to a studio in Chicago, where [Columbia Pictures] was filming Raisin," Okoro Johnson recalls. "Then we thought, Why should we do all the work while others get all the money?" Thus was born Ebony Talent Associates.

It soon became apparent that although every acting hopeful seeking ETA's services felt destined to become a star, few of them knew anything about auditioning, let alone working in the theater. "That led us to say to ourselves, `We need to start training people,'" says Brown. "But when you start to train people, you have to provide performance opportunities for those people, because you can't really develop capacity unless you're doing that for which you're training." This urgent need prompted the formation in 1971 of a second, even more vital wing to develop aspiring artists' talent: the ETA Creative Arts Foundation.

During the early years, ETA productions were staged in temporary homes and performance venues - the Encore Theatre, the Harris YWCA auditorium, Chicago State University, Jamela House, Transitions East and the Chicago Affro Arts Theatre. By 1978 Brown found herself longing for stability and repeating to herself: "We've got to have our own place."

Knowing exactly what she wanted, Brown hired an architect to translate her vision into a drawing. Two weeks later, Brown matched the drawing to an old factory at 76th and South Chicago. "It was so open, perfect for what I wanted," she recalls. She put up the $2,000 necessary to secure the $35,000 property and then obtained a loan from South Shore Bank to purchase the building. One year and a $1 million renovation project later, the former 16,000-square-foot factory was transformed into Chicago's leading African-American cultural and performing arts institution, featuring a 200-seat auditorium, an art gallery, a library and classroom and office space, in the heart of the black community.

Not a few people questioned Brown's judgment. "You don't, want to be downtown?" they challenged. "Are you sure you want to be on this corner?" Brown was both steel@willed and business-smart in her belief in W.E.B. Du Bois' philosophy about black theater, that it should be by the Negro people, for the Negro people, about the Negro people, and near, near the Negro people. "I went straight to the business principle that said, `Here's a comer that has 16,000 cars passing every day, sitting smack in the middle of the black community at a time when black people have to go way across the city, out of their neighborhood, for theater,'" she says. "There were very few places we could go dressed up in our neighborhood, have a good time, see our friends, meet new friends and appreciate what,s on the stage."

But the black community was more than geographically central to ETA: The foundation,s mission is to be a major cultural resource for the preservation, perpetuation and promulgation of the African-American aesthetic. This goal has been reflected in its programs, right from the beginning. ETA's performance programs include a Mainstage season of six original plays for 40 to 44 weeks of the year, most of them world premieres that strive to present black people in real-life situations. There are no buck-dancing minstrels, Uncle Toms or Aunt Jemima characters projected as everyday black people at ETA, not even in good-natured fun.