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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

2004

Access and Equity: Performing Diversity atthe New World TheatreDonna Beth Aronson

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY  

SCHOOL OF THEATRE

ACCESS AND EQUITY: PERFORMING DIVERSITY

AT THE NEW WORLD THEATRE

By

DONNA BETH ARONSON

A dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded Summer Semester, 2004

The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Donna Aronson defended on December 8, 2003. Jean Graham-Jones Professor Directing Dissertation Donna Nudd Outside Committee Member Stuart Baker Committee Member Carrie Sandahl Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members 

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to acknowledge and thank my committee members Stuart Baker, Carrie Sandahl, and Donna Nudd for their support of this project. Chair of my committee Jean Graham-Jones provided excellent advice and assistance throughout the extended process. She deserves much gratitude. I wish to thank Jayme Harping for her editorial assistance. The University of the Incarnate Word and the faculty and staff of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences have been cheerleaders along the way. I would like to acknowledge the support of Jessica Kimmel. Finally, my profound love and appreciation to my family, especially my mother, Selma Aronson. She worried over the entire process and supported what seemed like an impossible quest. I can hear my father in heaven cheering on “his daughter the professor.”

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES vii ABSTRACT viii 1. INTRODUCTION 1 Setting the Context for the New WORLD Theater 2

The Five College, Inc. Consortium 2 The Location and Changing Communities 3

Methodology 5 Overview 5

Goals of the Study 6 The Use of the 2050 Youth Survey 7

Outline of the Dissertation 8 2. LITERATURE REVIEW: SHAPING THE STUDY 10

Introduction 10 Critical Education Theory: Cultural Reproduction and Resistance 11

Reproduction Theory and Cultural Capital 12 Critical Education Theory and Educational Reform 14

Cultural and Critical Pedagogy 17 Diversity in Higher Education 18 Access and Equity in Higher Education 23 Theatre Praxis and Education 28 Empowerment and the New WORLD Theater 30

3. THE NEW WORLD THEATER: BACKGROUND AND PRODUCTION HISTORY 33

Origins of the New WORLD Theater 33 New WORLD Theater: The First Ten Years 40

In the Beginning: Third World Theater 1979-80 40 Third World Theater 1980-1981 50 Third World Theater 1981-1982 51 Third World Theater 1982-1983 52 Third World Theater 1983-1984 54 1984-1985—The Third World Theater Becomes the New WORLD Theater September 1984 60

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The 1984-85 Season 61 New WORLD Theater 1985-1986 63 New WORLD Theater 1986-1987 66 New WORLD Theater 1987-1988 68 New WORLD Theater 1988-1989 71 New WORLD Theater 1989-1990 74

The Tenth Anniversary Season 74 The Tenth Anniversary Celebration 76

New WORLD Theater 1989-1990 80 Spring 1990 80

New WORLD Theater 1990-1991 81 New WORLD Theater 1991-1992 84 New WORLD Theater 1992-1993 87 New WORLD Theater 1993-1994 91

New WORLD Theater 1994-1995 96 New WORLD Theater 1995-1996 101 New WORLD Theater 1996-1997 105 New WORLD Theater 1997-1998 107 New WORLD Theater 1998-1999 109 New WORLD Theater Spring 1999 110 New WORLD Theater 1999-2000 112 New WORLD Theater 2000-2001 117 New WORLD Theater 2001-2002 118

Twenty-Four Years of the New WORLD Theater 120 4. NEW WORLD THEATER PROJECTS 124

Origins of the Looking In/To the Future Project 124 The Latino Theater Project 125     The Asian Theater Project 126

Looking In/To the Future Project: 1996 130 Looking In/To the Future: 1997 132 Looking In/To the Future: 1998 and 1999 136 Looking In/To the Future/Project 2050: 2000 140 Project 2050: 2001 147

5. ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS 153

Introduction 153 The Intersection of Praxis and Theory 153

Exploring the Potential of the Looking In/To the Future/Project 2050 Model 155

Using Theatre to Promote Access and Equity: A Model 159 Conclusion 165

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APPENDIX A Amherst Demographic Information 170

Northampton Demographic Information 170 South Hadley Demographic Information 171

Holyoke Demographic Information 172 Springfield Demographic Information 172

APPENDIX B New WORLD Theater 2050 Project Student Survey 179

APPENDIX C

Project 2050 Statements 182 APPENDIX D

New WORLD Theater Retreat Policies July 4-9, 2000 183  APPENDIX E

Biographies of Project 2050 Youth: Open Studio/Open Dialogue 184 APPENDIX F

The Artists 186

APPENDIX G Project 2050 Summer Youth Retreat 2002 Questionnaire for Youth 188

APPENDIX H Project 2050 Summer Youth Retreat 2002 Questionnaire for Youth pt.2 189 APPENDIX I

Project 2050 Summer Youth Retreat 2002 Evaluation form for Artists, Scholar/Activists, and Counselors 191

BIBLIOGRAPHY 193 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 214

 

  

      

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LIST OF TABLES   1. Demographic Census Data for city of Amherst, Massachusetts 174 2. Demographic Census Data for city of Northampton, Massachusetts 175 3. Demographic Census Data for city of South Hadley, Massachusetts 176 4. Demographic Census Data for city of Holyoke, Massachusetts 177 5. Demographic Census Data for city of Springfield, Massachusetts 178  

 

                             

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ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines the background, production history, and outreach

projects of the New WORLD Theater (NWT) in terms of the NWT's usefulness as a model

for diversifying theatre programs and, more importantly, for utilizing the work of theatre

programs to address issues of access and equity in higher education for at-risk and students

of color. Determining how theatre might be used as a tool to encourage young people to

participate in society and eventually matriculate to higher education is integral to the

motivation behind this study. The researcher’s extensive experience in both theatre and

higher education, and awareness of equity and access issues among both students and

faculty informs the goals for this study as well.

Chapter two's literature review concentrates on research related to diversity, access,

and equity. Additionally, the review covers critical educational theory and its relation to

theatre and praxis. The production history and background presented in Chapter Three

provides the context through which the NWT outreach projects were developed.

Chapter Four describes the outreach projects of the NWT, beginning with the

Latino Theatre Project and the Asian Theatre Project, two projects that set the stage for the

Looking In/To the Future project. Chapter four also provides a detailed description of the

Looking In/To the Future/Project 2050, as well as an in-depth account of the activities of

and changes to the outreach program over a three-year period.

Finally, Chapter Five considers the applicability of the NWT’s outreach projects to

the national issue of student and faculty recruitment and retention, and the usefulness of

the NWT as a model for expanding diversity in theatre programs at institutions of higher

education.

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This study finds that the NWT’s Looking In/To The Future/Project 2050 is

consistent with current national issues related to diversity, access, and equity in higher

education institutions. By bringing together marginalized artists and scholars of color, the

NWT has provided a site for continued discourse. The work of the project seeks to

politicize the discourse of at-risk and youth of color, and, as such, is situated in the politics

of performance.

 

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CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Higher education in the U.S. faces many problems as it seeks to fill needs

associated with the changing demographics of the early twenty-first century. Because

of the growing inequities inherent in U.S. society, colleges and universities must be

prepared to accept and support increasing numbers of students of color. A number of

national programs have sought to enhance K-12 education for students of color.

Nevertheless, many in higher education would argue that, although preparation is

crucial to matriculation into college for at-risk or students of color, the success of

these young persons requires something beyond an adequate K-12 curriculum.

Through my work with the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and

as Dean of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at a small private Catholic

Hispanic-serving university, I have become acutely aware of the growing number of

undergraduate students of color, low number of graduate students of color, and the

small pool of qualified faculty of color. The intent of this study is to explore issues of

access and equity for students of color through an examination of the work of the

New WORLD Theater (NWT), which began in 1978 at the University of

Massachusetts (UMASS) and continues to this day. The NWT is an internationally

recognized theatre organization dedicated to developing works by artists of color and

known for its outreach projects to at-risk young people and communities of color.

Housed at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Massachusetts, NWT has

maintained its commitment to students and artists of color throughout its twenty-four

years of existence. The study (1) documents the history of the New WORLD Theater,

(2) examines in particular the NWT community outreach project known as Looking

In/To the Future/Project 2050, and (3) suggests the use of Project 2050 as a potential

model for enhancing diversity in higher education theatre programs and using theatre

1

pedagogy to promote issues related to diversity and access among at-risk and students

of color.

Setting the Context for the New WORLD Theater

The Five College, Inc. Consortium

The Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts is home to the Five College, Inc.

Consortium, which includes Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith

Colleges and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMASS). 1 These

institutions have maintained a cooperative relationship for many years, and have

created special professorships, unique events, collaborative scheduling, open access

to courses, and transportation for faculty and students that are shared by the five

schools. The aims of the Consortium are stated in its 20 July 1965 “Articles of

Incorporation” and are quoted in the 1999-2000 annual report:

The primary purpose of the corporation is to promote the broad

educational and cultural objectives of Amherst College, Hampshire

College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University

of Massachusetts:

• by encouraging and fostering closer cooperation and understanding

among the faculty, staff, and students . . .

• by promoting and developing opportunities for joint lectures,

concerts, plays, games, and other activities for sharing the use of the

educational and cultural facilities . . .

• by promoting and developing opportunities for a better

understanding of the people, cultures, and institutions of other

nations . . .

• by facilitating the development of curricula ...

• by facilitating the development of, or acting as a participant in,

research or educational facilities, projects, or other undertakings.

—from the Articles of Organization, July 20,1965

2

(“Thirty-Five Years of Collaboration in Higher

Education.” 1)

Over sixty shared or joint appointments of faculty to the five colleges had

been made through the year 2000. The 1999-2000 annual report clarifies the long-

standing purpose of the Five College arrangement:

The purpose of having joint faculty appointments has not changed.

These appointments give the institutions a means to test new and

emerging fields within the curriculum, provide them with an effective

way of including highly specialized areas not represented on any of the

campuses, and allow them an affordable avenue for bringing

celebrated and distinguished visitors to the five colleges. (“Thirty-Five

Years” 3)

In 1979-1982, I was a Five-College Professor teaching Theatre Voice and

Speech at all five theatre programs. 2 As such, I traveled the triangle between South

Hadley, Northampton, and Amherst, teaching classes, conducting workshops, holding

office hours and tutorials, coaching actors, and conducting rehearsals. During that

time I had the opportunity to observe the distinct personalities of each of the five

theatre programs and their respective institutions. My contact with the students and

faculty in the theatre programs was limited to classes, workshops, and rehearsals. 3

Other than one African-American student from Mount Holyoke College, the students

and faculty with whom I came in contact were White. 4

The Location and Changing Communities

The Pioneer Valley, in which the Five College Consortium is located, is a

beautiful location nestled along the Connecticut River, the longest in New England.

Lining the river is a greenbelt, mostly publicly owned floodplain, framed by

mountains. The largest city in the region is Springfield. The small towns in the area,

including Holyoke, South Hadley, Amherst, and Northampton, are served by the New

WORLD Theater through their productions, workshops, residences, and educational

3

outreach programs. In order to understand the community-related needs of the

audiences served by the New WORLD Theater, it is helpful to look at a few cities in

the area. The cities noted in the following section are those where individuals

participate in the projects of the NWT or as audience members for the various

productions presented by the company. These cities include Amherst, Holyoke,

Northampton, Springfield, and South Hadley. The five institutions of the Five

College Consortium are located in Amherst, Northampton, and South Hadley.

Community centers, community theatres, artists, cultural workers, and scholars from

these surrounding communities all have played a role in the work of the NWT over

the years of its existence. The demographics of the region, as reported in the 1980,

1990, and 2000 U.S. Bureau of the Census data for those towns and cities, provide

information useful for this study.

Shifts in the demographics of the communities in which the Five College

Consortium exists and those surrounding cities that are served by the NWT have

influenced its outreach activities. The population in Amherst almost doubled from

1980 to 2000, with the largest growth being in the Asian community. Amherst also

saw an increase in families living at poverty level and a decrease in the number of

individuals attaining higher education. The least diverse community of those housing

a Five College Consortium institution is South Hadley, which experienced the least

change over the past three censuses. Springfield and Holyoke are communities that

are actively served by the NWT. Holyoke has maintained a relatively stable

population over the past twenty years. Holyoke’s Black, Asian, and Hispanic

populations comprised 47 percent of the total population in 2000, with the Hispanic

group representing 41.4 of that total. In the year 2000, the Black community of

Springfield constituted almost twenty-five percent of the population. Springfield has a

low percentage of residents completing four or more years of college when compared

to Amherst, where over fifty percent of those twenty-five years of age or older have

completed four or more years of college. One other characteristic of the Springfield

community that may be significant is that almost a third of the population in the 2000

4

census reported speaking a language other than English in the home. Concerns related

to the immigrant populations and diversity in these communities motivated NWT’s

educational outreach projects. (See Appendix A and Tables 1-5 for more detailed

information.)

Methodology

Overview

With the intent of verifying the benefits of theater activity as a means to

enhance access and equity for at-risk and youth of color, this study investigates the

history and practice of the New WORLD Theater, including its origins and

production history. NWT’s background and production history are documented for

the first time and provide a context for a discussion of the outreach projects. In

addition, this study examines in some detail the outreach projects of the NWT, which

involved youth and communities of color in activities that connected them to artists of

color and the world of higher education, and explored the potential for using such

outreach projects as models for similar programs designed to increase access and

equity among youth of color. This study’s purpose has been accomplished by

investigating, through interviews, an examination of NWT archival materials, and

observation of two outreach projects of the NWT.

This investigation is a descriptive case study. In examining changes in the

region served by the NWT, demographic data was gleaned from the 1980, 1990, and

2000 censuses. Also, the Special Collections section of the UMASS Library and the

archive of the UMASS student newspaper, the Collegian, were reviewed for pertinent

data regarding the years leading up to the founding of the NWT. Interviews were

conducted with faculty from the theater programs at each of the institutions of the

Five College Consortium, as well as an administrator from UMASS; the NWT

Artistic Director; NWT staff; and artists, scholars, and counselors from the NWT

outreach projects. Finally, participant observation was conducted of the NWT-

sponsored Intersection II conference and two NWT programs: Looking In/To the

5

Future and Project 2050 summer retreats. The researcher gained access to the

personnel and materials of the NWT through her association with the Association for

Theatre in Higher Education, her years spent as a Five College Professor (1979-

1982), and contact with the UMASS Dean of Humanities and Arts at the Council of

Colleges of Arts and Sciences (CCAS) annual meetings.

Goals of the Study

The original goal of the study was to address the relationship between the Five

College theater programs and the NWT. Open-ended interviews of chairpersons and

faculty of Five College theatre programs were conducted in Massachusetts in various

locations, including hotel lobbies, offices, restaurants, and campus lounges. The

informal interviews in public locations proved problematic due to ambient noise and

inaccuracies related to poor recall. In addition, those interviewed had had varying

degrees of contact with the NWT.

After the initial April 2000 interviews with faculty and chairs of the five

theatre programs, the researcher determined that examining the impact of the NWT

on the Five College theatre programs was not feasible. While the NWT clearly had

played a role in enhancing the awareness of multicultural issues in the Five College

area since its inception in 1979, it was not the sole influence in this regard. In the

1980s and 1990s, universities and colleges across the United States were dealing with

racial unrest and a lack of diversity in the student body and among faculty. The

production choices of theater programs were affected by this turmoil. Nevertheless,

because the NWT was a significant influence at UMASS, a shift occurred in the goals

of the study. It was clear that the NWT was a model for outreach to students of color

that could be used by theatre programs at other universities. The goal of the study

shifted to the development of a model that reflected educational research related to

access and equity.

Interviews with the staff, artistic director, students, and scholars of the NWT

and its outreach Looking In/To the Future/2050 Projects provided data that was

6

confirmed through NWT reports and archival materials, including records of

participants in projects, artist and production company publicity materials, grant

proposals and reports, publicity materials, programs and season brochures, mailing

lists, correspondence, agendas, meeting notes, and survey responses related to various

projects and activities of the NWT. Additionally, participation in the Intersections II

conference gave the researcher an opportunity to observe the artists and scholars in

action.

In case study research it is recommended that the researcher combine multiple

sources of evidence. The use of archival material and documents, interviews, direct

observation, and participant-observation allowed for what is known as triangulation

of results. All evidence was reviewed and analyzed allowing for such convergence of

data. This analysis will be discussed in the fifth chapter of this study.

The Use of the 2050 Youth Survey

The researcher attempted to survey the youth in NWT’s Project 2050;

however, due to a low return rate, the survey was not utilized in the findings except

for anecdotal student comments. Students selected for the survey were currently

participating in the 2002 session of Project 2050 and had participated in previous

Looking In/To the Future retreats. The researcher chose students from diverse

ethnic/racial groups within the Project 2050. The survey packet contained a cover

letter, release form, survey, and self-addressed stamped envelope. Of the twenty

surveys given to students, only five were returned to the researcher. An attempt was

made to re-issue the survey in the fall of 2002 by a member of the NWT staff, but that

too failed to obtain the researcher’s desired results (See Appendix B).

The low survey return rate limited the usefulness of the survey data. The

youth that did reply, while overwhelmingly happy with their experience, did not

report that their expectations of higher education had been influenced by their

participation in the NWT program. Several students referred to the project as “camp.”

The use of the term “camp” suggests that the goals of the Project 2050 retreat were

7

not clearly communicated to the participants. In fact, conversations with the artists

and scholars participating in the retreat revealed that their personal expectations for

the program were not specific to or directly aligned with the NWT goals.

Concentrating on the NWT’s production history and projects provided the

researcher with the opportunity to connect her interests in theatre, diversity, and

higher education. Observations of the activities of the NWT in the office, as well as at

workshops, conferences, classes, and performances were conducted with the

researcher’s compassion for the day-to-day struggles of staff, faculty, students, artists,

and scholars. Their diverse and sometimes conflicting goals stimulated the NWT to

great accomplishments, albeit at a significant personal cost to those involved.

Outline of the Dissertation

This dissertation is divided into five chapters. The present Chapter One

introduces the NWT, the demographics of the communities it serves, its location

within the Five College, Inc. Consortium, the intent of the study, and the

methodology used for data collection. Chapter Two provides the theoretical

framework for the study, including a description of several concepts critical to the

study recommendations (e.g., cultural capital, diversity, and access and equity in

higher education.). Chapter Two also presents an overview of research on diversity

and critical education theory, and relates theory to praxis. The work of theatre

practitioners who incorporate the approaches of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal

illustrates the relationship already present between critical education theory and

theatre practice. Through this lens the work of the NWT is linked to the discourse on

educational reform, diversity, and access and equity.

Chapters Three and Four present the history of the NWT. Chapter Three

chronicles NWT’s background and production history. This chronological

presentation of productions and theater companies nurtured and presented by the

NWT documents the NWT’s remarkable accomplishments. The struggles of this

theatre company, born of the racial unrest on a college campus, mirror the struggles

8

of critical education theorists as they incorporate issues of access and diversity into

higher education and sets the context for the outreach project described. Chapter Four

provides a description of the educational projects that led to the creation of the

NWT’s Looking In/To the Future and Project 2050. In addition, Chapter Four offers a

detailed description of the activities of and changes to the outreach program over a

three-year period. The description is presented to provide examples that might serve

as models for other theatre-related outreach programs designed to enhance access to

higher education, as described in Chapter Five.

Chapter Five, then, examines the usefulness of the NWT as a model for

expanding diversity in theatre programs and the relevance of outreach projects such

as those conducted by NWT to national issues of student and faculty recruitment and

retention. Two questions form the basis of the analysis presented in Chapter Five:

(1) Can the development of the NWT serve as a model for other schools and

communities interested in increasing cultural opportunities for audiences and artists

of color? (2) Are the NWT’s community outreach projects relevant to the current

national issue of student retention? Chapter Five incorporates the literature review

and the history of the NWT and its programs in answering these questions.

1 Amherst, Massachusetts is home to Hampshire College, Amherst College, and the University of Massachusetts. Smith College is located across the Connecticut River in Northampton, Massachusetts. Mount Holyoke College is located in South Hadley, Massachusetts. 2 As a Five-college Professor, I taught one course each semester at Mount Holyoke College and one course at one of the other four schools. I was hired by the Consortium to demonstrate the importance of voice and speech training. The desired goal was that one of the schools would commit a faculty line to this specialty. The University of Massachusetts eventually hired a voice and speech specialist. 3 In the three years the researcher spent in the Valley, she did not have the opportunity to see a production of the New WORLD Theater. As a Five College Professor hired for a limited term the researcher was both an insider and outsider who nevertheless knew of the minority student protests at UMASS and the university’s purpose in hiring Uno, that is, as an experiment in solving the problem of minority student dissatisfaction 4 The African-American student participated in the NWT and is now the Dean of Students at Mount Holyoke College.

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CHAPTER TWO

Literature Review: Shaping the Study

Introduction

Colleges and universities have struggled over the past twenty-five years with

changing demographics and racial incidents. Many institutions of higher education

have developed various strategies for encouraging inclusion and multiculturalism on

campus. Theatre programs have addressed the same need to involve minority

populations, with the added dimension that their success or failure is made visible to

their communities through their theatrical productions.

As noted in Chapter One, demographic reports suggest that, by the year 2050,

the size of the minority population in the United States will be equal to or greater than

that of the Anglo population. Such projections have raised concerns about access and

equity for students of color in higher education settings. The intent of this study is to

explore such access and equity issues through an examination of the New WORLD

Theater (NWT) community outreach project known as Looking In/To the Future

Project 2050 that began in 1994 at the University of Massachusetts and continues to

this day.

In Looking In/To The Future, the NWT worked with young people in the

Khmer, Vietnamese, Latina/o, and African-American communities surrounding

Amherst, Massachusetts (where the University of Massachusetts is located) to help

them define their cultural identities through writing and theatre activities. More

recently, the NWT engaged youth from these communities in Project 2050, a

program that seeks to address the problems that young people of color are likely to

confront in the future. This chapter reviews sociological and educational theories that

form the basis for the analysis of these two NWT programs, which will be examined

in terms of their potential to serve as model programs for greater access and equity to

10

higher education for at-risk students and students of color. More specifically, this

review will present the ideas of critical education theorists who have examined the

social implications of class and race in U.S. institutions of higher education and

examine scholarship related to educational reform, diversity, and theatre activities

that connect theory and praxis..

Critical Education Theory: Cultural Reproduction and Resistance

Over the last several decades, many studies have focused on issues of

academic access, equity, and multiculturalism, exploring such phenomena as racial

and ethnic differences in academic achievement and mobility. In the same vein,

educational policy-makers and administrators have developed plans to provide greater

access to postsecondary education for at-risk students and students of color. This

dissertation is consistent with such efforts, in that it highlights two factors shown to

influence the decision of at-risk and students of color to seek postsecondary

education: cultural capital and agency.

Students require more than an adequate high school curriculum to make the

leap to higher education. Students and their families need cultural capital, that is,

assets in addition to the monetary that add to the “wealth” of a particular individual.

Family and community involvement, for example, provide cultural capital that helps

students of color attain the experience and information necessary to succeed in

college. Further, cultural capital extends beyond the economic and skills level to

include advantages obtained through extra-curricular and co-curricular activities of

the sort that more affluent and privileged students typically experience. In addition,

at-risk students need to be able to picture themselves in and negotiate their way

through a higher education system.

Students, their families, and their teachers must be able to use as well as

acquire cultural capital, however. Reproduction theorists, who assert that schools

teach knowledge and skills that reproduce the dominant power structure of society,

downplay the importance of human agency, relegating students to a passive position

11

in terms of their successes or failures. According to Aronowitz and Giroux,

“Reproduction theorists focus almost exclusively on power and how the dominant

culture ensures the consent and defeat of subordinate classes and groups” (Education

Still Under Siege 68). Resistance theorists restore the concept of agency, although

both reproduction and resistance theories of education fail to acknowledge the

interrelatedness of structure (e.g., curriculum, classroom organization) and agency.

Without agency, students and families cannot utilize the cultural capital they do have

to resist the dominant culture. Without agency and resistance, they may not be able

to benefit from the emancipatory nature of education.

Critical education theorists blame schools for perpetuating the inequities of

the dominant society. They argue that change must begin by examining the structural

characteristics that limit the possibilities for teachers and at-risk students and/or

students of color. As Aronowitz and Giroux suggest, “Schools represent contested

terrains marked not only by structural and ideological contradictions but also by

collectively informed student resistance” (Education Still Under Siege 67). Such

theorists see schools as sites of complex resistance to the dominant social order.

Reproduction Theory and Cultural Capital

Sociological and educational theorists who write about cultural reproduction

have defined cultural capital differently, 1 however, and the commonly held meaning

of cultural capital refers to particular assets conveyed by middle- and upper-class

families to their children. This type of assets, according to McDonough,

substitutes for or supplements the transmission of economic capital as

a means of maintaining class status and privilege across generations.

Middle- and upper-class families highly value a college education and

advanced degrees as a mean of ensuring continued economic security,

in addition to whatever monetary assets can be passed along to their

offspring.” (Choosing Colleges 8)

12

Pierre Bourdieu originated the term cultural capital, describing it as the

conversion of experience, style, and language into a commodity that perpetuates the

dominant group. According to Bourdieu, dominant groups succeed because they

bring this cultural capital with them when they leave home. Further, culture is

reproduced through education controlled by the ruling class to perpetuate its interests.

In this way, Bourdieu connects power and culture. Although he believes in the

liberatory potential of education, Bourdieu’s ideology does not allow for resistance to

the transmission of the dominant culture (“The Forms of Capital” 241-58, “Cultural

Reproduction” 487-510).

Bourdieu contends that educators and society divide knowledge into two

categories, high-status and low-status, with low-status being the inferior of the two.

Michael W. Apple encourages researchers to “think of knowledge as a form of

capital” (Under Fire 99). He sees the university’s role in the production of knowledge

as significant, because it provides students with cultural capital. Schools perpetuate

the dominant culture through the distribution of knowledge, which some students are

more capable of receiving than others. For example, the dominant culture considers

theoretical subjects superior to practical subjects and working-class knowledge as

different from and inferior to high-status knowledge. However, Giroux argues that a

growing number of educators are anti-intellectual and that “educational criticism

itself has been transformed into a reductionistic celebration of experience that

resurrects the binary opposition between theory and practice, with the latter becoming

an unproblematic category for invoking the voice of pedagogical authority” (Border

Crossings 2).

Parental and environmental factors can help to determine the success of first-

generation students, at-risk students, and students of color in matriculating and

completing post-secondary education. Students from middle- and high-income

families find their passage to college facilitated by the schools they attend, the

subjects they study, the cultural activities they experience, and their home

environments. At-risk students and students of color face obstacles to the

13

achievement of their college goals due to their economic situations, tracking in

schools, and a lack of cultural experiences that might expose them to the goal of

attending college.

Critical Education Theory and Educational Reform

Schools limit at-risk students and students of color to the extent that they

perpetuate actions that reinforce the lack of equality evident in society. Recently,

resistance theorists have moved beyond deterministic conceptions of cultural

reproduction to an analysis of power relationships in education based on identity

conflict and resistance. They have “sought to redefine the importance of mediation,

power, and culture in understanding the complex relations between schools and the

dominant society” (Aronowitz and Giroux, Education Still Under Siege 93).

Similarly, recent Marxist studies of education have focused on the way in which

curriculum can serve the interests of dominant groups in a society. Such studies

explore the interaction between structure and human agency.

Resistance theorists have studied the opposition of subordinate groups to

dominant groups.2 Critics of resistance theory argue for the existence of a “range of

oppositional behaviors, some of which constitute resistance and some of which do

not” (Education Still Under Siege 94). Other criticism asserts that resistance

theorists ignore gender and race, and instead focus on class. By looking exclusively

at the rebellious or disruptive student, resistance theorists overlook passive resistance

and the potential political power of students who recognize their position in relation

to the dominant group and choose to transcend it in order to complete college and

place themselves in a more powerful position in the future. Both overt and passive

resistance, then, can be powerful political tools.

A number of researchers in the field of educational sociology have expressed

concern, and even alarm, at conservative political trends that would return public

education to a meritocracy, a move that would clearly benefit the dominant class at

14

the expense of minority groups. 3 Carole A. Stabile fears that such conservative

educational initiatives will undermine the educational progress of minorities:

While we defend our theory and practice from accusations of

undemocratic principles, democracy is being undermined at the ground

floor. How many university professors realize that African-American

students are three times as likely to be tracked into special education

classes as white students, while they are only half as likely to be

placed in “gifted and talented” programs (if in fact these programs are

funded in their school systems)? . . .What does it mean to discuss

“difference“ and “othering” effects of Western culture, when the

“other” is once again being systematically excluded from such

conversations? (120)

Stabile’s observation that at-risk students and students of color are excluded from the

discourse of difference is true at both predominantly White institutions and those with

diverse populations of students and faculty.

Numerous scholars have called for educational reform, and for the public to

reevaluate educational systems and recognize that schools must change to suit the

changing demographics of the population. In our time, education has become a major

political issue. In the 1991 text, Postmodern Education: Politics, Culture, and Social

Criticism, Aronowitz and Giroux explore issues of race, class, and gender in the

politics of education, declaring their disillusionment with the state of educational

politics as the first Bush administration followed in the footsteps of the Reagan

administration. Aronowitz and Giroux note that the tactic of managing the drug

problem as a police and courts issue, rather than a social/psychological one, is a prime

example of the Bush administration’s approach to social problems, which focused

less on the underlying causes of social problems than on the “quick fix” (4). They

further assert that the Bush administration’s use of standardized tests to evaluate

student performance according to federal educational standards, as well as its

expectation that teachers and administrators promote “American” values, has created

15

opposition in the form of increased student empowerment and intellectual skepticism.

In the educational environment created under President George H. Bush,

unconventional learning styles did not measure up and therefore were “consigned to

subordinate niches in the economic and status order” (67). For their own part,

Aronowitz and Giroux argue for the relevance and intellectual validity of “marginal

discourse” or discourse from the margins of conventional society. They assert:

Any viable educational theory has to begin with a language that links

schooling to democratic public life, that defines teachers as engaged

intellectuals and border crossers, and develops forms of pedagogy that

incorporate difference, plurality, and the language of the everyday as

central to the production and legitimation of learning. (187)

It is this very discourse on the centers and the margins that has been debated

in educational theory for two decades. In Higher Education Under Fire, Michael

Bérubé and Cary Nelson examine the crisis in higher education that took place in the

early to mid-1990s. Their book brings together numerous voices--from the left as

well as the right--that together provide insights on faculty and politics in higher

education, as well as on critical pedagogy and difference. One contributing author,

Joan W. Scott, describes the crisis in higher education as a series of paradoxes:

1. The more the university community has diversified, the more

relentless have been the attempts to enforce community.

2. The more individualism is used by those opposed to the

institutionalization of diversity, the more advocates of diversity invoke

individualism.

3. The greater the need for open-ended research, reflection, and

criticism in the production of new knowledge, the more instrumental

the justifications for taking new directions have become.

4. The greater the need for theorizing—for the practice of questioning

unquestioned assumptions and beliefs—the faster has been the turn to

moralism and the therapeutics of the personal. (294)

16

The conflicts inherent in Scott’s observations suggest the following questions:

Does the mainstream community take priority over the diverse community? Does

individualism mean choice? Does individualization mean further segregation of both

the minority and dominant communities? How does conservative political educational

reform affect individual disciplines in the university?

Cultural and Critical Pedagogy

When researchers focus on race, gender, and class, they are forced to address

questions of power, politics, and pedagogy. Many important critical education

studies examine pedagogy, depicting the relationship between power, politics, and

education. Such work no longer exists at the fringes of educational research. Henry

A. Giroux and Peter MacLaren, for example, explore the political nature of cultural

studies.4

The transformation of education to accommodate students of color impacts the

very foundation of education systems. Chandra Talpade Mohanty stresses, “The

theorization and politicalization of experience is imperative if pedagogical practices

are to focus on more than the mere management, systematization, and consumption of

disciplinary knowledge” (152). Central to providing an equitable education for

students of color is the empowerment of at-risk students and students of color to

express their unique voices in the classroom. While there is some conflict regarding

the manner in which strategies that empower students might be implemented, the

goals of such strategies remain the same.

Radical education theorists view the best education as interdisciplinary,

rejecting the boundaries of individual disciplines and educating for democracy. They

challenge educators to go beyond the transmission of current social behavior, and to

question the status quo and embrace the differences inherent in a democracy. Radical

theorists, then, join theory and practice with praxis. The hopefulness of such theorists

as Giroux and Freire complements the practicality of a theorist like Apple. In one

interview, Apple eloquently states,

17

Our work is a form of cultural politics. This involves all of us working

for what [Raymond] Williams called the ‘journey of hope’ toward ‘the

long revolution.’ To do less, not to engage in such work, is to ignore

the lives of millions of students and teachers throughout the world. Not

to act is to let the powerful win. Can we afford to let this happen?

(Official Knowledge 175)

Academic and arts disciplines within educational institutions, then, can become

locations of cultural political action.

Diversity in Higher Education

In Racial Crisis in American Higher Education, editors William A. Smith,

Philip G. Altbach, and Kofi Lomotey compile the work of a diverse group of scholars

concerned with the importance of race and politics in higher education. Their book

first addresses the history of race in higher education settings and then turns to the

changing demographics of the student population in the twenty-first century.

Concerns related to individual minority student groups, such as African-American,

Latina/o and Asian-American, are covered, as well as issues of concern to faculty and

administration, such as racism on campus and faculty of color. Other scholars have

explored college choice and successful matriculation among students in

predominantly White, Black, and Hispanic institutions. Smith, Altbach, and

Lomotey, for example, argue that continuing racial challenges on campus should be

expected, while they remain hopeful that shifts in attitudes eventually will occur at

universities and colleges.

Educational sociologists have examined the links between changes in social

consciousness and the reform of educational structures and systems. Yet, with the

exception of the neo-Marxists among them, educational sociologists have failed to

address the relationship between education and economic inequality in our society.

Those sociologists who do write about economic inequality have tended to see social

mobility as the path to equality. In “Research and Equality and Education,” Kathleen

18

Lynch enjoins sociologists of education to do more than just report on injustice, and

instead “examine the transformative potential of our analysis” (102). Lynch suggests

that, until sociologists are “working with rather than for” those marginalized in

society, they have not done their part in realizing the goal of educational equality.

Paulo Freire was a critical education theorist who wrote about the potential of

education to raise the social consciousness of those oppressed by the societies in

which they live. In Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare

Teach, Freire states, “A humanizing education is the path through which men and

women can become conscious about their presence in the world. The way they act

and think when they develop all of their capacities, taking into consideration their

needs, but also the needs and aspirations of others ” (xiii). Freire saw education as a

vehicle for lifting the poor and uneducated out of poverty. Freire’s Pedagogy of the

Oppressed similarly speaks to the potential of education to do more than just transmit

knowledge. Freire’s work, a potent testament to the power of education to raise the

cultural capital of otherwise marginalized individuals, has influenced a great many

scholars in many disciplines. 5 In Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice

of Freedom, bell hooks pays homage to the Brazilian theorist and practitioner: “When

I entered my first undergraduate classroom to teach, I relied on the example of those

inspired black women teachers in my grade school, on Freire’s work, and on feminist

thinking about radical pedagogy” (7). In her “playful” dialogue on Freire, hooks

further explains:

Paulo was one of the thinkers whose work gave me a language. He

made me think deeply about the construction of identity in resistance.

There was this one sentence of Freire’s that became a revolutionary

mantra for me: ‘We cannot enter the struggle as objects in order to

become subjects.’ Really, it is difficult to find words adequate to

explain how this statement was like a locked door—and I struggled

within myself to find the key—and that struggle engaged me in a

process of critical thought that was transformative. This experience

19

positioned Freire in my mind and heart as a challenging teacher whose

work furthered my own struggle against the colonizing process—the

colonizing mind-set. (46)

It is clear that hooks understands education as a process of liberation. hooks

proposes “engaged pedagogy” as a means of transforming curriculum so that it “does

not reflect biases or reinforce systems of domination” and allows students and

teachers to take risks that make the classroom a site of resistance (21). According to

hooks, the classroom must be a democracy, a place where all students feel safe to

participate and share responsibility for contributing to the learning that takes place.

A democratic classroom of this sort must move away from what Freire describes as

the “banking system of education,” in which students passively absorb the

product/knowledge dispensed therein. According to hooks, students of color

generally do not feel safe in the classroom, and teachers must re-learn how to teach

the diversity of students represented in the classroom today.

In Killing Rage: Ending Racism, hooks illustrates the necessity of exposing

and eradicating racism and sexism, and argues that we have not confronted the

colonialism in our own country. Hooks tackles class in Where We Stand: Class

Matters, but it is in Teaching to Transgress that she touches most deeply on ideas that

could change the educational system. Other scholars influenced by Freire have

discussed the concept of cultural workers, that is, those who work for the betterment

of the common good. Giroux notes that “professions such as law, social work,

architecture, medicine, theology, education, and literature” all have the potential to

engage in cultural work as long as they “mobilize knowledge and desires that may

lead to minimizing the degree of oppression in people’s lives” (Crossing Borders 5).

Within the discourses on identity, race, ethnicity, and class, many argue

against the essentialized language and social construction of race and ethnicity. U.S.-

Cuban scholar Coco Fusco decries the fact that the U.S. government and the media

have turned “hundreds of ethnic groups into one—Hispanic” (English is Broken Here

23). She resists as problematic the “current wave of multiculturalism” in the U.S.,

20

characterizing it as a double-edged sword. According to Fusco, much of the

celebration of multiculturalism regards difference “as light but exotic entertainment

for the dominant culture” (27). The celebration itself, she warns, gives the dominant

culture control over cultural difference (27). Though Fusco’s work deals mainly with

the performance arts, her frustrations are similar to those felt in elementary and public

schools and institutions of higher education, and among cultural producers within

those institutions. She believes that culture has the power to transform individuals

and that most of the art produced in the U.S. reflects “the legacies of the conquest and

colonization of the Americas” (36). According to Fusco, Latinas feel this legacy

within their being. At the same time, Latina/o artists and writers strive to open doors

for publication and performance and provide arenas for cultural productions. As

Latina author Cherríe Moraga states, “As a Latina artist I can choose to contribute to

the development of a docile generation of would-be Republican ‘Hispanics’ loyal to

the United States, or to the creation of a force of ‘disloyal’ americanos who subscribe

to a multicultural, multilingual, radical restructuring of America” (Latina 214).

Echoing Fusco’s desire to challenge identity and open doors, Moraga seeks to

redefine “our nation’s identity.” Moraga asserts: “We must learn to see ourselves less

as U.S. citizens and more as members of a larger world community” (Latina 219).

She continues to enjoin her readers to be politically active. As in her earlier text, This

Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color, edited with Gloria

Anzaldúa, she calls the reader to political action.

This Bridge Called My Back, originally published in 1981, has become a

seminal text in academic courses focusing on diversity. The work is raw with the

realities of the lives revealed. Anzaldúa states, “It is difficult for me to break free of

the Chicano cultural bias into which I was born and raised, and the cultural bias of the

Anglo culture that I was brainwashed into adopting” (Bridge 207). Anzaldúa,

Moraga, and the other women writing in this work explicitly recount their histories

and their pain, giving the text an immediacy that theoretical works dealing with

difference cannot duplicate.

21

“Race,” Writing, and Difference, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is another

anthology from the mid-1980s that presents the ideas of key theorists in the field of

difference and post-colonial thought. Gates asserts, “Race has become a trope of

ultimate, irreducible difference between cultures, linguistics groups, or adherents of

specific belief systems which—more often than not—also have fundamentally

opposed economic interests. Race is the ultimate trope of difference because it is so

very arbitrary in its application” (5). This volume is stunning in its inclusion of the

provocative ideas of both critical writers and those who would refute them. Although

Gates and others in this anthology define race and other-ness, they do so in purely

theoretical terms without the call to action heralded by such scholars as Fusco and

Moraga.

A myriad of themes—Chicano studies; labor and politics; language, literature,

and theatre—can be found in Chicana Voices: Intersections of Class, Race and

Gender, the published proceedings of the 1984 National Association for Chicano

Studies. Edited by a committee chaired by Teresa Córdova and including Norma

Cantú, Gilberto Cardenas, Juan García, and Christine M. Sierra, the book contains

essays with frequent references to inequality and paternalism in academia, in theatre

companies, and in labor and politics. In her essay, “Women in El Teatro Campesino:

‘¿Apoca Estaba Molacha la Virgen de Guadalupe?’”, Yolanda J. Broyles describes

the paternalism of El Teatro Campesino (The Farmworkers Theatre), a group formed

in 1965 by Luis Valdez to support the farm labor organizing efforts of César Chávez.

Through interviews with women who performed with El Teatro Campesino, Broyles

uncovers dissatisfaction with both their roles and their treatment by male members of

the cast. After interviewing Teatro Campesino founder Luis Valdez, who described

how the group worked and lived together in a relationship he described as familial

(with Valdez in the role of father), Broyles concludes, “Male resistance to female

self-determination…should not be personalized or considered the special problem of

this or that man or group. In truth, it is not unique to El Teatro Campesino” (Latina

Voices 168). The struggle of the women interviewed for Broyles’ essay, however, is

22

only part of the larger struggle of women to move beyond their pre-determined roles.

The paternalism described in this article is similar to the paternalism exhibited

towards the New WORLD Theater and Roberta Uno. Uno could not disassociate

herself from the NWT and took personally the perceptions of her role within the

university.

Access and Equity in Higher Education

Postsecondary education is widely seen as a must for economic survival in

today’s world, since the employment options available to students with a high school

diploma or less have become ever fewer. Aronowitz declares:

For a clear majority, entering college is as much an imperative as high

school was after World War One, and this state of affairs is directly

traceable to the absence of real economic alternatives. The narrowing

of employment options is reflected by the fact that in the United

States, where in 1997 more than 83 percent of those entering high

school graduated, 62 percent of graduates go on to college, half of

them in community college. (The Knowledge Factory 8-9)

Given the requirements of today’s job market, it is imperative that African-American,

Hispanic, and Native American students are provided adequate opportunities for

successfully enrolling in and graduating from college.

In Educating a New Majority, Laura I. Rendón and Richard O. Hope note that

changing demographics demand a shift in how we educate disadvantaged students of

color. Transforming education requires a truly seamless connection between K-12,

community colleges, and four-year institutions. The authors call for partnerships,

changes in curriculum and structure, new systems of faculty rewards, diversification

of faculty and staff, and greater national leadership (465-69). Outreach projects such

as the NWT represent models for partnerships between higher education and

community organizations.

23

Historically, students from low-income, first-generation, or disadvantaged

minority homes have resisted traditional curricula that ignore them or track them

away from courses needed for matriculation into college. A secondary school

curriculum that provides the necessary linguistic code or academic knowledge to

prepare all students for college is an essential part of an adequate education. When

at-risk students and students of color resist the acquisition of the cultural capital for

political reasons or are placed in tracks that deny them such assets, they tend to drop

out of high school or graduate without the academic requirements necessary for

college. The economic situation today pushes minority student resistance into

university settings. At-risk students and minority students resist in college when they

realize that they are unprepared and when they don’t have strategies necessary to

acquire the cultural capital to succeed. Institutions of higher education must face

demographic and economic shifts and revise or create curriculum, which incorporates

diversity and globalization. Linda Serra Hagedorn and William G. Tierney note that

studies of equal access to higher education indicate that outreach projects may

promote the matriculation of at-risk students into college (Increasing Access to

College 1-8). The outreach projects typically studied are federally-funded national

programs such as TRIO, Upward Bound, and Gear Up.6 In addition, researchers

have examined nongovernmental programs (NGOs) that provide some support to

students through foundations, universities, and partnerships. While the evaluations of

various outreach programs often are inadequate, many of these studies have identified

particular strategies integral to student success.

One strategy that appears to be crucial for student success is the establishment

of collaborative partnerships. 7 Other key elements of successful outreach projects

include college awareness, the development of social skills, campus visits, cultural

activities, and training in study-skills. Hope and Rendón declare, “Higher education

must view itself as an integral part of the education continuum for a new student

majority. These institutions must play a central role in helping students, whether

black, brown, red, and yellow, to consider college a realistic option” (466). Projects

24

like those initiated by the NWT have provided just such opportunities for students

and artists of color.

Alexander Jun has studied preparation for college success among Latino

students in urban areas. His study followed five student participants in the

Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI), a college preparation program in

partnership with the University of Southern California.8 Jun described the five youths

in the study as “optimists” who “expressed their ambitions while simultaneously

registering a degree of critical consciousness” (113). He identified five factors for

student academic success: (a) begin early, (b) focus on academics, (c) involve

everyone, (d) address financial realities, and (e) create an environment for success

(120-21). Jun suggests the development of services that affirm the cultural

background of students of color. He found that the successful college graduate was

introduced to the idea of going to college at an early age.

Serra Hagedorn and Tierney, editors of Increasing Access to College, bring

together a number of scholars in their assessment of college access, college

preparatory programs, and suggested policy changes for higher education. In this

volume, Susan Yonezawa, Makeba Jones, and Hugh Mehan explore how the

acquisition of cultural capital by underserved students might be facilitated as one

means of means of increasing their access to higher education. The authors analyze

the response of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to the ban on

Affirmative Action in California. UCSD developed numerous collaborative projects

with local K-12 schools to increase the eligibility of underrepresented youth for

higher education. The multifaceted projects incorporated the development of cultural

capital to promote change and included student inquiry groups and a writing project,

both of which depended on “relationship building and dialogue” (163).

Tierney recommends that college preparation programs be consistently and

continuously evaluated. Tierney’s framework for evaluation includes: parameters of

students entering the program, development of reliable benchmark data, multiple

measures of effectiveness, one annual evaluation per year of a single facet of the

25

program’s effectiveness, and a plan for evaluating cost and communicating

effectiveness (224-229). Serra Hagedorn and Tierney caution that expensive college

preparation programs must always assess their effectiveness based on its specific

goals.

Class, Race and Gender in American Education, edited by Lois Weis,

examines how American schools and institutions of higher education perpetuate the

inequalities of society. In addition, this anthology captures the response of students

to college. In this volume, Amaurey Nora and Laura Rendón discuss Hispanic student

retention at community colleges. Their study addresses the perception that

community colleges may contribute to the failure of Hispanic students to graduate or

to transfer to four-year institutions, although they are the location for most

postsecondary Hispanic student matriculation.

Nora and Rendón looked at two retention studies and concluded that students

who earn an associates degree or transfer to a four-year institution must have a

commitment to the institution itself, or to the goal of transferring to a four-year

college. In addition, they need financial support in the context of realistic family

expectations about the costs of higher education, as well as early and competent

advising with faculty mentors (Class, Race, and Gender 126-43). Although the

conclusions of this study (conducted in the mid-1980s) were not entirely consistent

with the results of previous studies of student retention, student identification with the

institution and their own educational goals, together with financial support, remain

significant factors in the retention of students today.

Access and equity can be studied with student access or faculty access in

mind. Raymond Padilla and Miguel Montiel’s Debatable Diversity: Critical

Dialogues on Change in American Universities is a dialogue that confronts the unrest

on university and college campuses. They explore what happens when faculty of

color enter primarily white institutions and the challenge of diversity in a liberal

atmosphere that seeks to promote tolerance without changing the structures of

privilege. The book is written in dialogue in the style of and in homage to Freire, and

26

follows the history of Chicanos in university settings, including their personal

struggles, complaints, power struggles, and successes. The non-traditional approach

of the book to academic scholarship reflects the souls of scholars taking personal

responsibility for change. Montiel posits, “Why is it that we criticize institutions for

not changing when we do not know how to change ourselves? What is the connection

between personal change and institutional change?” (254). Debatable Diversity

presents the perspectives of Chicano faculty members teaching on a campus that

resists its own transformation.

Leonard A. Valverde and Louis A. Castenell, Jr. edited The Multicultural

Campus: Strategies for Transforming Higher Education. This anthology divides the

issue of access into three types: access for students, access for faculty of color, and

access for administrative positions. Valverde describes a shift that took place in the

mid-1980s, “from a press for access to a desire for meaningful participations within

campuses of higher education” (21). Tracing the roots of such access from the Civil

Rights Movement through the conservative 1990s, Valverde asserts:

Although the politics are getting worse and economics are making it

more difficult for people of color to access higher education

institutions, some forces are working in their favor. Specifically and

most importantly, the demographic trend of increasing numbers of

people of color will force higher education campuses to develop

proactive strategies to create multicultural campuses. (24)

Valverde maintains that the creation of truly multicultural campuses will require more

than increased access, it will require the transformation of the institutions themselves.

How Minority Students Experience College: Implications for Planning and

Policy by Lemuel W. Watson, Melvin C. Terrell, Doris J. Wright, and associates,

reports on a study of small, private, predominantly White institutions with high

retention rates for students of color. The researchers asked subjects three questions:

1. How do minority undergraduates experience learning outside the

classroom? How do they characterize such experiences?

27

2. How does racial identity influence minority students’ learning

experiences outside the classroom?

3. How does campus climate influence minorities’ out-of-classroom

learning? (101)

These questions led to other questions about the activities and initiatives provided

by the universities studied to address the unique social and cultural needs of

multicultural students. The researchers found that campus climates that consciously

supported difference and offered social and intellectual activities enhanced their

students’ college experience.

Theatre Praxis and Education

Many theater practitioners in community and educational settings have

understood Freire’s pedagogical theory through the work of Augusto Boal, who

conceived of using theater techniques to empower the audience/spectator/spect-actors

(audience members who take part in the action). Influenced by Freire’s Pedagogy of

the Oppressed, Boal published Theatre of the Oppressed in 1974.9 Theatre of the

Oppressed (TO) techniques first became popular in Latin America and Europe, and

then spread to North America in the late-1970s. Since that time, Boal has conducted

regular workshops on TO techniques at conferences, universities and in

communities.10 The techniques have been employed in locations such as community

centers, grass-roots theaters, therapeutic settings, and for political action groups.

Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism, edited by Mady Schutzman and Jan

Cohen-Cruz, brought together reflections on Boal’s work from a number of scholars

and practitioners. The volume presents case studies of projects that employed TO

techniques, demonstrating with these examples the use of TO as a basis for

ideological exploration. In “Mainstream of Margin: US Activist Performance and

Theatre of the Oppressed,” Cohen-Cruz describes the development of the use of TO

in the United States (Playing Boal 110-23). Cohen-Cruz suggests that the

environment for political activism changed in the U.S. over several decades, from the

28

progressive mood of the sixties and seventies to the conservative mood of the eighties

and nineties. She maintains that this conservatism, together with a re-definition of

what constitutes theatre, opened the door for Theatre of the Oppressed in the U.S.

Canadian Lib Spry describes her search for a way to “fuse [her] political work

and theatre skills” in “Structures of Power: Toward a Theatre of Liberation” (Playing

Boal 171-84). Her search began in the early 1980s and took her to Paris, where she

worked with Boal. According to Spry, the value of TO is that:

It recognizes the knowledge and wisdom of those who experience

oppression, domination, abuse, and powerlessness; it connects the

body and mind; it understands that power relationships are

experienced inside as well as outside by each individual; it provides

tools to bypass the intellect and speech in order to reveal what is really

happening; and, at the same time, it encourages distance in order to

analyze what has been revealed. (Playing Boal 172)

Spry describes a number of projects in which she utilized TO exercises and

theory. While she saw the value of using TO techniques when working with

oppressed populations, Spry encountered difficulty when working with groups or

individuals who did not perceive their own oppression. She describes her discovery

that the term oppression itself was the stumbling block to such work. She began to

use phrases like, “power-over,” “power-with,” and “power-within” in place of

“oppression” when working with groups in Canada, with much greater success.

A case study by David Diamond, “Out of the Silence: Headlines, Theatre, and

Power Plays” (Playing Boal 35-52), has much in common with the work of the New

WORLD Theater. Diamond presents a description of week-long workshops in which

the Headline Theatre of Vancouver, Canada, worked with participants to create “short

theatre pieces on issues of concern to them” (Playing Boal 35). With the Headline

Theatre, Diamond conducts these workshops “across Canada with Native

communities, women’s groups, peace activists, unions, cultural workers, counselors,

prison inmates, refugees, and others” (35). He claims that the TO work helps

29

oppressed groups to find their voices. Using Boal’s “forum theatre” as a model,

Diamond created Power Plays to provide “the audience the chance to use the theatre

as a concrete tool for creating alternative role models” (36). Diamond suggests that

North Americans discover their own uses for Boal’s techniques.

Other theatre scholars and practitioners have sought to use the practice of

theatre for social change. Susan C. Haedicke and Tobin Nellhaus, editors of

Performing Democracy: International Perspectives of Urban Community-Based

Performance, brought together practitioners who use a wide-range of approaches to

create theatre. Some of the practitioners in this volume use Boal’s forum theatre

technique; others use “documentary drama, agitprop, cabaret, puppets, skateboarding,

presentational dance performance, and everything in between” (3). Haedicke and

Nellhaus state that “if anything unites community-based performance practitioners, it

is their political commitment and artistic engagement” (4). They define community

in a number of ways, for example, temporary, voluntary, based on social conditions,

and political.

Empowerment and the New WORLD Theater

The individual projects described in Performing Democracy: International

Perspectives of Urban Community-Based Performance mirror in some ways the

outreach projects of the New WORLD Theater, which were designed to build

community and to empower youth of color. The production history of the NWT

documents the presentations, performances, and new works commissioned and

developed at the New WORLD Theater at the University of Massachusetts. Although

the original aim of the Theatre was to provide cultural programming for students of

color, the NWT soon came to represent resistance to traditional gender, class, or

racial inequalities by students, teachers, and administrators at the university. The

enhancement of access and equity and the retention of at-risk students and students of

color, although not among the NWT’s explicit aims, have clearly resulted from NWT

productions and programs.

30

In its work both within and outside the institutional structures of the

University of Massachusetts, the NWT regularly struggled with prejudices associated

with the hierarchy of knowledge. The types of contradictions in higher education

described by Joan W. Scott and quoted earlier in this chapter, for example,

exacerbated the problems faced by the New WORLD Theater and led to frequent

crises throughout its twenty-four years. Such crises sometimes originated in the

friction between theory and praxis—between high- and low-status knowledge. The

NWT was the “other” within a predominantly White institution, presenting theatrical

works outside the traditional canon. Over the twenty-four years of its existence, the

NWT has used the arts, primarily theater, to raise the social consciousness of

individuals in the communities they have served. Especially in its early years,

students of color found a haven at the NWT, which struggled to provide a

constructive outlet for resistance through productions, workshops, and course

development. The political commitment and artistic engagement associated with

community-based theatre practitioners have been major factors in the development of

the NWT over its many years of existence.

This review of the research on issues of gender, diversity, and

multiculturalism in higher education reveals that little research has been conducted on

the relationship between programs of theatre in higher education and issues related to

gender, diversity, and multiculturalism.

1 Among the many others writing on cultural capital, a significant few are: Bourdieu 1977; Freire 1973 and 1985; Lamont and Lareau 1987; and McDonough 1994. 3 Many scholars writing in this area are represented in anthologies on the crisis in education, such as: Smith, Altbach & Lomotey 2002; Bérubé & Nelson 1995; and Aronowitz & Giroux 1993. 4 Henry Giroux and Peter MacLaren suggest that cultural studies “combines theory and practice in order to affirm and demonstrate pedagogical practices engaged in creating a new language, rupturing disciplinary boundaries, decentering authority, and rewriting the institutional and discursive borderlands in which politics becomes a condition for reasserting the relationship between agency, power, and struggle” (Between Borders ix). 5 Scholars frequently pay homage to Freire in their writings. Some who have mentioned him are: Apple 2002; Aronowitz & Giroux 1991; Aronowitz 2000, 2001; Banks 1996, 1997 and 2001; Giroux 1993; Giroux & McLaren’s 1994; Giroux & Shannon 1997; bell hooks 1994, 1995, 2000; and Rendón & Hope 1996.

31

6 TRIO is a federal program established in the mid-1960s as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. TRIO was part of Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965. The program is referred to as TRIO because it began with just three programs, though it has since expanded to numerous programs designed to serve low-income Americans. Upward Bound is a TRIO program that provides support for students as they prepare to enter college. Upward Bound provides pre-college workshops for high school students and their families. Upward Bound programs must provide support for math, laboratory sciences, composition, literature, and foreign language. Students who are at risk of failing high school may be eligible for an Upward Bound program. The summer classes/workshops function to provide them with additional preparation as well as substitute passing grades for classes they had not passed during the regular academic year. During the school year, students may participate in after-school tutoring. Other TRIO programs include the Ronald E McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement, which encourages low-income and minority undergraduates to consider a career in higher education and prepares them for PhD programs. GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness through Undergraduate Preparation) is another program that focuses on intervention at an early stage in the student’s education. In addition, numerous intervention programs at the state level were designed to counteract the effects of the ban on affirmative action. Other intervention programs were developed to serve low-income and minority student needs by nongovernmental bodies, private individuals and foundations. 7 Also writing on the subject of access and equity are scholars such as Alexander Jun 2001; Tierney & Hegedorn 2002; Nora 2002; Patricia Gándara 2002; Swail 2002; and Perna 2002. 8 NAI provides assistance to students beginning in the seventh grade and continuing until admission to college. Students and their families participate in the program. The students are primarily African American and Latino, and most of the Latino population are first-generation. 9 In addition to Theatre of the Oppressed, Boal has written Latin American Techniques of Popular

Theatre and Two Hundred Exercises and Games for Actors and Non-Actors. These works were published in the mid-1970s. Boal’s work spread throughout Latin America, Europe and then the United States as he conducted TO workshops. Boal has continued to conduct workshops and publish on popular theatre and pedagogy. 10 Boal presented a pre-conference workshop and was the keynote speaker at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s (ATHE) annual conference in 1992 in Philadelphia, PA. ATHE annual conferences have continued to present his work through Boal himself and through theatre practitioners such as Doug Paterson and Mark Weinberg. Paterson and Weinberg have brought Boal to various campuses for intensive workshops. Dr. Paterson hosts an annual conference with Boal at the University of Nebraska.

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CHAPTER THREE

The New WORLD Theater: Background and Production History

This chapter describes the conditions that led to the origin of the New

WORLD Theater (NWT) and outlines the twenty-four year history of the theatre,

from 1979 through 2002.1 Over these many years, the NWT’s mission has been to

produce plays, develop new works, offer a site for discourse by artists and scholars of

color, and to provide educational outreach to at-risk and students of color. The

environment in which the NWT originated, the communities affected by the NWT,

the demographics of the population served, and the Five College Consortium were

described in the Chapter One. The following history will review, in chronological

order, the productions and projects coordinated by the NWT over its many years of

operation. The NWT’s educational outreach projects will be explained in more detail

in the Chapter 4. This production history provides the context for the educational

outreach projects that form the center of this dissertation. Out of the racial unrest of

the 1960s and 1970s, the NWT formed and continued to bring artists of color to the

university campus and to the surrounding communities. Not satisfied with presenting

and producing works by artists of color, the NWT developed educational

opportunities for the university, the Five College Consortium, and for the neighboring

towns.

Origins of the New WORLD Theater

The Pioneer Valley is a beautiful location nestled along the Connecticut River,

the longest river in New England. The largest city in the region is Springfield,

Massachusetts. The productions, workshops, residencies and educational outreach

programs of the New WORLD Theater service the small towns in the area, including

33

Holyoke, South Hadley, Amherst, and Northampton. Three of these towns--Amherst,

Northampton, and South Hadley--are home to the Five College Consortium described

in the Chapter One. 2 The consortium allows students at each of the five

participating institutions to take classes at any of the other schools, providing access

to transportation and special visiting professors, and facilitating communication

between members of the five institutions. 3

Like many other universities and colleges during the turbulent 1960s and

1970s, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMASS) suffered various

protests and occasions of racial violence. Out of this unrest was born the Third World

Theater, later to become the New WORLD Theater (NWT), which is affiliated with

UMASS and the Five College Consortium. In order to fully set the stage for the birth

of the NWT, it is useful to examine the environment in which it was created.

UMASS is located in Amherst, Massachusetts, close to the Hadley town line.

The UMASS Southwest Dormitories are four high-rise buildings at the southwest

corner of the campus close to the rural fields of Hadley. The buildings are gray

concrete surrounded by concrete and asphalt surfaces. The area is utilitarian, austere

and forbidding in appearance. The Southwest Dormitories are home to over 5,000

students. The needs of the diverse population are met through a number of caucuses,

centers, or committees, such as the Center for Racial Understanding, the Women’s

Center, the Men’s Center, the Malcolm X Center, and the Civil Liberties Committee

of Southwest. The Southwest Center for Racial Understanding, initiated in 1972,

became the Center for Racial Studies (CRC) in 1978. The university provides a

student-run governing body--the Southwest Administration--that includes several

committees that meet in Assemblies. At the center of the dormitories is the Hampden

Center, which houses a small theatre space designed for student use.

What brought about the founding of what is now called the New WORLD

Theater? The late 1970s at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMASS)

were a troublesome time. Students of color at UMASS, including Asian, Latin

American, African American, and Native American students, did not reflect the

34

community at large, and periodically protested the hostile and racist atmosphere on

campus. The riots and protests of the 1960s had led to the establishment of an African

Studies Department at UMASS, but the continued lack of a support system for

students of color led to the renovation of New Africa House as a cultural center for

students of color in the 1970s. It was during this period of time that UMASS hired

programming assistants in the Student Activities Office to facilitate event

programming for students in general and particularly for students of color.

When interviewed about their recollections of the times leading up to the start

of the New World Theater (NWT), Roberta Uno, artistic director of the New

WORLD Theater (NWT), and other faculty and staff remembered that several racial

incidents occurred around that time though no one recalled exactly what happened.

Retired director of the Fine Arts Center Dr. Fred Tillis, when asked about the racial

incidents that led to the hiring of Robert Uno in spring of 1979, described the

University of Massachusetts campus as liberal and believed that because of its diverse

student population clashes were inevitable. In reflecting on the events at UMASS

during the 1970s and 1980s, Tillis stated that it happened on all campuses. Tillis, a

long-time Black faculty member and later director of the Fine Arts Center, began the

Jazz program at the university. He watched UMASS cope with many periods of

student unrest. 4 Tillis understood the Administration’s point of view and recognized

the actions of the university as ahead of their time (Tillis interview). According to

Tillis, what distinguished UMASS was its open recognition of racial problems and its

active attempts to seek solutions.

From the fall of 1978 through the spring of 1979, the UMASS student

newspaper, the Collegian, reported on a series of incidents that indicated a campus

climate of serious racial unrest. Incidents, like the suspicious death of a Black female

student (that appeared to be covered up in the press), the beating of a Black student,

and a cross burning outside a campus event for students of color, were reported in the

student newspaper as well as in the local press. Nummo News, written by the Black

students of UMASS, supplemented the Collegian, which was published daily. The

35

Collegian had a daily section devoted to “Black Affairs.” Their close coverage of the

activities on campus and in the Five College area fueled racial tensions.

In the late fall 1978 the racial climate of the UMASS Southwest Dormitories

was heated. The UMASS student newspaper, the Collegian, reported on an intense

Southwest Assembly, held on December 5, 1978, that led to daily commentary and

articles in the Collegian. The Assembly meeting resulted in a call for the resignation

of the vice president of the Assembly, or for his public apology to the Third World

community (Collegian, 13 Dec. 1978: 4). The clash began with a request by the

Center for Racial Understanding for $900 to offer a CRC-sponsored course. The

Collegian reported that after the meeting, “shouting, threats and accusations broke out

from separate areas of the room” (Collegian, 13 Dec. 1978: 4). The meeting and

subsequent activities resulting from that event were reported in the student paper for

months to follow. An editorial by a member of the Third World Women’s Task force,

in the 30 January 1979 Collegian, responded to the issue of racial oppression, calling

upon the Third World community to stand up:

Because we ignore our responsibilities and disregard the reality of our

precarious position at U MASS and within the Valley, the system feels

free to openly abuse and commit barbarous acts against us. A few

examples of the attacks against the Third World community are the

KKK burnings of the cross both at UMASS and Hampshire College

last year, the Craemon Gethers frame-up, many acts of physical and

verbal abuse against brothers and sisters (remember Jill Dickerson and

Sita Rampersad), distortion of racist incidents by both the commercial

and student newspapers. (Collegian 30 Jan. 1979: 2.) 5

The editorial described some of the racial incidents that had occurred dating back to

1975, including deaths and wrongful arrests. In that same issue of the student

newspaper a break-in and vandalization of the New Africa House was reported. The

February 5th Collegian published another call to rise up, and again past wrongs were

36

spelled out. Eliseo Garcia outlined the class issues that confronting the Third World

community:

It is about time that we began to view the problems that confront the

Third World in the Valley from a realistic perspective, where the

problem is not only racial prejudice, but class repression. As objective

conditions indicate, Third World individuals and progressive white

forces that struggle against oppression will meet the same fate. Where

today the Third World is the target, tomorrow will be anyone who

demands change. As the political climate in this country moves further

right, the same is occurring within the Valley, perhaps a bit more

exaggerated. As the KKK is nationally on the rise, crosses are burned

in the Valley. As BaKKKe gains entrance in to school, in the Valley

hundreds of minorities are turned away. As Patty Hearst buys her

freedom from a jail resort, Craeman Gethers innocently suffers

through a jail sentence. (Collegian. 5 Feb. 1979: 3) 6

The angry tone of the articles published in the student paper escalated, polarizing the

Third World community. Although the Nummo News was regularly included in the

Collegian, the masthead of Nummo News on 12 March 1979 stated, “The Collegian

does not consistently print anything relevant to the Third World community.

Therefore, Nummo News proudly announces that it in no way is controlled,

manipulated or associated with the Collegian” (Nummo News, 1). Nummo News

continued to publish calls to act, to resist, to “organize the unorganized” (20

Feb.1979). The Undergraduate Student Senate adopted measures to combat campus

racism at a meeting reported on in the 1 March 1979 Collegian:

Charging the senate with a ‘conspiracy against the Third World

students and caucus members’ in particular, Senator and Third World

Affairs Coordinator Stan Kinard told the students it had the

37

‘responsibility as student leaders to address the problems of racism on

this campus.’

Kinard’s proposal, which passed 66-0, asked the senate to condemn

racist and sexist action, organize meetings with administrators and

students to investigate and denounce acts of violence against Third

World students, and organize dormitory meetings to discuss racism in

the housing system. (1)

A letter to the editor, printed in the Collegian the next day, challenged the

reporting of the statements by Kinard:

The caucus did not charge the student senate with conspiracy against

Third World students, but rather charges were leveled against certain

members of Whitmore administrative staff, certain RSO group, and a

conservative faction in the senate.

The Third World caucus contends that this conspiracy is aimed at a

denial of our Human Rights by the systematic harassment of Third

World RSO organizations, by attempts to limit the effectiveness of the

Third World caucus and by the intentional lack of recognition, or

racial incidents which have recently occurred. (Zulu, 2 Mar. 1979: 4.)

Articles in the Collegian and Nummo News continued to speak of the strife

between the UMASS administration and the Third World students. On March 7,

1979, the Collegian published an article entitled “Student Senate Launches Campaign

to Eliminate Racism on Campus” (8). The article listed past offenses, such as student

assaults, student deaths (one with a delayed investigation and no report), the burning

of a KKK cross outside a Third World student’s social function, and a rock-throwing

incident at the Malcolm X Center on campus. This same article railed against the

Collegian for a perceived lack of fairness, citing as examples the lack of photographs

in the paper of the Black Student President, and the front-page photograph of a Black

38

student charged with an alleged robbery without any photograph of the white student

who was implicated in the robbery. In addition, the article reported on a possible suit

by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare against UMASS for not

enforcing Affirmative Action. The next day, the Collegian published a short

statement from the Chancellor of UMASS, who condemned the “increasing number

of racially motivated incidents” on campus (Collegian, 8 Mar. 1979: 7). The

statement was met with derision from a member of the Third World Women’s Task

Force in a 12 March 1979 story in Nummo News.

Clearly, racial unrest pervaded the entire Five College area during this time

(Nummo News, vol. 7, issue 11, 23 Apr. 1979: 1-2). In April 1979, a cross-burning

incident occurred on the campus of Amherst College. Nummo News reported the

event and described the issues raised in a community meeting on the power of Third

World faculty, divestment in South African corporations, and Black Freshman

Orientation. The same issue of the paper printed “Black Student Demands at

Amherst College,” an article asking for student input, more Third World faculty, and

divestment in South Africa. At Converse Hall at Amherst College, a sit-in escalated

to the point that students took over the building. Hampshire College students

boycotted classes on 24 March 1979 to protest racism at academic institutions in the

Five College area.

The Collegian reported that the Amherst College Converse Hall blockade

ended on March 24th when the President of Amherst agreed to eight student

conditions (25 Apr. 1979: 5). That same day the Collegian published an article

entitled, “Purpose Statement of the Campaign to Combat Racism” by the Office of

Third World Affairs and the Center for Racial Studies. They called for renaming the

library and the Fine Arts Center for W. E. B. DuBois and Duke Ellington; expanding

Affirmative Action; developing a course to “expose students to the causes,

background and exploration of solutions to racism, sexism, business ethics, and the

handicapped;” and acknowledging the past repression of Third World students (25

Mar. 1979). On 27 April 1979 the outline of the proposed course was presented to

39

the administration. The awareness course requirement would “require all

undergraduate students to take two courses” on the issues mentioned above. This

proposal was passed by the Student Senate and was scheduled to move to the Faculty

Senate’s Academic Matters Committee, which agreed to hear this matter in the fall.

An atmosphere of racial tension prevailed on the campus, accompanied by a report of

an incident at a Third World student party at Crampton dormitory at Southwest and a

series of small fires throughout New Africa House. UMASS Chancellor Randolph W.

Bromery claimed, “this is the worst year in terms of women’s rights incidents and

racial incidents he has seen in the past 12 years” (Collegian, 8 May 1979: 1).

Into this climate of racial unrest came Roberta Uno, a twenty-four-year-old

Japanese-American woman originally from California and a recent graduate of

Hampshire College. The Student Activities Office hired Uno in the spring of 1978. At

the time she was hired, she was married to Michael Thelwell, a faculty member of the

Afro-American Studies Department at UMASS. According to Uno and Tillis, the

objective of the university in hiring her was to provide programming for students of

color.

New WORLD Theater: The First Ten Years

In the Beginning: Third World Theater 1979-80

Faculty and staff members who remember the early days of the NWT recalled

that it was formed to provide programming for minority students. After interviewing

a number of people, it is clear that no one remembers the actual event that triggered

the hiring of Roberta Uno, who was born in 1956, grew up in Southern California,

and moved to Amherst to complete her undergraduate education at Hampshire

College. Even as an undergraduate she was aware of the difficulties of being an

Asian-American in a predominantly White community.

40

Roberta Uno’s experience as a minority student in the Pioneer Valley in the

mid- to late-1970s placed her in a unique position to understand the desire of minority

students for entertainment and programming that reflected their various cultures and

experiences. The UMASS Student Activities Office recognized this need and hired

Uno in the spring of 1978 as a Program Specialist. Working with student

programmers Miriam Carter, Berry Claxton, Derek Davis, Karen Lederer, and Pavel

Shepp, Uno began to create cultural activities geared for students of color on campus.

Soon after Uno entered her position, she was involved in the development of

programming for Martin Luther King Day and Black History Month, which included

bringing groups and artists of color to the UMASS campus. Uno also understood the

frustrations that actors and playwrights of color felt due to the Eurocentric focus of

the theatrical productions in the area. She saw the power of theatre as a political and

cultural force, and made use of her position and the resources of the Student

Activities Office to realize her ideas. In her first year with the Student Activities

Office, Uno wrote and directed a play called In the Rock Garden under the auspices

of the Third World Theater. She noted in a local newsletter,

Everybody’s oppressed and we’re all equally oppressors. I

really feel heavily that Asian-American people have oppressed me and

I’ve oppressed myself as an Asian Woman. It’s our own self-

perpetuation of the oppression—that’s what I want people to realize.

You can’t keep saying that it’s the white man out there because we

don’t have to even deal with that person on that sick dynamic.

(Lombardo “A Plot of Land in Foreign Soil”)

In an article about Uno’s play, Daniel Lombardo wrote, “It is this emphasis on all of

us–even third world people bearing the responsibility for oppression—that gives Rock

Garden its brilliant peaks.” The play was first produced at Hampshire College in

spring of 1978 and then re-produced at Smith College as part of its playwright’s

workshop series with funding from the Ada Howe Kent program. Lombardo

describes In the Rock Garden in an article promoting the play, “What In the Rock

41

Garden lacks in subtlety and dramatic power is more than compensated by the

ground-breaking freshness of its viewpoint.”

Karen Lederer, a work-study student in the Student Activities Office in the

first year of what was to become the NWT, commented that Uno always had a goal

(Lederer interview).7 Lederer remembered, “Roberta got hired. And she obviously

had these particular area of expertise and also vision.” Lederer recalled the morning

when Uno came into the Activities Office and told them about her dream to have a

theatrical company dedicated to works by artists of color. This dream was the genesis

of the NWT. A workshop entitled “Working Theater” was the initial project in

summer 1979.

Working Theatre presented the work of five local artists of color: Freida

Jones’s choreopoem Lucky Strikes Legacy, a three women tribute to the pioneers of

jazz; Andrea Hairston’s Handbook for Survivors, a reading with music; Mascheri

Chapple’s prisms, a one-act play about life in a Florida penitentiary; Bird of My Luck

by Bheki Langa, a one person play about South Africa; and Countdown, a play by

Melinda Goodman on women’s experiences. According to an article in The Contact

in September of 1979, “Uno wanted to test the atmosphere to see if Third World

Theater could breathe in the Pioneer Valley” (Hospedales). 8

All of the summer workshop presentations took place in the Hampden Center

for the Performing Arts in the Southwest Residential Area, which consisted of four

high-rise dormitories encircling the cafeteria and Hampden Center. The Hampden

Center is a small space that was converted for use as a performing arts center to

relieve the pressure of the dense living situation. The university’s purpose in using the

Hampden Center was to dedicate a space to student programming with the hope that it

would provide a cultural outlet for students of color. Fifty percent of the

programming was student generated. The Fine Arts Center provided the other fifty

percent. The University Administration hoped that the arts and cultural programming

would pacify the unrest in the dorms. In addition to the Working Theater, Uno

produced another summer series—The Bright Moments Theater Music Series. This

42

series promoted four young Black classical musicians. Uno clearly saw the potential

and importance of her work. She described these four young performers as the

“Masters of Jazz in the future.” From the beginning Uno felt it was her responsibility

to create programs as models: “In that way, Uno’s work is similar to the

accomplishments of early civil rights organizers—but translated into the arts. She is

creating ways in which struggling Third World artists can unite productively. Uno

also hopes her work will create jobs for the future” (CK, Contact September 1979).

Miriam Carter, a production staff member of the Third World Theater,

described how the Third World Theatre grew out of a great need in the minority

community in a Black Affairs article in the Collegian:

[…] non-white artists have in the past repeatedly experienced the

hopelessness of auditions which have only white parts, or roles which

are servile or alienating. Additionally, Theatre Arts Programs in the

Valley have repeatedly failed to utilize the skills of talented Black,

Hispanic and Asian artists. In fact, the programs have failed to fully

realize their own potential as an instrument for increasing student

awareness. (Hospedales)

Carter further states the goals of the fledgling company, “The group has three main

objectives—to act as a support group for young Third World artists in the area; to

expose the university community to professional Third World artists and to try to

reach a larger cross section of the community by offering plays at an affordable

price.” Puerto Rican/Jamaican-American Miriam Carter Langa, one of the original

Student Activities staff members, described the climate at UMASS, “Our cultures

were not represented and the people, outlook, focus was thoroughly white European

[. . .] we were looking for a progressive, political message we felt needed to be

communicated to the Valley audiences. We all understood the need; Roberta was the

one who articulated it” (Gillingham 14).

In the Fall of 1979, the UMASS student newspaper the Collegian promoted

two new fine arts series, A Duke Ellington Music Series and a Third World Theater

43

Series (Davis 1-2). The theatre series brought three groups and a student play to the

UMASS campus: Homeland by Selaelo Maredi and Steve Friedman and performed

by the Modern Times Theater; prisms by Mascheri Chapple, a student at Smith

College; And the Soul Shall Dance, by Japanese-American playwright Wakako

Yamuchi, performed by the New York City’s Pan-Asian Repertory; and Edward

Gallardo’s Simpson Street, a contemporary Puerto Rican-American drama performed

by the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater of New York. The Third World Theater Series

brochure spelled out the goal of the company:

Theater has always been an integral part of the lives and culture of

Black, Hispanic, and Asian peoples. Our theater has taken the form of

dance, music, oral, and written tradition. We have used masks, rituals

and poetry to convey our dreams and realities. The theater of Third

World peoples has preserved our cultures’ integrity, told our history

and insured our survival in a hostile world. Our theater has not been

restricted to what takes place in the space of three acts before a

curtained stage. It has evolved from the spontaneity and needs of our

everyday lives; the stage is an extension of our collective experience.

The Third World Theater Series was conceptualized as a

coming together of audiences and artists in a mutual sharing of

information and perspectives. As a celebration of the human spirit, the

series aspires to enlighten the university community to the struggles of

people of color.

The series has many goals. Some primary ones are; first –to

advance the state of the arts by supporting and encouraging the work

of young Third World theater artists in this area. The series will

feature original productions to further this goal. Second – to bring in

professional Third World companies to set a standard of excellence

and create a dialogue between the professional and university

44

communities. Third—to make culture available to everyone by

offering plays at an affordable price.

We are proud to present the works of three companies from

New York and to introduce an original play in our first season. A

second series is in the works for the spring. We hope you will share

your comments and criticisms and give your understanding and

support. This is an exciting—terrifying—necessary and long overdue

project. (Third World Theater Series brochure, fall 1979)

The jazz and the theatre series began with a screening of Woody King’s

documentary film, The History of the Black Theater Movement from Raisin in the Sun

to Colored Girls, shown at the UMASS Campus Center. Academic courses were tied

to the productions: a one-credit UMASS Southwest Dormitories course to develop the

audience and a three-credit course offered through the Afro-American Studies

department. The three-credit course included workshops with the playwrights and

visiting professionals. This combination of original works, visiting professionals, and

a relationship to academics began to set the direction of the future New WORLD

Theater. In a press article in the Valley Advocate, Charles C. Smith quotes Uno,

There’s a definite community of non-white artists living in this area…

It’s not like a community that has a geographical location, but there

are definitely people of color who are into the arts in various aspects—

dancers, musicians, theater people, poets . . . Although the cultures and

the themes may be very, very different, in terms of how Black, Latino

and Asian people have been treated in the arts, or in general, the

experience is very similar. So, it’s important for us to come together

and work together, and work with progressive white people, to deal

with things which are common to all of us. (“After the Summer”)

Uno’s thoughts were echoed in a letter sent by Mascheri Chapple dated 14

December 1979 following the summer workshop series and the Third World Theater

Series. Chapple’s play prisms was produced in both settings. She wrote to Uno,

45

Not only do both series offer those individuals directly involved a

good theatrical experience, but both series also offer the Five College

Community a cultural experience, a cultural diversity. I think that the

series are a positive force in the development of our Five College

Community to educate us about the various cultural theaters…I must

admit that I am from the South Bronx, New York, where I grew up in

a Puerto Rican neighborhood, and I have never seen a Hispanic play

until I saw Simpson Street. (Chapple)

For this Smith College student playwright, the opportunity afforded her by the

summer workshop and subsequent production by the Third World Theater Series was

invaluable.

Uno was committed to the concept that theatre could be used for political

purposes. By December 1979, Uno already commented in an article in the

Hampshire Gazette that, “What happens here is something very special [. . .]

Organizing among third world students was, more often than not [. . .] a reactionary

thing, a response to crisis, budget cuts, or racist incidents. So we decided to do

something positive, and we all love music and dance” (Wilson, 2 December 1979).

Uno considered herself an organizer. The article reported, “She grew up in a Mexican

neighborhood of Los Angeles. Her father was the founding editor of the first

Japanese-American newspaper in that city. At an early age, she joined in the

organizing efforts of the United Farmworkers in California.” (Wilson, 2 December

1979). Uno continued to espouse the original mission of the Third World Theater

throughout the group’s beginning years. In a 1982 Collegian article promoting the

fourth year she expressed the long-term goal of the series, “Ultimately, it would be

nice if there didn’t have to be a separate Third World Theater Series” (Walsh, 8

November 1982). Uno’s wistful statement was an underlying theme in her work with

the Third World Theater, later to be known as the New WORLD Theater.

In the early days of the Third World Theater, Uno focused on bringing groups

or artists of color to campus—interspersed with some locally produced works. In

46

various archival documents, such as press releases and grant proposals, Uno

mentioned the goal of bringing in three outside groups and one local production in

each season. Former Student Activities Office worker Karen Lederer continues to

live in Amherst and occasionally attend NWT productions. When asked about the

impact of the NWT, she commented upon the diversity of the programming:

I think it’s a really important—I think that it forwarded the connection

of the arts and politics together—it highlighted the importance of

cultural expression as well as awareness—I think its magnified the

kinds of offerings that particular groups can have—So, it’s not just

China Night, or you know, Haitian Dance Parties, you know you can

see other kinds of things. I think that it’s really established the

importance of inter-ethnic interest and dialogue.

Lederer also commented upon the audiences in the early years:

If we had a play that was about Chinese immigrants, there were

primarily Chinese folks who were in the audience. And then if you had

an African-American play there were primarily African-American,

and, as I would say to Roberta, there was always a sprinkling of guilty

White. [. . .] even in just the three seasons I was there, you began to

see that, because is was a series, [. . .] a Chinese student, or a Chinese-

American who’d gone to the Chinese play thought, “Hey, this other

play seems interesting. Maybe I should check that out.”

Lederer recalled the importance of developing an audience that would see the value

in the variety of productions offered by the Third World Theater Series. She

understood, even in those early days, the remarkable ability that Uno had to see what

was new and bring it back to Amherst and the students at UMASS. Lederer still

works in the Women’s Studies program at UMASS, and sees the importance of

programs such as the NWT:

And because the staff was multicultural . . . it sort of wove together

that community. So I think that was really important—it legitimized

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[the Third World Theater Series]. I think these kinds of programs

need an institutional home and a point person. You can’t just say well

it’s nice that it happened. […] Roberta went and got the really hot

innovative city theatre companies…to come here—which gave the

students a real opportunity. It probably was good for the companies

both financially and also for them to show their work to different

audiences. So I think there were a lot of good collaborations. And

then there were all the sort of other things then the shows. There were

those classes and workshops, series…and the ensemble came out of

that and the youth project…all these things that came way after me.

Lederer comments testify to the enduring impact of the NWT on the whole

community of UMASS and the city of Amherst.

In the spring of 1980 the Third World Theater began their second season

funded by the Student Activities Office. At that time they defined the seasons by

academic semester. The season included: I Just Wanted Someone to Know by Bette

Craig, performed by the Labor Theatre of New York City; East West in Review by

East West Players of Los Angeles; Lucky Strikes Legacy, an original production by

Freida Jones; and The Eight Million by Steve Friedman, performed by Modern Times

Theater in New York City. In addition to the Third World Theater series, the

programming of the Student Activities Office included a film series. 9 The Ellington

Music Memorial Solo and Duo Series, the Annual Black Musicians Conference, and

speakers, including Angela Davis and Theresa Rodriguez, were also presented in the

spring of 1980 (April Student to Student Calendar, 1980). Once again we see that, at

its inception, the Third World Theater Series was a small part of the overall

programming presented for the students of color at UMASS.

The Labor Theatre of New York City performed the first production of the

1980 spring season, I Just Wanted Someone to Know. The play was derived from oral

histories of working women. A statement given out at this production illustrated the

dynamic, collective, and politicized nature of the Third World Theater Series:

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We the staff of the Third World Theater Series wish to make the

following clarifications about tonight’s production of I Just Wanted

Someone to Know.

The play you will see tonight is not the production originally

invited to perform as part of the Third World Theater Series. The

original cast of five women consisted of Black, Asian, Hispanic and

White women. Without our knowledge or consent The Labor Theatre

made the cast changes which will be reflected in the performance

tonight. The de-emphasization of Third World women in the play and

the subsequent modifications of the script is a disappointment to us.

These changes overlook one of our primary goals which is to provide

opportunities for Third World actors, authors, technicians, and

companies.

We have discussed this problem as a staff and have decided not

to cancel the production. An understanding of oppression must involve

not only and understanding of racism, but must consider sex and class

as issues as well. We feel these issues are important, and while we are

a Third World Theater Series we recognize no single theater piece is

likely to address all those issues in a complete and thorough way. I

Just Wanted Someone to Know perhaps deals with issues of class and

sex more than race. This indeed deserves criticism, yet we hope that

rather than expend our energies on anger we can use this production as

a jumping off point for discussion.

In planning this season we made a potentially controversial

decision to feature two multi-racial plays involving Third World and

White actors. As a multi-racial staff ourselves we felt it important to

bring plays which would address positively the deep schisms between

Black, Hispanic, Asian and White students at University of Mass. We

49

also decided that simply showcasing Third World people on stage is

not enough. Political content of the plays is also important.

We hope you enjoy the first play of the Spring Season and join us in

honoring working women.

We encourage any interested persons to remain after the

performance for a discussion with the staff and theater group.

This statement, which was handed out at the performance or inserted into the

program, exemplified the political zeal of Uno and the NWT staff, and their

commitment to involve the audience in discussion. From the beginning open

discussion or master classes were part of the programming.

Third World Theater 1980-1981

The fall of 1980 brought a new season to the Third World Theater Series and

the Duke Ellington Music Series. Richard Mei, Jr., writing in the Black Affairs

section of the Collegian, focused on Roberta Uno, noting that she “has done more

than just bring dynamic and enlightening entertainment to the Pioneer Valley. She has

promoted and helped students further their artistic talents while exposing her

audiences to entertainment not typically found on a college campus” (Mei, “Third

World Arts Brought to UMass by Roberta Uno”). The 1980 fall season included:

Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Banzi is Dead; The Healing of Sugar, written by Valley

playwright Carlos Anderson; Gimme 5, produced by Teatro Cuatro, a Puerto Rican

collective company; and Black Girl by J. E. Franklin. In addition to the plays, the

Third World Theater Series arranged for lectures by Hanay Geiogamah on

contemporary Native American drama, Teatro Cuatro on collective theatre, Theodore

Yoshikima on Asian movement, and dance-theatre and Aisha Rahman on Black

women playwrights.

Defining their seasons by academic semester, the Third World Theater Series fourth

season, in spring 1981, included: The Mighty Gents by Richard Wesley, an original

production; Sister, Sister, a one-woman show by Vinnie Burrows; Vusu Musi by

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Bheki Langa, performed by the New African Company; Ol’ Sis Goose by New

African Company; and Flowers and Household Gods by Momoko Iko, performed by

the Pan Asian Repertory. The season included a play for the whole family called Ol’

Sis Goose, which was developed from the Fox and Goose stories of African-

American folklore by the New African Company. Langa, a South African committed

to its liberation, wrote Vusu Musi.

Third World Theater 1981-1982

In the fall of 1981, according to the Third World Theater archives, a break in

the production of Third World Theater plays occurred at UMASS. Conversations

with Uno indicate that funding sources dried up for a time. Then in the spring of

1982, the Collegian announced the fifth season of the Third World Theater Series.

The fifth season included: An Evening with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, a salute to

Black History Month with two legends of American theatre; Forty-Nine by Hanay

Geiogamah, an American Indian spiritual musical performed by Native Americans in

the Arts; Dance Bongo by Errol Hill, an original production inspired by the religious

bongo rituals of Trinidad and Tobago; and Paper Angels by Jenny Lim, a Chinese-

American drama taken from over one-hundred poems recorded at an immigrant

detention center on Angel Island outside San Francisco. Keeping true to the original

vision and goals of the series, the plays reflected the diverse population of the student

body.

The NWT archives include a single type-written document noting the funding

sources for the fall 1982 season: the Dean of Students Office, the Office of Third

World Affairs, the Afrik-Am Society, the Asian-American Students Association, the

UMASS Arts Council, the Distinguished Visitor’s Program, and the Black MASS

Communication Project (The1982 Fall Season made possible by. NWT Archives).

Uno started early to take advantage of the system to gather resources for her vision.

At this stage in the evolution of the New WORLD Theater, she worked within the

51

university. Later she tirelessly and successfully would raise funds from multiple

sources.

That same typewritten document that listed the 1982 funding sources

contained a statement suggesting that public perceptions of the Third World Theater

had begun to change:

The Third World Theater Series was founded in 1979 in order to

present the theatrical works of non-European peoples as a major

contribution to contemporary theater arts. The concept of Third World

Theater does not seek to obscure the individual cultural traditions and

achievements of Africans, Asians, Hispanics, and Native-Americans,

nor consider them as one entity. Although the histories and cultures are

different, there exist many shared themes and experiences. The series

seeks to highlight the theatrical works of Third World people,

providing a forum for the expression of their struggles, aspirations, and

dreams. It is our goal to broaden the experience of the University

community by presenting a series of plays which reflects both the

beauty and diversity of people of color. (“1982 Fall Season made

possible by…” document in archives)

The statement responded to concerns within the Third World community that by

combining the works representative of many ethnic and racial groups under one title,

“Third World,” each group lost their identity. The statement was meant as a

justification of the need to continue this project.

Third World Theater 1982-1983

The fall 1982 season included: Home by African-American Samm-Art

Williams, performed by Daedeles Incorporated; Life in the Fast Lane, A Requiem for

a Sansei Poet, a one man tour-de-force by Japanese-Hawaiian poet Lane Nishikawa,

performed by Sansei Theater Company; an original production of Homeland by Steve

Friedman and Selaelo Maredi; and Home, a Broadway play brought to UMASS for

52

one-night by the Third World Theater Series, which also played at StageWest, a

professional repertory company in Springfield, Massachusetts (Madnick, 1982).

Along with this sixth season of plays, the university offered a Third World

Theater Colloquium, a class that included three plays, opening night discussion, and

three discussion periods (“Culture of Credits” flyer). The flyer did not state how

many credit hours were to be awarded to students attending this colloquium, but it

heralded the beginning of regular course offerings that included in their curricula the

productions of the Third World Theater Series.

The spring 1983 season included: For Better Not For Worse, an original play

by Selaelo Maredi; two one-act plays written in the 1960s, Los Vendidos by Luis

Valdez and Day of Absence by Douglas Turner Ward; Yellow Fever by R. A.

Shiomio, performed by the Pan Asian Repertory (“Third World Theater Series

Announces Spring ’83 Schedule”). The season also included a full line up of lectures

and workshops. Maredi presented a lecture discussion entitled “Black South African

Theater: At Home and in Exile” at Hampshire College. George Bass, associate

professor of theatre and Afro-American Studies at Brown University presented a

lecture at UMASS entitled “Art, Reality, and the Sacred Rite of Being in the Afro-

American Adventure.” Ernest Abuda of the Pan Asian Repertory presented a

workshop at Smith College entitled “Introduction to Asian-American Theatre: Acting

Workshop.” Smith College costume designer Kiki Smith presented a filmstrip and

workshop, “Make-up for Non-White Actors.” Patricia Gonzalez, professor of Spanish

at Smith College, presented a lecture and slide presentation, “Latin American Teatro

Nuevo (Latin American New Theatre).” Playwright and director of the Native-

American Theatre Ensemble Hanay Geiogamah led the discussion and workshop

“American Indian Theater” (“Third World Theater Series Announces Spring ’83

Schedule”). By this time, the Third World Series involved students, faculty, and guest

artists at all Five College Consortium campuses.

Los Vendidos and Day of Absence were performed by students and directed by

two students, Lauren Price of Hampshire College and Rachelle Calhoun from Mount

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Holyoke College (Day of Absence and Los Vendidos Press Release). Students of color

from the Five College area were becoming involved in the early days of the Third

World Theater Series as an ensemble of actors and directors. In 1984, this early

group of students eventually formed the ensemble of the New WORLD Theater,

which then became a program of the UMASS Fine Arts Center.

Yet an April 1983 Collegian article spoke to the fragility of the Third World

Theater Series. In the article (“Third World Theater: Bridging the Culture Gap”), Uno

spoke about the lack of roles for actors of color in mainstream theatre:

It’s difficult for third world students to find parts […] so you have a

Catch-22. Third World people aren’t going to be attracted into a

department where they’ll have a little part where they walk in as a

butler or maid, or something servile. [. . .] Ideally it would be nice if

[the Third World Series] didn’t exist at all [. . .] if all theater

departments covered the material, offered these opportunities to

students, we wouldn’t be needed. I don’t see where that will be

possible either philosophically or financially.

The article focused on two productions of the spring 1983 season, For Better Not for

Worse and Day of Absence, productions that reportedly mixed “politics and

aesthetics” and still attracted an appreciative audience of a variety of races and

cultures. The article also hinted at some difficulty in the relationship between the

Third World Theater Series and the Department of Theater at UMASS. A number of

people interviewed for this study (Tillis, Erdman, Kaplan, Uno, Conway, Mendez,

Page, and Werner) made reference to some tension in this relationship as well.

Third World Theater 1983-1984

The eighth season of NWT plays was presented in the fall of 1983 and

included Stepping Into Tomorrow by the Nucleus Theatre; Do Lord Remember Me, a

musical integrating traditional Negro spirituals and authentic oral histories; A.B.C.:

American Born Chinese, a one man performance by “Charlie” Chin exploring the

54

history, joys and sorrows of being Chinese in the United States (Fall Season—Third

World Theater Series press release).

The description of the New York-based Nucleus Theatre said that the

company “brings together the talents of two of the foremost proponents of freedom

and justice in this country, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. They are Attallah

Shabazz and Yolanda King, who serve as Artistic Directors of the company”

(Stepping into Tomorrow program). Shabazz and King, the respective daughters of

Malcolm X and Dr. King, performed in the production and led a workshop at the

Mwangi Cultural Center at Smith College entitled “Changing the Face of Theatre:

The Next Step” (“Stepping Into Tomorrow” press release). The workshop provided

them the opportunity to speak of their fathers and their difficulties in moving beyond

the legacies of the two men. This play, a collaborative effort meant to be performed

only once, evolved into a touring production and was performed many times (Ling,

Nummo News). Newspapers covered the visit of Shabazz and King to the Valley. The

Springfield article focused on the impact of the fathers on the daughters and quoted

King’s comments to the audience following the performance: “Our two fathers

dedicated their lives so each and every one of you could reach for the sky. You can’t

stand up to a thing unless you stand up for yourself first” (Gordon, 18 October 1983).

This quote could have been a mantra for the Third World Theater, in its ongoing

efforts to stand up for students of color.

The fall 1983 season was off to a good start. The next play, Do Lord

Remember Me, was directed by Uno and focused on the memories of former slaves in

Virginia. Alison Maloon, staff writer for the Collegian, ended her review with, “And

although Do Lord Remember Me in itself was not a depressing show, I left the theatre

not only with a deeper knowledge of slavery but with a much deeper sense of guilt”

(Maloon, 8 November 1983). The Daily Hampshire Gazette, the Collegian/Nummo

News, and the Campus Connection favorably reviewed Do Lord Remember Me (Troy,

1 November 1983; Woods, 7-13 November 1983; Collegian/Nummo News 1

November 1983). John De Jongh originally wrote the play for a workshop at Smith

55

College, and it was later produced at the American Place Theatre in New York.

Another young writer for Nummo News, Brenda Ling, put the spotlight on Uno in a

pre-production article, noting that Uno originally saw the New York production and

decided to bring it back to the series. Uno mentioned in the article that the NWT

wanted to do a project with UMASS music professor Horace Boyer, and Do Lord

Remember Me was a good vehicle for such a collaboration (Ling, 24 October 83).

Only one of the actors in the production was a student: Felicia Thomas of Mount

Holyoke. The other cast members were from the community, and none had studied

theatre. This article once more gave an inkling of the distance between the Third

World Theater Series and the UMASS Department of Theater (Ling, 24 October 83).

The last play of this fall season was A.B.C.: American Born Chinese. A pre-

production article in the Collegian/Nummo News describes the satirical production

that is a “celebration of life and survival against many odds” (Collegian/Nummo

News, 28 November 1983). In addition to the performance, a free workshop entitled

“Twelve Years of Asian-American Performance,” was offered. A.B.C. received an

excellent review from the Collegian/Nummo News. The review quoted several

American-born Chinese students as they left the performance: “UMASS student

Karen Su said, ‘It’s good to have things like that around this area because there are so

few events that deal directly with Asian-Americans.’” Committee for the Collegiate

Education of Black and other Minority Students staff member Carol Young liked the

play ”because it was important to see an Asian on stage (who) accurately portrayed

what it’s like to be an A.B.C.” (“The ABC’s,” 5 December 1983).

Spring of 1984 brought the ninth season of the Third World Theater Series,

including the following productions: Proud by C. Bernard Jackson, performed by

Inner City Cultural Center of Los Angeles; A Sunday Visit with Great-Grandfather,

The Arrow that Kills With Love and Paint Your Face on a Drowning in the River, all

by Craig Kee Strete and performed by Native Americans in the Arts; and Gullah, a

musical play by Alice Childress (Spring Season—Third World Theater press release,

1984). The production of Proud was the first east coast performance by the Inner City

56

Company. The playwright, C. Bernard Jackson, won an OBIE for his play Fly

Blackbird. Two actors in the company, Glynn Turman and Phyllis Bailey, also held

an acting workshop at Smith College. The Collegian gave the production a good

review, praising the play, the performers, and the music (Jackson, 13 February 84).

The Springfield paper published an article about Glynn Turman and his career

(Gordon, 11 February 1984).

Craig Kee Strete, a “Cherokee Indian playwright, had written five foreign

films and been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards for his talent in science

fiction writing” (A Sunday Visit press release). Two of Strete’s plays, A Sunday Visit

with Great-Grandfather and The Arrow that Kills With Love, were meant for young

audiences. According to the press release that accompanied the presentation of these

plays:

The American-Indian Community House/Native Americans in the Arts

is an in-residence theater company, one of only two Indian theater

groups located throughout the U.S. This professional not-for-profit

arts presenting organization responds to the social, economic, cultural

and educational values of 14,000 American Indians living in the

Greater Metropolitan New York Area. (A Sunday Visit press release)

Well-known figure in American theatre Alice Childress directed the

production of Gullah, a musical play exploring “the lives of African-American

descendants of West African slaves, who reside in the sea islands off the coast of

South Carolina and Georgia” (Bryant, March 1984). Childress had received an artist-

in-residence grant for the 1983-84 academic year from the Five-College Third World

Theater subcommittee, allowing her to direct her own play in the Third World season.

The play was an original production collaboration between the Third World Theater

and the New World Ensemble.10 In personal conversations with the author, Uno

spoke of the “ensemble” of the New World Theater. The “New World Ensemble”

mentioned in the article above and performing in Gullah was established in 1983.

Claire Hopley, writing in the Amherst Bulletin, described the collaboration:

57

Both because these two performing groups are used to working as

teams and because the author also directs the play, the production is

exceptionally well focused. There are no performances which pull in

the direction of another vision and the actors work exceptionally well

as an ensemble. The play is fast-paced and while it is serious, it is also

funny, witty, endearing and moving. (Hopley, 11 April 1984)

Childress directed the production that prompted cheers and discussion.

Childress’ residency was sponsored by the Five-College consortium, and

appeared to be a spark in a tinderbox. Students and faculty debated the value of the

arts outside the traditional Western theatrical canon. The Five-College consortium’s

Third World subcommittee had people talking and challenging the status quo. The

New WORLD Theater archives contain several articles about the usefulness of or

need for a Third World Theater (“Third World Theater Straddles a Theatrical Fence,”

Marini, 5 September 1984). One Xeroxed copy of an article without any date or

evidence of its origin debates the Third World Theater’s goals compared to the

theatre departments in the consortium (“Third World Theater Straddles a Theatrical

Fence”). The article suggests that the value of the student-run organization, Third

World Theater Series, was being weighed against the theatre departments. Former

students who had performed with the Series were interviewed about the importance of

having had opportunities for roles that reflected their cultures. Uno commented that

producers and directors like herself “must chose new symbols to change the

stereotypes of Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Native-Americans that still dominate

American movies, TV and stage” (“Third World Theater Straddles a Theatrical

Fence”). Alice Childress was said to support the notion of a separatist theatre and was

quoted as saying, “Many black people have never seen black plays or any plays at

all.” She saw the need to educate the black community through production of plays

written by and for that population. Len Berkman of Smith College’s Department of

Theatre, a long-time supporter of the Third World Theater Series, spoke for the

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instructional function of the group. He called it a “stepping stone. . .a communal

celebration.”

According to the same article, Uno challenged traditional theatre departments:

“Why have you closed your doors? Our doors are open.” Julian Olf, chair of the

UMASS theater department was quoted as saying that third world theater “has an

identity that must be protected and not be assimilated.” Other faculty also registered

their opinions about the need for a separate theater for students of color. Walter

Boughton, professor of theater at Amherst College, offered the most reactionary

response to the concept of the Third World Theater Series and the need for

performance opportunities for students of color. The article stated that Professor

Boughton “wonders whether some minority students ‘would rather martyr

themselves’ than try out for major roles in traditional theater. He points to the roles

in productions this year at the college that could have been filled by third world

students but there were none who tried to get them. ‘If someone with real talent is

there, he gets the role’” (“Third World Theater Straddles a Theatrical Fence”). What

was spoken by faculty and members of the Third World Theater and what was heard

resonated for many years. The article referred to above, published just before the

opening of Gullah, illustrates the delicate nature of the relationship between the Third

World Theater Series and the Five-College theatre departments that saw the Series as

a topic of debate. It was around this time that the Third World Theater moved from

being a registered student organization at UMASS to operating under the auspices of

the Fine Arts Center under the name “Third World Programs” (O’Heir, 1989).

The first five-year history of the NWT indicates that it was not an easy

adjustment for the Third World Theater and for the university that sponsored it. Born

out of the racial unrest the theater struggled to find recognition and a home that

recognized the work that it was doing. What began in the Student Activities Office

was about to become legitimized by a move to the Fine Arts Center at the University

of Massachusetts. What began in reaction to dissatisfaction by students of color with

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their treatment at UMASS became a producing arts organization that served the

community of color and the wider community surrounding the university.

The early days were rife with misunderstandings and misperceptions by the

members of the NWT and the university that supported it. The UMASS theatre

Department did not see the group as legitimate. The members were not professional

theatre practitioners. The early productions developed and produced by the group

could be considered community theatre by the faculty in the UMASS and Five-

College theatre programs. In addition, the group was vocal about its disdain for the

Western canon produced by the Five-College theatre programs. Third World Theater

saw as its mission the production of plays not being produced by the more

mainstream producing groups on campus. Not only were the members not considered

professionals and the plays produced not esteemed by the traditional culture, the

group wanted to utilize the spaces controlled by the theatre department. As the group

moved under the administration of the UMASS Fine Arts Center, the space issues

grew more acute. The Fine Arts Center houses the UMASS Theater Department’s

two theatres, plus a larger concert hall and offices. The Fine Arts Center also ran the

Hampden Theatre used by the Third World Theatre.

1984-1985—The Third World Theater Becomes the New WORLD Theater

September 1984. Change was imminent. In September 1984, several

newspaper articles announced that the name of the Third World Theater had been

changed to the New WORLD Theater (Collegian; The Sunday Recorder; New

England Entertainment Digest; and Nummo News). Nummo News reported on

September 10, 1984 that the group had outgrown the original focus of the Third

World Theater, which was to “showcase works of non-European people, as a forum

to spark discussion of current issues and to broaden the cultural experience of its

audiences.” According to Uno:

After five years, I think the community knows we offer a comparative

look at the various theaters of Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native-

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American peoples; however, theatergoers and actors have sometimes

felt our former name indicated a separatist philosophy. Our new name

more accurately reflects our reality as a multi-racial program and also

our optimism about the future of the American theater. (“NWT: New

Name, Same Excellence”)

By this time, the New WORLD Theater (NWT) was housed in the Fine Arts Center

of UMASS with a staff of fifteen student workers and volunteers, a part-time

administrator, and a full-time director. In addition to its productions, the NWT

sponsored a multi-racial theatre ensemble, an internship program and a workshop

series. The New WORLD Theater Ensemble was “an acting troupe of local students”

that worked together throughout the year and performed in the original productions of

the New WORLD Theater. The NWT also sponsored “an internship program in the

areas of theatre production and administration, and a colloquium/workshop series”

(Marini, 5 September 1984). The NWT was committed to continuing the original

goals of the Third World Theater and to expanding its outreach.

The 1984-85 Season.

The tenth season for the theatre group opened on the heels of the name change

announcement and included: Love to All, Lorraine, a drama based upon the life of the

late Lorraine Hansberry by Elizabeth Van Dyke, performed by National Black

Touring Circuit; a reprise production of Life in the Fast Lane with Lane Nishikawa;

and a New World Theater Ensemble production of Short Eyes by Miguel Piñero.

Love to All, Lorraine received mixed reviews that primarily recounted the plot of the

one-woman show. Ronni Gordon wrote that the script deteriorated into a polemic

“speechifying about injustices such as segregation” and complained about the small

size of the audience in the large auditorium (“‘Love’ is a Difficult Drama”). The

NWT presented the New World Ensemble in a production of Short Eyes, a prison

drama that concerned the inmates’ response to the presence of a child molester. The

Latino playwright Miguel Piñero gave a lecture on the “Development of Short Eyes”

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following the Saturday matinee performance (Short Eyes press release). At least one

review of Short Eyes was positive: “Drama and reality are so intertwined that at times

it is hard to separate them. The drama was intense, keeping the audience aroused to

the issues, some humorous, some harsh, some sad, but always for real” (Betances,

December 1984). At the end of the fall 1984 season the NWT produced a staged

reading of James Baldwin’s Blues for Mr. Charlie at Amherst College to “sold-out,

racially-mixed audiences which responded with uniform and extraordinary

enthusiasm” (“A Symposium: Mr. Baldwin’s Blues: the Politics of Theater”).

The eleventh season in spring 1985 began with a joint presentation by the

UMASS Fine Arts Center and the New WORLD Theater of The Negro Ensemble

Company’s production of A Soldier’s Play by Charles Fuller. The play was directed

by Douglas Turner Ward the founder of the NEC. In addition to the NEC production

the NWT season included David Henry Hwang’s The Dance and the Railroad,

directed by Uno and choreographed by Richard Cesario. Cesario presented a

workshop along with the production (“New World Theater Announces Spring

Season,” 1985). The program for The Dance and the Railroad printed a new

statement about the NWT and reported that the New WORLD Theater was now a

project of the Fine Arts Center. The move from the Student Activities Office to the

Fine Arts Center legitimized the NWT’s standing in the community and at UMASS.

The financial backing of the Fine Arts Center allowed the NWT to bring in larger

groups as part of its season. The new NWT statement was a revision of the prior

goals statement printed in all programs and press releases:

The New WORLD Theater was founded in 1979 as a showcase

for the theatrical works of Third World people, reflecting the

rich histories and cultures of African, Asian, Hispanic and

Native American peoples. The New WORLD Theater strives to

highlight the separate, yet related experiences of people of

color, to show the vastness of our artistic expressions, and the

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depth of our histories and shared themes of our social realities.

(The Dance and the Railroad program)

The program also listed the various offices at UMASS that financially supported the

production. Uno skillfully managed to pull resources from many sources to get the

productions funded. The season concluded with a production of Errol John’s Moon on

a Rainbow Shawl directed by Uno and performed by the New WORLD Ensemble, the

multi-racial ensemble of students and community members that formed the pool of

actors for NWT productions (“Auditions set for New WORLD Theater” press

release). Dian Mandle, administrator with the NWT, ultimately directed the

production.

The New World Theater archives for spring 1985 included a flyer for a three-

credit course in the UMASS Department of Theater, “The Theater of Third World

Americans,” taught by Uno. The description of the course utilized the language of

the new goal statement of the NWT: “This course is designed to introduce students to

the separate yet related theater movements of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native

Americans” (“The Theater of Third World Americans”).

New WORLD Theater 1985-1986

The NWT’s twelfth season in fall of 1985 opened with a reprise of David

Henry Hwang’s Dance and the Railroad, which was nominated for the American

College Theatre Festival. Unfortunately, the performances of this play were canceled

due to Hurricane Gloria, but they were presented the following weekend at the

Northampton Center for the Arts to excellent reviews (Reily, 2 October 1985). The

second presentation of the spring semester was In Living Color, an evening of one-act

plays by third world authors that included: Pigeons by Genny Lim, Marine Tigers by

Estrella Artau, and Loners by Joan California Cooper (“New World Theater

Announces New Season,” 26 August 1985). Lim’s Pigeons explored the relationship

between two Asian women. Marine Tigers examined the Hispanic community’s

difficulties with bilingual America and was presented at a special performance at

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Casa Latina, Inc., a center for popular education and culture in Northampton.

Following the performance the audience and actors participated in a multi-cultural

potluck dinner featuring traditional Puerto Rican foods (Casa Latina, Inc. press

release, 18 November 1985).

Cooper’s Loners was a Black drama about relationships (“New WORLD

Theater presents In Living Color,” 24 October 1985). The last production of the

spring 1985 season was Voices in the Rain by Jomandi Productions, the only major

Black owned and managed theatre company in Georgia. Jomandi Productions was

founded and co-directed by Marsha Jackson, a graduate of Smith College, and

Thomas W. Jones II, a graduate of Amherst College (“Area Alumni return in Voices

in the Rain,” 25 November 1985). Voices in the Rain was an evening of two of

Jomandi’s most popular plays, Jus’ Cumin’ Home and Sing til the Song is Mine

(“College Area Alumni return in Voices in the Rain,” 25 November 1985). The play

was well received, despite some complaints about a lack of cohesiveness: “The talent

both in the performing and the writing, is there. What this show needs is a good hard-

nosed director/editor to narrow its scope and bring it into clearer focus” (Robinson,

17 December 1985). The New WORLD Theater continued to bring productions to the

Amherst area that challenged audiences and were reviewed by local papers.

NWT continued to expand the group of students and community members

participating in the Ensemble. Students of color from the Five-Colleges became

Ensemble members and valued their experience with this community of color. It

appeared that the theatre department continued to view the NWT as a student

organization producing inferior work. Thus the struggle between the NWT and the

UMASS Theatre Department could be seen as an example of the resistance of the

subordinate group towards the dominant group. The very structures of UMASS

created the schism. It would be difficult for any group emerging from the Student

Activities Office to gain legitimation with the faculty. Even with the move to the Fine

Arts Center, the very home of the UMASS Theater Department, the conflict remained

close to the surface. Nevertheless, as mentioned in Chapter Two, Aronowitz and

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Giroux argue for the relevance and intellectual validity of “marginal discourse” or

discourse from the margins of conventional society. NWT spoke from the margins of

the discourse set by the established conventional programs surrounding it.

The NWT 1986 spring season opened with a play about the civil rights

movement of the 1960s, Freedom Days, by Steve Friedman, performed by New

York’s Modern Times Theater Company, which also offered a free workshop (“New

World Theater Season Opens with Freedom Days” press release, 16 January 1986).

Shango De Ima by Pepe Carril was the next play in the season, an African-Cuban folk

opera with Yoruban-inspired choreography by Cuban Roberto Borrell. Roderick

Robinson described the play as “always interesting, often beautiful and sometimes

powerful and moving” (Robinson, 11 March 1986). The reviews were positive, with

most focusing on the history of the Yoruban religion and the story of the play. A

brief note in the NWT archives about the New WORLD Theater Ensemble at this

time appeared in a source entitled Both Ears to the Ground. It mentioned that the

ensemble in the spring of 1986 was three years old and had grown from its original

seven members to a membership of sixty (“New World Theater Ensemble,” March

1986).

The last play of the spring season was a production by the New WORLD

Theater Ensemble of Lorraine Hansberry’s last play To Be Young, Gifted, and Black.

The press release for the show noted that the script consultant for the play was Five-

College professor and author James Baldwin and that the play was directed by Esther

Terry from the Afro-American Studies Department (“New World Theater to Portray

Life of Lorraine Hansberry,” 26 March 1986). The press release also noted that both

Baldwin and Terry were close friends of Lorraine Hansberry. A Collegian article by

A. V. Thompson, “Zora: Black Folklore,” highlighted a production of a performance

of the play Zora in honor of Black History Month in February of 1986. The NWT did

not include this play in their list of productions although it was presented in the

Hampden Theater at UMASS and included in the cast performers from the NWT

ensemble.

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In addition to the productions in spring 1986 the NWT cosponsored with the

Amherst College Department of Romance Languages a lecture by Uruguayan

dissident playwright Mauricio Rosencof at the UMASS Campus Center. The lecture,

entitled “The Culture of Resistance Under the Uruguayan Dictatorship,” spoke of the

“intense covert cultural activities in the prisons and how the prison experience

affected [Rosencof’s own] writing” (“Latin American Playwright to Speak” press

release, March 1986). Also during that active spring season of 1986, the NWT

Ensemble reprised their popular production of Marine Tiger by Estrella Artau in the

Dever Auditorium in Westfield, Massachusetts (“Marine Tiger Performed in

Westfield,” 14 February 1986).

New WORLD Theater 1986-1987

The fall of 1986 brought two major companies to the NWT, the Market

Theater and the Negro Ensemble Company. The first play, Asinamali by Mbongeni

Ngema, was produced in cooperation with the Market Theater and Columbia Artists

Theatrical Corporation and presented by the Committed Artists. The Market Theater

is a South African company founded by Artistic Director Barney Simon and

Managing Director Mannie Manim. Ngema founded the Committed Artists

following a tour of the play Woza Albert in the United States. The press packet for

the Market Theater Company and the Committed Artists noted that Ngema had

trained the thirty-person company, which had become a group “with explosive energy

which gave rise to Asinamali.” Reviewer John E. Reily raved about Asinamali:

At the end of Asinamali, the stunning South African play presented in

Bowker Auditorium at UMass Saturday night, the audience rose en

masse to give a standing ovation to the five actors on stage because

there was nothing else you could do. After watching two hours of the

most dynamic, non-stop theater imaginable, you were compelled out

of your seat to clap, roar and give thanks. (Reily, 29 September 86)

The production must have been riveting. Reily described the music in the show, “a

cappella sing, itself worth the price of admission [. . .] this was gorgeous five part

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harmony akin to gospel, with the words in Zulu, and the power and beauty of the

music was overwhelming” (Reily, 29 September 86). The Market Theater Company

also presented Born in the R. S. A. by Barney Simon. The New WORLD Theater

Ensemble presented Be Still and Know by Stephen Newby. The last play of this fall

1986 season was the renown Ceremonies and Dark Old Men by Lonnie Elder III

performed by the Negro Ensemble Company.

The spring 1987 season included: Grandma and Grandpa, two one-character

Native American comedies, by the Native American Theater Ensemble; The Magic of

the Monkey King by Hong-Jun Guan of the Peking Opera; Williams and Walker of the

National Black Touring Circuit; Sun, Moon and Feather by Spiderwoman Theater;

and a New WORLD Theater Ensemble production of The Lion and the Jewel by

Wole Soyinka, presented by the UMASS Department of Theater and NWT. World

Awareness, Inc. presented an introduction to the Peking Opera in their production of

The Magic of Monkey King. Hong-Jun, a professional member of the Peking Opera,

presented a workshop demonstrating make-up application and the acrobatic fighting

skills of the mischievous Monkey King. NWT, Five College East Asian Studies, and

the University Asian Languages and Literature Program cosponsored the production

and workshop.

In honor of Black History month, the National Black Touring Circuit

presented Williams and Walker, a musical tribute to the legendary Black

vaudevillians Bert Williams and George Walker. Spiderwoman Theater, a Native

American feminist theatre company, presented a workshop demonstrating play

development, storytelling, and the role of Native American culture and theatre in

urban America. Richard Trousdell, professor of theatre at UMASS, directed The Lion

and the Jewel. The production was supported by grants from the offices of the

UMASS Chancellor, Dean of Faculty of Humanities and Fine Arts, and Dean of

Students; the Committee on University Lectures; the Graduate Student Senate; the

Afrik-Am Society; the Distinguished Visitors Program; the Five College Black

Studies Executive Committee; Five Colleges, Incorporated; the Five College Third

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World Theater Committee; the Hampshire College Third World Fund; and the

University of Massachusetts Arts Council. The breadth and number of sponsors is

another example of the extensive development process Roberta Uno used to realize

the work of the New WORLD Theater.

In the spring of 1987, the UMASS Department of Theater hosted a Black

Theater Conference to honor Professor Doris Abramson’s retirement. Abramson was

the one UMASS Theater faculty member who supported the work of the NWT from

its inception. “The Black Theater Scholar” Symposium, the “Voice of the Black

Playwright” Colloquium, the production of The Lion and the Jewel, and the awarding

of the Doris Abramson Playwriting Award for a Previously Unpublished Play by a

Black Playwright were presented at the conference (“A Black Theater Conference

brochure,” 1 May 1987). Some of the well-known scholars and artists participating in

this event included Errol G. Hill, Nellie Yvonne McKay, James V. Hatch, Rosemary

K. Curb, Margaret D. Wilkerson, Thomas D. Pawley, Esther Terry, William B.

Branch, Lofteen Mitchell, Alice Childress, and Louis Peterson.

New WORLD Theater 1987-1988

The productions of the fall 1987 season included: Alice Childress’ Wine in the

Wilderness by First World Images; Migrants by Teatro Pregones; a NWT production

of Sneaky by William Yellow Robe; and Sanctuary: The Spirit of Harriet Tubman, an

epic production combining masks, shadow puppets, projections, and live music

celebrating the underground railroad of the 1850s and depicting the plight of Central

American refugees in today’s sanctuary movement by the Underground Railway

Theater (New WORLD Theater Fall Season 1987 brochure). Wine in the Wilderness,

directed by Ingrid C. Askew, received favorable reviews in the Collegian (McDaneld,

25 September 1987). Migrants utilized music, drama, oral testimony, and historical

essays to portray the struggle of Puerto Rican immigrants in New York City from

1920-1940 (NWT Press Release, 2 September 1987). Teatro Pregones, a New York-

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based Puerto Rican theatre company founded in 1979, conducted workshops based on

the collective creation of scripts.

Sneaky, a world premiere, was the first Native American play performed by

the NWT Ensemble. The NWT presented other works by Native American touring

companies, but this local production helped to establish ties with the local Native

American community. Sneaky was the story of three Assiniboine brothers who decide

to reclaim their mother’s body from the morgue in order to conduct a traditional

funeral. One actor in the play, George Whirlwind Soldier, was a Lakota Sioux

working on a graduate degree at UMASS in public health. In a newspaper article, he

was quoted as saying:

There are a lot of differences between this campus and my reservation,

but it’s the similarities that stand out glaringly in my mind. The high

level of violence, the high level of alcohol and drug abuse, the racism.

It’s these bad things about—I hate to say it, but—white culture, that

seem to dominate, and that’s what we have in common real strong.

(Rohmann, November 1987)

The four actors portraying Native Americans in the production were Native

Americans from the community. Soldier claimed:

There are two cultures [. . .] and there is peace in both cultures, for

anyone willing to see deep enough. We tend to get consumed by all

this negativism. That’s what stands out in my mind now, but just like

anywhere else, on this campus or back on my reservation, there are

some gallant efforts being made to handle these problems and create

peace and harmony. (Rohmann, November 1987)

Chris Rohmann believed Sneaky was one of these “gallant efforts.” Playwright

William Yellow Robe visited the NWT, viewed the production, and shared his

experience with the NWT ensemble in workshops and discussions (“Notes for a New

WORLD.” Fall/winter 1987-88).

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Spring 1988 brought An Evening with Cicely Tyson; a NWT production of

Nzinga’s Children by Veona Thomas; Muffet Inna All A Wi by Sistren, a theatre

collective of Caribbean working-class women using music theatre and dance to create

the story of five Jamaican women; and The Tale of Lear, with actors from the

StageWest, Arena Stage, Milwaukee Repertory and Berkeley Repertory in a

contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear directed by Tadashi Suzuki.

The NWT collaborated with the Black Mass Communication Project to bring Cicely

Tyson to the UMASS campus. The evening was described as a collection of “portraits

of Black women in history” (“New WORLD Theater presents ‘An Evening with

Cicely Tyson’” press release. 19 February 1988).

Reviews of the NWT ensemble production of Nzinga’s Children praised the

production, but pointed out problems in the text (Reily, 16 March 1988; Polk, 17

March 1988). John E. Reily, a regular reviewer of NWT productions, questioned the

outcome of the play:

Last Saturday night the audience gave the cast a well-deserved

standing ovation at the play’s conclusion. It was no doubt a very

entertaining evening, but I was troubled by the basic message that

mixed couples can never be truly happy. It seems especially odd

coming from the New WORLD Theater which has always promoted

harmony and understanding between people of different colors and

creeds. (Reily, 16 March 1988)

The play is about Nzinga, a Black woman, who breaks up with her Black boyfriend

and begins to date her white boss. She is visited by the ghosts of her grandmothers

and is led back to the path of honoring her Black ancestry and her responsibility as a

Black woman. Several reviewers criticized the weakness and one-dimensionality of

the white character. Critic Betsy Polk thought—based upon the program notes—that

although the intent of the playwright was to write a play about feminism and

sisterhood, Nzinga’s choice to go back to her weak black boyfriend was a major

weakness of the show (Polk 17 March 1988). Ingrid Askew, a former UMASS

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student, well-known actress and director in the Pioneer Valley, and artistic director of

Third World Images, directed Nzinga’s Children. A Collegian announcement

mentioned that one of the cast members, Bryan Tinker, was the recipient of a New

WORLD Theater scholarship, indicating that the NWT had become sufficiently

successful and institutionalized to offer scholarships.

The Lear project began in August 1987 when three actors from four major

theatre companies traveled to Japan to spend nine months working with Tadashi

Suzuki, who for the first time worked with American actors on this production.

Suzuki’s work, combining traditional Japanese movement with an emphasis on

physical expression, gave rise to a radical form of actor training (“New WORLD

Previews Tadashi Suzuki’s ‘Lear,’” 9 April 1988). NWT was an early presenter of

Suzuki’s work in the United States.

Cosmo Macero, Jr., of the Collegian wrote about the climate for the NWT

spring of 1988. Yvonne Mendez, NWT staff member and graphic artist, was quoted

as saying: “We expose University people, and the whole Pioneer Valley to different

cultures, and we outline different experiences in the way that Third World People

live.” She connected the problems that happen on campus to the work produced on

the stage, “in hopes of enlightening the public to minority situation” (Macero, 6 May

1988). Macero pointed out that the NWT’s status as a registered Student Organization

made it subject to budget cuts: “They received an 1100 dollar cut in their budget,

dropping them from 8000 dollars to 6900 dollars annually” (Macero, 6 May 1988).

That the NWT was both a “student organization” at UMASS and a program of the

Fine Arts Center provides some indication of the delicate path the NWT had to travel

in fulfilling its goals.

New WORLD Theater 1988-1989

The 1988 fall season’s theme was: “Remembering Jimmy. . .A season

dedicated to James Baldwin and the continuing struggle.” In the spirit of this theme,

the NWT brought a number of productions and companies to the area, including:

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Quien Vive?/Who Lives? by the Antioch Theater Company, Vusisizwe Players’s You

Strike the Woman, You Strike the Rock; Carpetbag Theater’s Dark Cowgirls and

Prairie Queens; Blues for Mr. Charlie by James Baldwin, presented by the NWT;

August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by Amaryllis Productions; and an

“African Heritage Program” that included the No-Name Gospel Singers, Los Pleneros

de la 21, Papa Susso, and Thokoza for the World Music Institute.

Students from the Antioch College Theatre Department stopped at UMASS to

perform the student-written Quien Vive?/Who Lives, a play based on the life of a

twenty-seven year old American “killed by the U.S.-backed contra rebels while

working as an engineer in Nicaragua” (Gordon, September 1988). The play was co-

sponsored by the MacArthur Fund at Hampshire College, the Hampshire College

Theatre Department, and the NWT. The performance took place before the opening

of the regular NWT season and the proceeds were donated to Technica and

Necessidades, two area organizations doing related work to broaden awareness of

Central American issues (Uno letter to Dorothy Green of Necessidades, 26 July

1988). Dark Cowgirls and Prairie Queens portrayed “seven black women and their

confrontations with freedom” (Stipada, 19 October 1988). Baldwin’s Blues for Mr.

Charlie, was presented in conjunction with the W.E. B. DuBois Department of Afro-

American Studies and the Institute for the Advanced Study of the Humanities. The

NWT presented a symposium on the history of Blues for Mr. Charlie during the run

of the production (“A Symposium—Mr. Baldwin’s Blues: The Politics of Theater”

press release, October 1988).

The African Heritage Program presented by the NWT spotlighted traditional

music of Africa and the African Diaspora in an effort to revive such musical

traditions and keep them alive. The No Name Gospel Singers was an acappella group

that relied on tight harmony, interlocking vocal parts, and a moving vocal bass line.

Los Pleneros de la 21, under the direction of Juan Gutierrez, was a group dedicated to

the perpetuation of traditional Afro-Puerto Rican music styles. Papa Sussa was a jali

from Gambia, in the tradition of jalalo, who were “professional musicians, praise

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singers, and oral historians who were attached to the royal courts in West Africa and

[whose] duties were to recall tribal history and genealogy, compose commemorative

songs and perform at important tribal events” (“New WORLD Theater Announces

The African Heritage Program,” November 1988). Another group composed of choral

Zulu singers, Thokoza, performed indigenous Zulu songs and dances. Finally, the

1988 fall program presented by the NWT included a symposium and video on “Ten

Years of New WORLD Theater” (“New WORLD Theater Announces The African

Heritage Program,” November 1988).

The 1989 spring season included: American Indian Dance Theater by The

American Indian Dance Theater Company and co-sponsored by the NWT with the

Fine Arts Center Performing Arts Series; Don’t Start Me Talking or I’ll Tell You

Everything I Know (Sayings From the Life and Writing of Junebug Jabbo Jones) by

John O’Neal for Roadside Productions, also co-sponsored by the NWT with the Fine

Arts Center Performing Arts Series; Fairy Bones & Pay the Chinaman by the Asian

American Theater Company; Webster Street Blues by the Asian American Theater

Company; and Encrucijada by Manuel Méndez Ballester, an original production of

the NWT.

The American Indian Dance Theatre was created to provide Native-

Americans an opportunity to share their heritage and culture. It was the first

professional dance company in the U.S. comprised entirely of Native-American

dancers and musicians. The Asian American Theatre Company presented two

performances for NWT in the Spring of 1989, Webster Street Blues, a play about four

teenagers growing up in San Francisco’s Japantown, and New Age of Wonders, two

one-act plays set in the California foothills in 1893, one about con men who gamble

with their savings and passage home and the other rooted in Chinese mysticism. The

Asian American Theatre Company also offered workshops at UMASS and Amherst

College (“Asian American Theatre Company” press release, Spring 1989).

Manual Méndez Ballester’s Spanish language play, Encrucijada, examined the

trials of a “Puerto Rican family living in Spanish Harlem in the 1950’s” (Encrucijada

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press release, April 1989). It was performed by the Latin American Theater Project

(LATP), which was described in this way in the Encrucijada press release:

This “arm” of New World Theater came into existence in an effort to

nurture an on-going relationship between NWT and the Latino

American community. LATP consists of a core group of Latino

students, faculty, staff and interested community members whose goal

is to research and produce plays that highlight the experience of Latino

people. LATP’s first production was a radio performance of

Encrucijada in December 1988 on WFCR and National Public

Radio.(Encrucijada press release, April 1989)

The play was presented during Puerto Rican Awareness Week. The programming

also included a visit from Puerto Rico by the playwright, as well as lectures and

workshops. The director of the play, Jaime Martínez Tolentino, was teaching at

UMASS at the time and working on a second doctorate in Spanish Literature. The

LATP provided a forum for creative and political activity in the community.

New WORLD Theater 1989-1990

The Tenth Anniversary Season. The Tenth Anniversary fall 1989 season

included: Woza Albert! by the Crossroads Theater Company; Project by the Free

Street Theatre, which was co-sponsored by NWT with the Fine Arts Center

Performing Arts Series; Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies

in a Gilded Cage by Aishah Rahmam, an original NWT production with the

University of Massachusetts Department of Theater; Ariano by the Puerto Rican

Traveling Theatre Company; Spiderwoman Theater’s Winnetou’s Snake-Oil Show

From WigWam-City; and Coming Into Passion—Song for a Sansei by Jude Narita.

Woza Albert!, conceived by Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema, and Barney

Simon, was a fast-paced, poignant, and comical illustration of the lives and hopes of

Black South Africans using as a theme the second coming of Christ. The production

was brought to the NWT by the Crossroads Theatre, an Equity regional theatre

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founded in 1978 to promote multiracial appreciation. Crossroads presented six theatre

productions each season and a series of workshops, classes and demonstrations for

young inner-city artists, art groups, and teachers (Notes for a New World Fall 1989).

The Free Street Theatre, a political theatre founded in 1969, presented twenty-six

residents of Chicago’s Cabrini Green Housing Project in Project, a multimedia

documentary combining music, dance, rap, and video.

Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage

was an underground classic play about teenage pregnancy set on the day jazz legend

Charlie Parker died. The NWT used the theme of this play to continue their

community outreach. Leslie T. Laurie, Executive Director of the Family Planning

Council of Western Massachusetts thanked the NWT for providing “one dozen

complimentary tickets” to a number of participants in the “Family Planning Council’s

SAFE (Services for Adolescent Family Enhancement) program” (Laurie. Letter to

Gillingham. 4 December 1989). Laurie explained that SAFE was an enrichment

opportunity for pregnant and parenting teens in Springfield and Westfield. As the

NWT worked with community groups its understanding of the potential for audience

development grew. Providing outreach to at-risk youth in community settings was to

play a much larger role in the future projects of the NWT.

Ariano was a hard-hitting drama about an upscale Puerto Rican and his

obsession with acceptance in a white world produced by the Puerto Rican Traveling

Theatre. The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre was founded by Miriam Colón in 1967

and had operated under Actor’s Equity contracts since its inception. The company’s

four units included: a touring unit that took free performances to low-income

communities; a training unit where young people fourteen years and older receive

free theatre training; a playwrights unit: and a permanent theatre located in the

Broadway area of New York. Ariano examined the tensions between light- and dark-

skinned people and raised issues related to race: prejudice, self-hate, pride, and the

pressures of assimilation.

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Finally, Spiderwoman’s Winnetou’s Snake-Oil Show From WigWam-City was a

review that brought together traditional ritual and hysterical parodies of fake

initiations performed by “wanna-be” Indians. Coming Into Passion/Song for a Sensei

explored Asian women’s stereotypes and realities.

The Tenth Anniversary Celebration. Uno saw the importance of the NWT

and sought to document its history. For the tenth anniversary of the NWT, Uno

planned a three-day commemoration conference. The weekend of events

incorporated two gallery retrospectives of poster designs and photography from the

theatre’s ten years; a performance of the Puerto Rican Traveling Company’s Ariano;

a panel discussion entitled “Meeting at the Crossroads”; a luncheon with keynote

speaker playwright-director Shauneille Perry; a performance by the Spiderwoman

Theater; a performance of Jude Narita’s one-woman show; a panel discussion entitled

“Tradition and a New Aesthetic”; and a NWT ensemble performance of Unfinished

Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage (Bermiss, 29

November 1989).

The two panel sessions brought together artists of color and scholars to

discuss issues of importance to the NWT. Andrea Hairston moderated the panel

discussion entitled “Meeting at the Crossroads: What Direction for the 1990’s?”

Several well-known artists participated in this panel, including Cat Cayuga, the

director of Canada’s Native Theatre School; Tisa Chang, the founder of the Pan Asian

Repertory Theater; Miriam Colón Valle, the director of the Puerto Rican Traveling

Theatre; Rick Khan of the Crossroads Theater in New Jersey; Woody King, the

founder of the New Federal Theater; and Eric Hayashi, the artistic director of San

Francisco’s Asian American Theater (O’Heir, December 1989; Sullivan). The panel

entitled “Traditions and a New Aesthetic” was led by moderator Ramona Bass and

included another distinguished group of panelists: Jessica Hagedorn, Filipino

playwright, novelist, music and video artist; David Henry Hwang, Tony Award-

winning playwright of M. Butterfly; Honor Ford-Smith, director of the Sistren Theater

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in Jamaica; Carlos Morton, Chicano playwright from Texas; William Yellow Robe,

Native-American playwright from Fort Peck Reservation in Montana.

Yet again, Uno demonstrated her ability to pull together both recognized and

up-and-coming theatre artists and scholars of color for the NWT anniversary

celebration. The conference provided a site for discourse from the margins to occur at

UMASS. She shaped both panel discussions, writing to each participant to provide an

outline of the format that would be used and the questions that would be asked for the

panels. These letters to the panel participants, found in the NWT Archives, clearly

illustrate Uno’s personal perceptions about the strained relationship between

mainstream theatre and the work of artists of color and the ways in which those

perceptions framed the substance of the panel discussions. In a letter sent to the

producers panel, for example, Uno asked,

Is it true that as producers of ethnic theater, you have had to engage

the production styles, technology, and processes of mainstream theater

much more than vice versa: i.e. has the mainstream theater had to be

conscious and responsive to your realities? … Have you seen a move

away from the type of Eurocentric critical sensibility which has

dominated the critical discussion? (Uno, “Letter to Eric Hayashi.” 8

November 1989)

Uno’s questions also influenced the content of the playwright’s panel. In a

letter to the playwright David Henry Hwang, Uno wrote,

Your work has in common an awareness, use, and projection not only

of the experiences and themes of non-European cultures, but also

incorporates innovatively the cultural styles and forms of these

cultures. . . .Does this imply a rejection, perhaps as too narrow or

confining, of traditional Western theater’s perspectives, forms and

visions? …What historical forces and reasons explain this

phenomenon (movement) at this present time? The inhospitableness of

mainstream theater? (Uno “Letter to Hwang”)

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Uno’s point of view was evident in the questions she both asked and answered in

letters to panel participants. Seeing the work of the NWT as a process of

empowerment, Uno claimed, “I see the arts as one of the strongest tools that we have

to connect our history and share our history. [. . .] I see that the New WORLD

Theater is one of the few places that I’ve seen the various people come together in a

multiracial context” (Gillingham 56). Empowerment of artists and scholars of color

through discussion of common issues in such meetings links education to democracy.

Critical theorists such as Joan W. Scott argue that the diversification at universities

and colleges is not easy to accomplish. Scott describes the need for increased

justifications as new knowledge is created and assessed (Bérubé and Nelson 294).

Most frustrating to Uno was the constant need to justify what she perceived as

important and expanding knowledge.

The highlight of the weekend’s events was a banquet moderated by former

NWT Ensemble member Rev. Felicia Thomas, at which five people were recognized

for their contributions to the New WORLD Theater. Yat Man and Angela DoCanto

represented the many NWT people who worked behind the scenes (DoCanto

graduated from UMASS in 1987 with a degree in Family and Community Service

administration and was an administrative assistant in the NWT office. Man came to

UMASS in 1979 from New York City, later graduating from Brooklyn Law School in

1986 and practicing law in New York). In addition, Man and DoCanto recognized

early managing directors Yvonne Mendez and her predecessor, Beth Nathanson and

the conference co-coordinators Maya Gillingham and Pam Tillis. DoCanto

recognized E. Jefferson “Pat” Murphy as having founded the Five College Third

World Theater Committee, and mentioned that the committee had supported the Third

World Theater throughout the Five Colleges by funding plays, workshops,

residencies, and special projects.

At the banquet, Kevin Frazier and Ingrid Askew represented the many young

people who received encouragement from the NWT and eventually became

playwrights, actors, composers, designers, and directors. Frazier had founded

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Spectrum III in May of 1986 at Amherst College, where he had produced independent

productions and directed and acted with the NWT before graduating from Amherst in

1989. Askew had participated in numerous NWT projects as director, actress and

member of the crew. She had been a Theater major through the UMASS University

Without Walls Program and had founded First World Images in 1987 in Springfield

(Notes for a New World Fall 1989).

Others who had contributed to the success of the NWT were singled out for

praise as well. Frazier and Askew recognized two teachers, Dr. Pearl Primas and Dr.

Horace Clarence Boyer, who had been important to the students involved in the NWT

productions. Rev. Thomas acknowledged the four people who had created the NWT:

Miriam Carter Langa, Karen Lederer, Derek Davis, and Roberta Uno Thelwell. Carter

Langa spoke of the support, diplomacy, integrity, and vision of the Director of the

Fine Arts Center, Dr. Fred Tillis, describing his advocacy on behalf of multicultural

arts throughout the University and thanking him for giving a permanent home to the

NWT. Uno referred to the “amazing commitment” and incredible support of Dean

William Field during the early days of the NWT. Field had promised the NWT a

matching grant for every dollar they raised, a promise that was sustained through

times of small audiences and controversy (Banquet Script, 7 December 1989). Field’s

promise encouraged the NWT to go out and seek grant money, initiating the NWT’s

a relentless quest for funding and a long record of grant awards.

The tenth anniversary celebration took place at a financial crisis point for the

NWT and UMASS. Budget cuts had left the NWT, the Fine Arts Center, and the

Department of Theater operating at reduced budgets. Uno realized that the cuts were

coming just as the planning was being finalized for the anniversary celebration. She

decided to use the “reserve fund built up over the past five years and originally

intended for capital expenditures” (Rohmann, October 1989) to finance the

anniversary weekend, though the NWT continued to raise funds through the

solicitation of advertising from local businesses for the anniversary program

(Mendez. Letter to Vendors draft letter). Uno declared, “We could have just

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celebrated the 10th anniversary with the performance of one production [. . .]. Instead,

we wanted to show a variety of strategies for accomplishing the same goals—cultural

identity” (Bermiss, 29 November 1989).

Recalling the early days of the NWT, Uno related that she and the others

working with her during the late 1970s and early 1980s:

began the theater with an office staff of three students and a handful of

students and community members with an interest in theater. Working

on a tight budget she recalled having to barter for different services.

[Uno] remembers sending someone to chop wood for a woman who

would sew their costumes. (O’Heir, December 1989)

By the fall of 1989, the NWT Ensemble included seventy members. All

ensemble members were expected to work on all aspects of the production and on

“plays involving cultures different from their own” (Heir, 1989). The number of

students working behind the scenes and on production had grown substantially,

indicating the important influence the NWT had on the students. The first ten years

were years of struggle and growth. UMASS professor Music, Horace Clarence Boyer

recalls the struggle of the early years: “If you’re not going to present my plays, I’ll

present them. If you’re not going to present my music, I’ll present my music. If

you’re not going to present my art, I’ll present my art because it has to be there. And I

don’t want us to wait until they open the door. I want us to build the door ourselves

that we can open” (Gillingham 66). Much like Paolo Freire and bell hooks suggest,

the NWT allowed the members to understand their place in the world, to construct

their identities within the university and the community.

New WORLD Theater 1989-1990

Spring 1990. The NWT’s 1990 spring season included: Robeson! by Don

Oliver; The Mission by Culture Clash; Coyote Builds North America by the

Perseverance Theatre, which was co-sponsored by the NWT with the Fine Arts

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Center Performing Arts Series; and I’m on a Mission from Buddha by Lane

Nishikawa for the Asian American Theater Company.

Robeson! was a play about the legendary artist and activist Paul Robeson

(performed by Don Oliver) that was presented in conjunction with Black History

Month. The press commentary prior to the performance highlighted Robeson’s

activism, describing him as “champion of freedom for the oppressed, whether they

were Jews in Nazi Germany, copper miners in Utah, or Blacks in the United States”

(Robeson! press release). The west coast comedy troupe Culture Clash, composed of

the actors Richard Montoya, Herbert Sigüenza, and Ricardo Salinas, presented The

Mission, a comedy set against the backdrop of the California Missions and the alleged

ill treatment of the Costanoan Indians. Culture Clash was thought of as a new form of

mainstream Latino entertainment. Barry Lopez compiled and wrote the

music/theatre/dance production Coyote Builds North America based on Native-

American legends. The character of Coyote is the ancient trickster from the oral

traditions of Native Americans from the Great Plains to the Arctic. Lane Nishikawa’s

I’m on a Mission from Buddha, a sequel to Life in the Fast Lane, was a fast-paced

panorama of the Asian-American experience in the 1980s (New World Theater

Spring Season 1990, Maguire 12 February 1990 and 8 March 1990).

New WORLD Theater 1990-1991

The fall 1990 NWT season included: La empresa perdona un momento de

locura/The Company Pardons a Moment of Madness by Venezuelan playwright

Rodolfo Santana and performed by the Boston-based Latin American theatre group

Huellas Vivas; Twenty-First Century Groove by Alonzo D. Lamont, an original NWT

production; Yankee Dawg You Die by the Asian American Theater Company; and

Sarafina by Roadworks Productions, Inc., which was co-sponsored by the NWT with

the Fine Arts Center Performing Arts Series.

La Empresa was described as a NWT “production of theatre for social change

which stimulates emotion, intellect, and social awareness.” The play was performed

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twice in Spanish and twice in English. At the heart of the play is a factory worker and

a psychologist, both trapped by the imperialistic company that employs them. Caty

Laignel, a UMASS graduate and NWT member, translated and directed the

production, which gave a brutal picture of class exploitation (Nguyen 2 October

1990).

Alonzo D. Lamont won the James Baldwin Playwriting Award for Twenty-

First Century Groove. The award was created to commemorate the Tenth

Anniversary of the NWT. From Baltimore, Lamont was a writer for the television

show A Different World. Directed by Ingrid Askew, the play centered on a young

African-American woman at a point of crisis—torn between individualism and how

her family and society define African American identity (“New World’s Latest Prize-

winning Play on Tap at UMASS”).

The San Francisco-based Asian American Theater Company performed Philip

Kan Gotanda’s Yankee Dawg You Die. According to Alexander Nguyen, “Yankee

Dawg illustrates the social issues facing Asian-American actors in mainstream

Hollywood” (“Asian American Play to Perform” November 1990). Along with this

production, the cast and artistic director of the Asian American Theater Company,

Eric Hayashi, presented a workshop that addressed the significance of the play and

issues related to Asian stereotypes and aspects of Asian- American theatre in America

(Yankee Dawg You Die project description).

The final production of the fall season was the Broadway hit, Sarafina!,

presented in cooperation with the Fine Arts Center Performing Arts Series. Sarafina!,

written and directed by Mbongeni Ngema with music by Hugh Masekela, was a

celebration of a South African student group’s resistance to the rebellion against

apartheid (Notes for a New World. Fall 1990).

The NWT spring season was advertised as “Works by Women” and included:

Praise House, performed by Urban Bush Women; Sisters, written by Marsha Jackson

and produced by Jomandi Productions of Atlanta; and the original NWT production

Letters to a Student Revolutionary by Elizabeth Wong. (“Works by Women”

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brochure). Praise House was a multidisciplinary piece examining the revelatory

experiences of southern African American women artists. The play was inspired by

the life of Minnie Evans, “who found her calling through a vision in which she was

commanded to ‘paint or die’” (“NWT Season to Feature Works by Women”). Urban

Bush Women is an ensemble whose work centers on culture as an expression of

social complexities and as a trigger for social change. They use folklore, spiritual

traditions of African Americans to create dance/music/theatre pieces that honor the

human spirit. After their performance, Urban Bush Women were “lauded for their

innovative multidisciplinary work expressive of the courage and vitality of African

people from the Caribbean to the rural south, from Brazil to the urban north” (“Notes

for a New WORLD” Spring 1991). Sisters was a humorous and “insightful study of

two women who, though not related by blood, learn to acknowledge their kinship as

women and human beings.” The play takes place in a corporate penthouse during a

snowstorm that strands two women, one Chinese and the other Chinese American,

one an outspoken cleaning woman and the other an ambitious advertising executive

(“NWT Presents Atlanta-based Theater Company”). Marsha Jackson (graduate of

Smith College) and Tom Jones (graduate of Amherst College), together founded

Jomandi Productions in 1978. One of the nation’s leading African-American theatre

companies, Jomandi offered a main stage season and tours two or three productions a

year.

Letters to a Student Revolutionary continued NWT’s commitment to

producing new works by emerging playwrights. The play was developed in the

UMASS theater department’s Theater in the Works project for the 1990 season and

received a staged reading. The production was directed by Nefertiti Burton, a

UMASS graduate student working on an MFA in directing. In addition to her

experience as an actor and director, Burton brought to NWT and UMASS her

experience as an arts administrator for Middle Passage Educational and Cultural

Resources, a media and arts production and consulting company in Boston. Two

forums were held in conjunction with the production: one on issues surrounding the

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Tiananmen Square uprising and the other on changing images of Asian women.

(“NWT Spring Original Production: Letters”). The play and the forums also were

part of a Symposium on Asian and Asian-American Issues held at UMASS. In

addition, “Notes for a New World” in fall 1991 announced four multicultural courses

available in spring 1991 and several courses that include works by playwrights of

color or a strong multicultural component.

New WORLD Theater 1991-1992

In the fall of 1991, the NWT season included performances of: Latins

Anonymous; Camp Logan by Mountain Top Productions; Walls by Jeannie Barroga,

an original NWT production; and M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, which was

co-sponsored by the NWT and the Fine Arts Center Performing Arts Series.

Latins Anonymous was written and performed by California-based actors

Luisa Leschin, Armando Molina, Rick Najera, and Diane Rodriguez. An outrageous

show that blasted Latin stereotypes, Latins Anonymous illustrated that jokes can have

a serious side (“Latins Anonymous Opens NWT Fall Season”).

Camp Logan was a docu-drama about the all-black 24th Infantry that rebelled

against their poor treatment in Houston, Texas in 1917. Though these soldiers

believed they would be sent overseas to prove their fighting ability, they were sent as

laborers to build a camp. The soldiers marched on the town and killed twenty

townspeople, resulting in the largest murder trial up to that time in U.S. history

(Dering).

Walls is about the building of the Vietnam memorial. Written by second

generation Filipino playwright Jeanie Barroga, the play was inspired by the

photographs in the Jan Scruggs’ book To Heal a Nation, a series of photographs with

accompanying text on the Vietnam Memorial. The Maya Lin character in the play

reveals the playwright’s frustration at being told to redo her art. Barroga believed that

the conflict over the design of the Wall was racially driven. She used Maya Lin’s own

words in a dialogue that eloquently defends the memorial. The play addressed a

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salient issue that was present in Barroga’s life—the denial of what you are. She

wrote,

how can you stand up there and talk about a memorial to an Asian war

and not point out that you are Asian. . .this seemed to be the perfect

opportunity to cover. . .that denial that I’ve seen a lot of Asians in

American society. . .you always have to be aware, you have to

acknowledge that otherness in you, especially when it’s physically

apparent. (“Notes for a New World” Fall 1991)

M. Butterfly was presented in cooperation with the NWT and the Fine Arts

Center Performing Arts Series. The production was part of the national tour of this

smash Broadway hit, which was based on the true story of a Western diplomat who

has an illicit love affair with a Chinese opera star.

In November 1991, NWT brought in the Underground Railway Theater for a

one and one-half week residency in which they spent time brainstorming a new

production dealing with the contemporary legacy of Columbus’ discovery of

America. With partial funding from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Art Partners

Program to further develop the play and present it in spring 1992, the resulting play

would eventually be funded by numerous groups on campus and the Five College

consortium (“Notes for a New World” Fall 1991). Miss Ida B. Wells by Endesha Ida

Mae Holland opened the 1992 spring season. The play was based on the life of the

early African American journalist, suffragist, and militant civil rights leader Ida B.

Wells. The season also included The Christopher Columbus Follies: An Eco Cabaret;

a special children’s presentation of Are You Ready My Sister? by the Underground

Railway Theater; and Foghorn by Hanay Geiogamah, another NWT original

production.

Miss Ida B. Wells was part of “Hear Our Voices: Reflections of Early African

American Experience,” a series sponsored by the NWT to provide a venue for the

voices of Black woman playwrights. NWT was awarded a $15,000 grant by the

Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities to support the production, which toured

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three sites in Western Massachusetts. Presented during Black History Month, Miss

Ida B. Wells was directed by Uno and performed by Ingrid Askew, artistic director of

First World Images of Springfield, and Nefertiti Burton, graduate student in the

Department of Theater at UMASS. The performance was the subject of later panel

discussions with African American theatre artists, activists, and scholars, consistent

with the NWT goal of making theater more than an event. According to Uno, the

NWT sought to provide “an interactive educational experience. The [NWT] is deeply

committed to using cultural presentations as a catalyst for audience discussion and

response. . .” (“Notes for a New World” Fall 1991).

Ida B. Wells was ahead of her time, fighting biases so far ahead of her own

people that many were ashamed of her. The play’s main focus is Wells’ campaign

against the “lynch laws” that terrorized Southern blacks. Uno’s direction emphasized

the status of young Blacks, with opening and closing sound cues of young voices

speaking of being followed as they walk through a store (“Inspired Invective”).

Horace Clarence Boyer, recipient of recognition at the NWT tenth anniversary

celebration, was the musical director of the production. A symposium connecting the

historical with the contemporary followed the Saturday matinee performance of Miss

Ida B. Wells (Christopher, 2 November 1992).

The Underground Railway Theater from Cambridge, Massachusetts presented

cabaret-style The Christopher Columbus Follies: An Eco-Cabaret during this same

season. Using music, drama, and puppetry the play explored the legacy of Columbus

and his impact on the peoples and environments of the Americas. The Underground

Railway used a cabaret format like a dramatic version of an essay, using themes in

various contexts. According to Underground Railway Theater members, the scenes

in the eco-cabaret were created developmentally, with research inspired by a

conference for Clergy and Concerned Laity entitled, “Columbus in Context:

Rediscovering the Americas” (The Christopher Columbus Follies press packet). Post-

performance discussions were designed to help the audience to process the material

presented in the eco-cabaret. The production was written-up in the New England

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Elementary Educator as an interesting “study trip” for elementary-age students

(“Historical Adventures Get Realistic Adaptation”).

Are You Ready My Sister?, a children’s play utilizing puppetry and masks to

depict the life of Harriet Tubman, was co-sponsored by the New England foundation

for the Arts and the NWT (Are You Ready My Sister? flyer). Kiowa playwright

Hanay Geigomah’s Native-American classic Foghorn was the last play of the 1992

spring season. The NWT had a twelve-year history of producing Geigomah’s plays.

Foghorn was a biting satire of American Indian experience touching on the myth of

the “Columbus “discovery,” the Pocahontas story, religious conversion, the Bureau of

Indian Affairs policy, Wounded Knee, the Lone Ranger, and FBI infiltration of the

American Indian Movement. Rochelle Calhoun, a former member of the NWT

Ensemble and a graduate of Mount Holyoke, directed the play. She went on to earn a

master’s degree in directing at Columbia University and is now Dean of Students at

Mount Holyoke College. As part of a celebration of American Indian Heritage, the

NWT also presented a symposium on issues surrounding Foghorn (“Kiowa

Playwright’s Foghorn Combines Tragedy, Ritual, Satire”). The play received a

scathing review from the Collegian student newspaper, however. The reviewer called

the NWT to task for presenting a “tasteless expression of everything that they

allegedly oppose. If the funds which this group is currently fighting for are given, one

can only hope that they will not waste them on more tripe like this” (McDonnell 27

April 1992).

New WORLD Theater 1992-1993

The 1992 NWT fall season included: the American Indian Dance Theater, co-

sponsored by the NWT with the Fine Arts Center Performing Arts Series; Marga

Gómez Is Pretty Witty and Gay and Memory Tricks by Marga Gómez; and a reprise of

Jude Narita’s Coming into Passion, Song for a Sansei. The American Indian Dance

Theater Company presented dancers and musicians from the Dakotas, the Southwest,

Canada, and the Great Plains performing authentic dances in different dress. Hanay

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Geigomah was the director and choreographer of this performance. Marga Gómez,

born in Harlem to a Cuban comedian and a Puerto Rican exotic dancer, was in

residence for one week at the NWT in October of 1992. She created two different

evenings: Marga Gómez is Pretty, Witty and Gay and Memory Tricks, Gómez’ first

full-length monologue written as she worked though her feelings about her mother’s

diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. The play was described as “an astonishingly funny,

blisteringly painful consideration of her family and of all our families as well.” Her

later piece, Marga Gómez Is Pretty, Witty and Gay, tore down cultural icons satirized

stereotypes of the gay and lesbian experience while exploring the author’s own fears

and doubts (“Spotlight: Marga Gómez Actress/Comedian/ Playwright”).

In the 1992-93 season, The Tragedy of Macbeth was performed at the Fine

Arts Center by the Committed Artists of Great Britain, Black actors from the Royal

Shakespeare Company, and the Royal National Theatre Company. The play was set

in twentieth century Africa. Director Stephen Rayne, a protégé of Adrian Noble and

Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, wanted the audience to make a

connection between Shakespeare’s Scotland and Africa in the grip of tribal and

international war, famine, disease, poverty, AIDS, and overpopulation. Rayne saw

similarities between the political instability of Africa and the events that occur in

Macbeth (“Committed Artists of Great Britain in Macbeth at Fine Arts Center”).

The NWT decided to present on a regular basis the most popular of the past

productions. The last play of the 1992 season was a repeat of Coming Into

Passion/Song For a Sensei, which had been performed in the fall 1989 season. The

one-woman show, written and performed by Jude Narita, is described as a

journey of discovery, as a thoroughly assimilated young sensei—a

third generation Japanese-American—moves from ignorance and

indifference to an understanding and appreciation of her people’s

experience, both in the New World and under the sometimes horrific

impact of American influence in Asia. (“Alternate Visions” 27

October 1992)

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In the 1992-93 season, the NWT also received a grant for $11,000 from the

Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities to extend the tour of the NWT

production of Miss Ida B. Wells. This grant provided funds for the production to tour:

the Heritage State Parks of Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence and Holyoke, as

well as to the Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, the Friendly House

of Worcester, Stonehill College in North Easton, and two public high

schools; Amherst Regional and Central High in Springfield. The tour

took place September 1992-June 1993. (“Notes for a New World” Fall

1992)

Uno continued to raise funds in order to maintain associations with artists of color

and through repeated performances and residencies.

The spring 1993 NWT season included: Word!, an evening of student one-

acts; Miss Ida B. Wells by Endesha Ida Mae Holland, a reprise of an original NWT

production; Fierce Love and Dark Fruit by Pomo Afro Homos, co-sponsored by

NWT with the Program for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Concerns and the Lesbian,

Bisexual, Gay Alliance; August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, an original

production of NWT and the UMASS Department of Theater; Reverb-Ber-Ber-

Rations, written and performed by Spiderwoman Theater; and Tokyo Bound by Amy

Hill.

A trio of San Francisco-based actors made up the Pomo Afro Homos (the Post

Modern African American Homosexuals) Brian Freeman, Djola Bernard Branner,

and Eric Gupton. Their two productions, Fierce Love and Dark Fruit were

compilations of skits and monologues capturing Black gay life and Black gay

childhood. Freeman described the group’s purpose as “blowing those stereotypes out

of the water” (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1993). In conjunction with the

productions, a symposium entitled “Intersection: Confronting Racism and

Homophobia” and a brown-bag lunch discussion were conducted as part of the

Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual studies weekly series, “Who Is We? Race, Sexuality,

Identity and Culture.” (Jones 18-21 February 1993; St. John February 1993). The

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symposium provided a continuing connection with organizations on campus and

within the community served by the NWT. The conference gave a voice to a

community often unheard on college campuses.

August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, the third co-sponsored

production with the UMASS Department of Theater, was directed by Nefertiti

Burton. Set in Philadelphia in 1911, the play traced the migration of newly freed

African slaves into the city. According to the promotion article in the NWT

newsletter,

Wilson describes how these people, ‘isolated, cut off from memory,

having forgotten the names of the gods, arrive dazed and stunned, their

heart kicking in their chest with a song worth singing’ and eventually

find in the city ‘a new identity as free men of definite and sincere

worth.’ (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1993)

Burton cited the NWT as one of the reasons she chose to study at UMASS, and Uno

described Burton as a member of one of the first groups of graduate students of color

in the Theater Department. The presence of the NWT had by now become a

recruiting resource for the UMASS Department of Theater.

Three sisters—Lisa Mayo, Gloria Miguel and Muriel Miguel—formed the

heart of Spiderwoman Theater. Reverb-Ber-Ber-Ration was a play about their Native

American spirituality and “connections to the drum, the heartbeat, to elders,

ancestors, tribes, nations and to the future generations,” and the spelling of the play’s

title was meant to reflect these connections. Some controversy existed about the

women playing the drums, which in Native American tradition were played only by

the men. The women of Spiderwoman Theatre cited “oral history sources” that

indicated that centuries ago Native American women did handle the drum, however,

if they were “no longer of childbearing age” (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1993).

The last production of the spring 1993 season was Amy Hill’s Tokyo Bound.

Actor/writer Hill had worked with the San Francisco Asian American Theater

Company, the Eureka Theatre, Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum, and the Los Angeles

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Theatre Center. Her background (her father was Finnish-American and her mother

was a Japanese war bride) contributed to her creative work. Tokyo Bound is Hill’s

story of her move to Japan at the age of eighteen and the six years she spent working

in television and radio as she developed her sense of comedy and ability to meet

widely different people. Hill stated:

You can use improvisation to break through barriers. . .not to give up

who you are and your life and experiences and the people who have

affected you, but also to embrace all the other things that everybody

else has seen and are making fun of too. We have to take it on

ourselves and become a political force. (“Comedy of Identity in Tokyo

Bound at New WORLD Theater”)

Identity was the theme of many NWT productions throughout the 1990s. The

transformative nature of education became real as performers explored their identities

for and with the audience.

The NWT announced in its spring 1993 newsletter a proposed collaboration

between the NWT and the Hampshire Multicultural Theater Collective (MCTC) to

commission Marga Gómez to create an original theatre piece. During the spring of

1993, Gómez spent a week in residence at UMASS, with the intention of performing

the new piece the following year. During this time she performed her stand-up

comedy both at UMASS and Hampshire.

New WORLD Theater 1993-1994

The fall 1993 NWT season included: Do the Riot Thing by the Chicano Secret

Service; Dark Cowgirls and Prairie Queens, a repeat production by Carpetbag

Theater; Cric? Crac! by Carpetbag Theater; 1992 Blood Speaks by Coatlicue Las

Colorado; and A Dream of Canaries, an original production by the NWT and the

UMASS Department of Theater.

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The fall semester began with controversy, however, about the moving of the

NWT offices from Hasbrouk Hall. The staff was not informed in advance of the

move, which resulted in the following coverage in the Collegian:

After the very turbulent semester we experienced last year on this

campus, I hope the University has reflected on some of the inane

decisions that are often made without any communication with

members of the community and which have been made with lack of

regards for the feelings of others. (Gomes, 13 September 1993)

The NWT staff perceived the move as an example of the administration’s callous

treatment of minorities. The article described the impact of the NWT on students and

the surrounding communities and noted that the NWT had been requesting expanded

office space since 1987 without any result. The student newspaper writer complained

that the Physics Department needed additional space and received that space at the

expense of the NWT.

The first production of the fall 1993 season, Do the Riot Thing, was created

out of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The Chicano Secret Service was a group of three

men from the southern California barrios: Elias Serna, Lalo López and Tomás

Carrasco. Performing together since 1988, the group targeted “the youth and

[particularly] young Chicanos who are at that critical point in their lives when they

are making decisions and . . . questioning the systems . . . that control us in this

country” (“Notes for a New World” Fall 1993). The Chicano Secret Service sought

to confront their audiences with political and social issues and force them to think

critically. The group felt that the angry nature of this confrontation with the audience

made them significantly different from other Latino comedy groups. Carrasco stated,

“We don’t have to make material up. It’s there for us . . . We’re attacking the system

very cleverly, intellectually and streetwise . . . ly” (“Notes for a New World” Fall

1993). The Chicano Secret service also gave a workshop and presented a free

performance for Latino and other youth at Northampton High School.

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Knoxville, Tennessee’s Carpetbag Theater presented two plays that fall, Dark

Cowgirls and Prairie Queens and Cric? Crac!. A reprise of their 1988 production at

the NWT, Dark Girls used folktale and myth to examine the lives of seven pioneer

Black women. Cric? Crak! was a series of folk tales from Haiti, Senegal, and the

southern United States. The title referred to a Haitian convention of preceding the

telling of stories with “‘Cric?’ (Are you listening?) -- to be answered by the audience

with ‘Crac!’ (Yes!). Designed to teach children about the history of African American

storytelling” (“Notes for a New World” Fall 1993), the troupe also offered a free

workshop open to the public.

Written and directed by the Colorado sisters, Hortensia and Elvira from the

group Coatlicue Las Colorado, 1992 Blood Speaks looked at the Columbus myth

through Native American eyes. Pura Fe and Soni Moreno-Primeau joined the sisters

in this performance. The play included videotaped interviews of Zapotec women that

the sisters had conducted in Oaxaca, Mexico. The play incorporated different cultural

and historical perspectives and used English, Spanish, and Native languages, dress,

and music. Consistent with the Native American philosophy that “everything is a

circle,” the concept for the piece centered on the continuum of experience (“Notes for

a New World” Fall 1993). In addition to the performance, Coatlicue Las Colorado

conducted a free workshop at UMASS and Hampshire College.

The last play of the fall 1993 season was A Dream of Canaries by Diane

Sáenz, a joint production of the NWT and the UMASS Department of Theater and

directed by Uno. Located in an unnamed country, the play explored the issue of

disappearances. Canaries delved into the lives of people living under systems that

routinely violate human rights, people living on the edge, illustrating what living with

terror can do to a population. Roberto Clavijo, a self-taught musician/composer from

Chile, composed the original music for the production, which was accompanied by a

symposium on political violence in Latin America. The symposium brought together

Carlos Oliva, a community activist and political refugee from Guatemala; Liliana

Acero, a visiting sociology and Latin American Studies professor from Argentina;

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Paula Rojas, a local activist who left her native Chile during the Pinochet

dictatorship; Dalila Balfour, an activist who focused on health care as a human right

and who left her native Honduras after being involved in the revolutionary

underground; and Martín Espada, Puerto Rican poet and UMASS English professor.

The symposium brought together these panelists as well as the members of the

community in attendance.

The spring 1994 NWT season included: From the Mississippi Delta, written

by Endesha Ida Mae Holland and produced by Daedalus Productions; WORD!, staged

readings of plays written by students; A Grain of Sand by Nobuko Miyamoto; Wild

Woman At Large Performance Series Presents Marga Gómez, co-sponsored by NWT

with the Program for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Concerns; La Carpa Aztlán

Presents “I Don’t Speak English Only” by El Centro Su Teatro, co-sponsored by

NWT with the Fine Arts Center Performing Arts Series; A Revival of Black Women’s

Stories: One Deaf Experience by the Onyx Theater; and two one-acts by Alice

Childress, Florence and Mojo, an original NWT production. In the spring season,

the NWT also received an invitation to present Miss Ida B. Wells at the Third Annual

International Women Playwrights’ conference in Adelaide, Australia, the only college

production participating in the conference (“New WORLD Theater Invited to

Conference in Australia,” 24 June 1994). A number of UMASS offices funded the

trip for the production.

Holland’s From the Mississippi Delta was an autobiographical story of the

playwright’s journey from childhood in segregated Mississippi to her position as full

professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The production employed

three actresses portraying multiple characters.

Third generation Japanese-American Nobuko Miyamoto was the creator of A

Grain of Sand. The play was a fusion of music, poetry and video that revealed

Miyamoto’s journey to find her own voice. The Los Angeles riots served as a

metaphor for Miyamoto to present her questions about how to use music and theatre

to create change (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1994).

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Marga Gómez’s 1993 residency at NWT honed Memory Tricks prior to its

performance at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre. In the spring of

1994, the NWT announced that it would co-commission a new play from Marga

Gómez in conjunction with the Mark Taper forum in Los Angeles. The new play was

to focus on her father and would be the third play in the autobiographical trilogy that

included Memory Tricks and Marga Gómez is Pretty Witty and Gay. Gómez, a

founding member of Culture Clash, had been a guest artist with Culture Clash in their

performance of Carpa Clash at the Mark Taper Forum in November-December of

1993, and Gómez had performed an evening of stand-up comedy in the fall 1993

NWT season. The NWT announced that it would present Gómez’ new play in the fall

1994 season (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1994).

Denver’s El Centro Su Teatro made their first appearance at the NWT with

their production of La Carpa Aztlán Presents “I Don’t Speak English Only.” Written

by the company’s artistic director Anthony J. Garcia and performed in the style of a

Mexican carpa vaudeville tent show, the play was “a probing analysis of English-

only legislation through biting satire, music, singing and drama.” A multi-disciplinary

cultural arts center in the Elyria neighborhood of Northeast Denver, El Centro Su

Teatro was founded in 1971 and inspired by Luis Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino

(“Notes for a New World” Spring 1994; Notes for a New World” Fall 1995).

The Onyx Theatre is an American theatre company for deaf minority actors

founded by Michelle Banks in 1989. Banks created Black Women’s Stories: One Deaf

Experience, drawing on fourteen short stories and poems from eight hearing and deaf

Black women. The NWT and the UMASS Disability Services Office also co-

sponsored a symposium that looked at issues of the deaf community of color (“Notes

for a New World” Spring 1994).

Celia Hinson, a former NWT Ensemble member and student at UMASS,

studied the Suzuki Method at StageWest in Springfield, Massachusetts, and returned

as the head teacher and coordinator of children’s theatre productions at Capacidad in

Amherst. Hinson returned to the NWT to direct the last production of the spring

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season, two one-acts by Alice Childress—Florence, set during segregation, and Mojo,

a black love story. Hinson described these plays as having “basic human meaning.”

According to Childress, the plays concerned

women, the struggles of mothers and daughters and the legacy that

each generation passes down to the next. These are plays about things

that our culture takes for granted: communication, and developing

appreciation for the life givers. (“Notes for a New World” Spring

1994)

Hinson’s work perpetuated the NWT goal of involving the local community and

using theatre to effect change.

In addition to the productions of the spring 1994 season, the NWT engaged in

an audience development project funded by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Arts

Partners Program. The goal of the project was to broaden the audience for Latino

theatre by creating partnerships with communities outside the town of Amherst

(Latino Theater Project Final Report 1995-1996). The NWT targeted the

Massachusetts towns of Holyoke, Springfield, Northampton, and Amherst for the

Latino Theatre Project, the goals and results of which will be discussed further in

Chapter Four.

New WORLD Theater 1994-1995

The fall of 1994 NWT season included A Line Around the Block by Marga

Gómez; The Queen’s Garden and Tales of the Pacific Rim by Brenda Wong Aoki;

Open Wounds on Tlalteuctli by Coatlicue Las Colorado; Sheila’s Day by Duma

Ndlovu, an original production of NWT and the UMASS Theater Department;

S.I.N.G.: Silence is Never Golden, An Exploration of the Complexities of African

American Lesbian Lives by the Women’s Theatre Project which was co-sponsored by

the NWT and the Program for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Concerns.

The fall season opened with Marga Gómez’ new work, A Line Around the

Block or My Art Belongs to Daddy. Commissioned by the NWT and the Center

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Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum, the play centered on Gómez’ father and the world

of Latino show business in New York City. Gómez stated:

I was an only child of the marriage of a Cuban comedian-impresario to

a Puerto Rican dancer and aspiring actress. I grew up in the Sixties

believing that my parents were big time stars. . . and in the Latino

community of Manhattan, they were. There was nothing more fun

than tagging along with my parents to the Teatros on the weekend and

being a fly on the wall backstage while my parents and their show biz

colleagues (some very talented, others just well endowed) entertained

the familias, from grandparents to the babies, all dressed in their best.

It looked like church with a beat. (Notes for a New World Fall 1994)

Gómez pulled the performance material from her life. The piece was first developed

at the NWT, then worked on with Corey Madden, Associate Producing Director at the

Mark Taper Forum, and finally performed at Josie’s Cabaret in San Francisco, before

returning to the NWT. Madden came to the NWT for Gómez’ residency and directed

the workshop Gómez conducted at this time (Notes for a New World Fall 1994).

Brenda Wong Aoki’s The Queen’s Garden was the closing event of “Women

of Color: A Passion for Justice,” a day-long program presented by the Every Woman

Center. The local event brought together activists and organizers for a panel

discussion that included: Carmen Rosa, School committee member, Springfield; Tha

Bin of the Cambodian American Association of Amherst; and Marsh Burnet of Arise

for Social Justice of Springfield. Yuri Kochiyama, a community activist from Harlem,

delivered the keynote speech. A second program presented by the Every Woman

Center, “In Our Own Image: The Portrayal of Women of Color in the Media,” took

place in conjunction with Sheila’s Day in November. The Queen’s Garden examined

“urban violence from the perspective of a woman coming of age.” Aoki said the play

was based on her childhood, “mixed up as chop suey—I am Chinese, Japanese,

Chicano, and Scots, my work with street gangs in Long Beach and fifteen years

experience as a community organizer in Watts, East L.A., Hunter’s Point, the

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Mission, and Chinatown.” The NWT continued its work with community

organizations in the course of this project, an experience that would become a factor

in the development of NWT educational community outreach projects in the future

(Notes for a New World Fall 1994). NWT’s community outreach began as audience

development; however, the work quickly shifted to empowerment, politicization, and

indentity-building of the participants and artists involved in the projects.

The Colorado Sisters (Coatlicue Las Colorado) returned to the NWT with

Open Wounds on Tlalteuctli. The play was a “multi-media theater piece that

examined violence against women and against the earth.” The sisters described

themselves as “weaving stories of the goddesses with personal stories of their family

and themselves, incorporating the Nahuatl language and reaffirming their survival as

urban Indian women” (Notes for a New World” Fall 1994). The NWT established

long-term relationships with groups such as the Colorado Sisters, allowing the NWT

to play a role in their growth and development.

The production of Sheila’s Day was a collaboration between the NWT and the

UMASS Theater Department. The play was “developed by African American women

theatre artists at Crossroads Theater of New Brunswick, New Jersey Sangoma

Project, who collaborated with African writer Ndlovu to create a drama with music

which parallels the struggles for liberation on both continents.” The play’s name was

a reference to the traditional Thursday day-off for domestic workers in South Africa

known as “Sheila’s Day.” Directed by Roberta Uno, the play’s structure and themes

related the Civil Rights Movement to the South African struggle for liberation

(“Notes for a New World” Fall 1994).

The last play of fall 1994 was S.I.N.G.: Silence is Never Golden: An

Exploration of the Complexities of African American Lesbian Lives, co-sponsored by

the NWT and the Program for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Concerns. Produced by the

Women’s Theatre Project, a multi-cultural, multi-racial, non-profit company

producing progressive, lesbian, feminist, experimental theatre, S.I.N.G. was described

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as “an autobiographical journey of identity, spirituality, humor and sexuality through

six women’s lives” (Notes for a New World” Fall 1994).

During the summer and fall of 1994, the NWT commissioned Lane Nishikawa

to write a new play, Heartbeat of America. The idea for the commission began in the

spring of 1993 with community meetings organized around the anniversary of the Los

Angeles riots that followed the notorious Rodney King beating. Nishikawa was

chosen because of his long-term relationship with the NWT, his ongoing contact with

the region, and the urban youth perspective reflected in his writing. Nishikawa visited

the area in the summer to meet with NWT organizers and saw the potential for a play

to explore the issues related to African Americans, Latino, and Asian Pacific

American youth. He addressed the issues from both national and local perspectives.

In May and June of 1994, Nishikawa held a series of workshops and

interviews with organizations that worked with youth of color in the San Francisco

bay area. In July 1994, he visited the NWT and met with residents of Springfield,

Holyoke, and Amherst as well as members of Springfield’s Youth Mobilization

Board, the Holyoke Teen Resource project, the Holyoke Youth Alliance, and the Self

Reliance Center in Springfield. Nishikawa’s plan was to produce his play as early as

spring 1995 in various locations in Holyoke, Springfield, and Amherst. The Asian

American Theater Company in San Francisco also planned to “produce and tour the

play to school and community settings” (Notes for a New World” Fall 1994).

The NWT 1995 spring season included: Monkhood in Three Easy Lessons

written and performed by Dan Kwong; Frederick Douglass Now written and

performed by Roger Guenveur Smith; Botanica by Dolores Prida, performed by

Repertorio Espanol; and a children’s play, My Snow White, written and performed by

MOTOKO.

Asian American performance artist Dan Kwong was based in Los Angeles.

He began his work as a visual artist and became fascinated by performance art. In

performance art he combined visual art, writing, music, storytelling, sound effects,

and physical movement. His athletic training in various martial arts influenced his

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movement in performance. Monkhood in Three Easy Lessons focused on male

identity from an Asian American point of view. Mingling physical movement and

visual imagery, Kwong created dialogues about his childhood and his Japanese

grandfathers. In addition to his performance, Kwong presented a movement workshop

for NWT Ensemble members (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1995).

The W. E. B. DuBois Department of African American Studies and the NWT

presented Frederick Douglass Now to commemorate the centennial of Douglass’

death. In addition, a symposium entitled “100 Years After Douglass: A Look at his

Legacy,” explored the impact of the great Black nineteenth century African American

orator and abolitionist on his world. One performance for area youth was a benefit for

the Grove Street Inn, an emergency shelter for homeless adults that served Hampshire

County (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1995), an example of the NWT’s

commitment to find ways to give something back to neighboring communities

through outreach like benefit performances.

Dolores Prida’s Botanica tells the story of the cultural conflicts between an

older Puerto Rican woman, her daughter, and her granddaughter. The Repertorio

Español performed the play in Spanish, and headsets were available for simultaneous

translation into English (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1995).

The last play of the spring season was the children’s production, My Snow

White, a one-woman play by MOTOKO that told the story of a Japanese woman’s

journey from youth to adulthood. The mime piece was accompanied by music and

moved beyond traditional street mime to exquisite storytelling through movement.

MOTOKO stated, “By choosing to express myself in a physical world instead of a

spoken world, a whole realm of possibilities are opened to me.” MOTOKO chose to

work as a solo artist so that she could maintain control of her work (“Notes for a New

World” Spring 1995).

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New WORLD Theater 1995-1996

The NWT 1995 fall season included Maija of Chaggaland and Ndito the

Masai Girl by Sheela Langeberg; Strawberries and Chocolate by Senel Paz, an Arete

Inc. Production co-sponsored by the NWT with the Stonewall Center; Tales from the

Flats, an NWT original production, written by Sandra Rodriguez, in collaboration

with New Visions and Teatro Moriviví of Holyoke, MA, presented by NWT’s Latino

Theater Project; Flyin’ West by Pearl Cleage, an original production co-produced by

NWT with the Mount Holyoke College Department of Theatre; Bones and Ash: A

Gilda Story by Urban Bush Women; and The Return of Margarita by Sandra

Rodríguez and Marilú Martínez Acosta, a GRUPO BRIDGES production.

Tanzanian performer and storyteller Sheela Langeberg opened the season with

Maija of Chaggaland, a story based on Langeberg’s mother. Langeberg used her

mother to represent every human being. Through music, dance, and storytelling the

story of a woman’s turmoil, trauma, and heartache were presented. Maija “faced

rebuke for refusing to marry the man she was arranged to marry and fighting to keep

her daughters from being circumcised.” This play was seen at the Third International

Women Playwright’s conference in Adelaide, Australia. Langeberg also presented

Ndito the Masai Girl, an adventurous and hopeful play for children based the true

story of a child from Tanzania who Langeberg followed for five days (“Notes for a

New World” Fall 1995).

Strawberries and Chocolate was an English translation of Cuban author Senel

Paz’s novella El lobo, el bosque, y el hombre nuevo [The Wolf, the Woods, and the

New Man]. The play was produced by Arete, a theatre company from Puerto Rico,

and portrayed the story of a middle-aged gay man in Castro’s Cuba. The play also

dealt with Cuba’s treatment of gays, homophobia, revolution, and betrayal (“Notes

for a New World” Fall 1995). Strawberries and Chocolate was also the title of a

Cuban film based on the same novella and inspired by this stage production.

Tales From the Flats was the culmination of the first residency of the Latino

Theater Project led by GRUPO BRIDGES playwright Sandra Rodríguez. Gloria

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Zelaya directed the production. Choreographer Julio Peña, set designer Miguel

Romero, visual artist Norma Rivera-Díaz, and musician/composer Jose González also

worked on the production. These artists collaborated with several Latino community

leaders (including Juan Rivera, Holyoke’s Teen Resource Center director and director

of the youth theatre New Vision/Nueva Vision; Miguelina and José Correa, Teatro

Moriviví directors; NWT’s Joshua Fontánez, Latino Theater Project coordinator; and

Uno) to create a theatre piece based on the experiences of the Latino community from

“the flats” of Holyoke. The groups worked together for six weeks and performed the

play in various community settings in Holyoke. The play spoke to the concerns and

struggles of the adult and youth community members. Rodríguez spoke of working

with the Holyoke community, “It was great to work with a Puerto Rican community

so different from the ones in New York.” The October performance of Tales From

the Flats was considered the third residency of the Latino Theater Project The next

Latino Theater Project residency was with the Denver-based Chicano theatre group,

Su Teatro.

Pearl Cleage’s Flyin’ West presented a story of pioneering Black women of

the West in the 1850s. The historical play, set in the all-Black town of Nicodemus,

Kansas, confronted issues of spousal abuse and highlighted the strength and capacity

of Black women to cope with the harsh realities of the West. The play was presented

in collaboration with the Mount Holyoke College Department of Theatre (“Notes for

a New World” Fall 1995).

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder of the Urban Bush Women, directed and

choreographed Bones and Ash: A Gilda Story. Zollar aspired to create a “dance

company that depicts African American culture in a way that resembles how Blacks

express themselves when not in the presence of White people.” Urban Bush Women

are known for their celebration of the human spirit through a powerful fusion of

dance, music, and drama. Their work used ritual, myth, and folklore to explore issues

of social injustice as well as related issues such as homelessness, abortion, and

adoption. Bones and Ash is based on the Jewelle Gómez novel The Gilda Stories.

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Gómez worked with the company as they created this production. The play

“fragments the temporal and spatial linearity of the novel for a more non-linear

approach. The story harbours the theme of empowerment of women through history

and the basic human need to belong to a family group” (“Notes for a New World”

Fall 1995).

The last performance of the fall was a reprise of GRUPO BRIDGES’ The

Return of Margarita with Sandra Rodríguez and Marilú Martínez Acosta. The play

celebrated “Puerto Rican women—their struggles, laughters, strengths, choices, and

rituals for survival and blossoming even in the harshest growing season.” Rodríguez

based the story on the mujeres in her family. GRUPO BRIDGES also brought a

family play The Friendly Boat, to Holyoke, Amherst, and Springfield. The play used

music and games to portray a travel adventure through the Caribbean and Latin

America. Both The Friendly Boat and the residency of GRUPO BRIDGES were part

of the Latino Theater Project grant (“Notes for a New World” Fall 1995).

The NWT 1996 spring season included: Assimilation by Shishir Kurup; a

repeat performance of La Carpa Aztlán Presents “I Don’t Speak English Only” and

Night of the Barrio Moon by Anthony J. Garcia, performed by Su Teatro; Pinaytok

(Womyntalk) by Chris Millado, performed by Theater Mayi; More than Feathers and

Beads by Muriel Borst; and excerpts from Heartbeat of America, a staged reading of

a commissioned play written by Lane Nishikawa.

Shishir Kurup was born in Bombay, India, and raised in Mombasa, Kenya,

and the United States. He has referred to himself as Indo-African-American. His

play Assimilation is Kurup’s story of coming to California via India, Kenya, and

South Florida, and his struggle to fit in. It painted the picture of the complex world of

hyphenated integration. Kurup was the Director of the Asian American Theater

Project, a program of the Los Angeles Theatre Company, but left in frustration after

he determined that “they called it multiculturalism while what it was, was

ghettoization” (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1996).

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Su Teatro returned with their production of La Carpa Aztlán Presents “I

Don’t Speak English Only” and a new work in progress Night of the Barrio Moon.

NWT sponsored a symposium discussing issues related to California’s 1994

Proposition 187 and the National Language Act of 1995. Su Teatro participated in the

symposium and teach-in (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1996).

Mayi Theater Ensemble, the only Pilipino-American theatre company in the

East, presented Pinaytok. 11 The play explored the lives of three Pilipino women: one,

a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia who kills her employer while defending herself

from sexual and physical abuse; the second, a star at a film shoot for a pornographic

movie who reveals her abusive childhood and lost love; and the last, a woman

physically abused by her alcoholic husband. The stories were linked by music and

dance. Founded in New York in 1989, Mayi was a forum for Pilipino expression

(“Notes for a New World” Spring 1996).

Murielle Borst’s More Than Feathers and Beads presents four Native

American women based on her friends and family . Borst intended to portray some of

the struggles that Native-American women must endure. The characters—ballerina

Jessica who denied her heritage; fancy shawl dancer Crystal who went to college and

must return to the reservation; and stripper Stephanie who fears she is HIV positive--

are drawn together by pop star Bunny. Because Borst was a principal dancer of the

Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, it is not surprising that dance linked the

characters in the play. Muriel Miguel of Spiderwoman Theater directed the play

(“Notes for a New World” Spring 1996). The shared goals of Spiderwoman and the

NWT to pass on the traditions were realized in Borst’s production at the NWT, since

Borst was a protégé of one of the founders of Spiderwoman.

In the spring of 1996, nine grants to support the development of new works by

artists of color were awarded by the NWT and the New England Foundation for the

Arts in partnership with a number of organizations, including Inquilinos Boricuas en

Acción of Boston, Rites and Reason Theater of Providence, and the UMASS

Department of Theater.12 The nine grantees submitted their works in May and four of

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the nine works were selected for further development during July. This play

development project was begun in collaboration with the UMASS Theater

Department. A call for submissions for the 1997 project was posted in the Spring

1996 NWT newsletter. Summer 1996 activities included the New Works For a New

World performance of Return of the Elijah, The African by Sekou Sundiata and

Chicomoztoc—Mimixcoa Cloud Serpents by Coatlicue Theater Company’s Elvira

Colorado (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1996). NWT’s commitment to develop

works by artist of color was a continuation of its earliest goals.

The New WORLD Theater 1996-1997

The fall 1996 NWT season included: Milk of Amnesia, written and performed

by Carmelita Tropicano; Amor Positivo/Positive Love; H. I. VATO by Albert “Beto”

Antonio Araiza; Rosa Luisa Marquez’ Son Corazon/Heartstrung; Undersiege Stories

by Keith Antar Mason and performed by the Hittite Empire; R. A. W. by Diana Son;

Lisa Jones’ Combination Skin; and a one-woman show by lê the diem thûy, Red Fiery

Summer “Mua He Do Lua.”

The NWT’s Latino Theater Project presented a week-long festival called

“Positive/Positivo Gay and Lesbian Latino/a Identities in the time of AIDS,” designed

to explore issues that lie at the intersection of health, race, sexuality, cultural identity,

and creative expression. “The festival centered on a production and symposium that

provided a forum for discussion of issues central to the Latino gay experience”

(Burns 1996). The production Amor Positivo/Positive Love, directed by Julio Pena,

was presented at the UMASS Hampden theater as part of the NWT fall season and in

community centers and gay bars in Springfield, Northampton, and Chicopee,

Massachusetts and in Hartford, Connecticut.

The Undersiege Stories took a hard look at the American justice system seen

through the eyes of three prisoners confined to their on-stage cells. The play was

performed by the Hittite Empire and playwright/actor Keith Antar Mason hosted the

evening. The review described the play as “a raw, no-apologies picture of the horrors

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of prison and the realities of an unjust criminal justice system” (Brown 28 October

1996). The Hittite Empire, an ensemble theatre group from Los Angeles, was founded

by Mason, Michael Keith Woods, and Ellis Rice with the goal of bringing the issues

of the Black community to the forefront of social thought.

The spring 1997 season began with A Laying of Hands written by Michelle

Maureen Verhoosky and performed by the Onyx Theatre Company and included 13

Dias/ 13 Days performed by the San Francisco Mime Troupe; a NWT original

production of Unmerciful Good Fortune by Edwin Sánchez; and Laughter From the

Children of War, written and performed by Club O’Noodles.

The spring of 1997 brought new energy and resources to the NWT. They

received increased funding and added three new positions to the staff: a managing

director, an education and access director, and a production/residency manager.

Yvonne Mendez moved from Managing Director to Director of Design and

Publication. These new positions provided assistance with the projects that had begun

to shape the mission of the NWT—New Works for a New World and the American

Festival Project “Looking Into the Future” community youth program. The new staff

was the result of advocacy on the part of Dr. Fred Tillis, Director of the Fine Arts

Center; Dr. Lee Edwards, Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts; and Dr.

Fred Byron, Vice Chancellor for Research who recognized the significant

contribution of the NWT (“Notes for a New World” Spring 1997). The changes in

staffing at the NWT indicate an institutional realization that the outreach and

educational programs of the NWT were integral to the goals of UMASS. The NWT

was providing a source of diversity at UMASS that, despite the strained relationships

among departments, was of value to the administration.

The return of the Onyx Theatre for A Laying of Hands brought hearing and

deaf actors to the NWT. The San Francisco Mime Troupe presented 13 Días/13 Days,

a multimedia event documenting the Chiapas takeover in 1994. The play centered on

five main characters: a Mayan village leader, a Mexican Army commander for

Chiapas, the commander’s illegitimate daughter, the daughter’s Indian mother, and a

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thirty-something gringo who came to Mexico for “the simple life.” The San

Francisco Mime Troupe is a controversial company that has won numerous awards

for their productions, including Tony and Obie awards. A symposium focusing on

indigenous culture and resistance in Mexico and Latin America was conducted along

with this production. The symposium was supported by the American Friends Service

Committee, UMASS Latin American/Latino Studies, Hampshire College’s Peace and

World Security Studies, and Juan Carlos Aguilar.

Edwin Sánchez’s Unmerciful Good Fortune was directed by Uno. The hard-

hitting play concerned a district attorney and an hourly-wage earner accused of

poisoning twenty-eight fast-food customers. The last spring production was Club

O’Noodles’ Laughter from the Children of War. Club O’Noodles was the first

“instant Drama & Comedy Vietnamese-Flavored Theater Troupe” based in Los

Angeles. The play was a compilation of the troupe’s stories and a parody of the U.S.

media representation of the Vietnamese people. The troupe’s artistic director, Hung

Nguyen, had worked with Southeast Asian youth in Northampton and Springfield

through the NWT’s Looking In/To the Future project. The Looking In/To the Future

project will be described in detail in Chapter Four.

In the summer of 1997, The New Works for a New World, an NWT play

development project, conceived and produced: Clay Angels by Daniel Alexander

Jones and Todd Christopher Jones; The Good Guys: An American Tragedy by

Michael Edo Keane; Borderscape 2000 by Guillermo Gómez-Peña in collaboration

with Roberto Sifuentes; and E Nana ‘Ike Kumu (Look to the Source) by Leilani Chan.

New WORLD Theater 1997-1998

In fall 1997 the NWT season offered numerous productions, including The

Return of Elijah the African by Sekou Sundiata and directed by Talvin Wilkes;

Greetings from a Queer Señorita by Monica Palacios; Flipsoids by Ralph Pena,

presented by Theatre Ma-Yi; an evening of one-acts by early Black women

playwrights Marita Bonner’s one-act The Purple Flower; and Shirley Graham’s one-

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act It’s Morning co-sponsored by the UMASS Department of Theater; and a re-

staging of the Looking In/To the Future youth performance Society Unmasked and

Homelands in collaboration with community groups New Visions, HCAC.

The NWT distinguished the performances they produced from the

performances they presented in a report entitled “Three-year Producing and

Presenting History,” used for fund raising purposes. The report noted the venues used

by the NWT: the Bowker Auditorium (capacity 650), the Curtain Theatre (capacity

100), the Hampden Theatre (capacity 150), and the Rand Theatre (capacity 40). The

NWT expanded the offerings in numerous locations on the UMASS campus and

collaborated with various production companies and groups between 1995 and 1998

In the spring of 1998, the NWT and the Five College Theatre departments

held a festival of student writing entitled WORD!13 Additional NWT fall productions

were: Quinceañera, created by Alberto “Beto” Antonio Araiza, Paul Bonin

Rodríguez, and Michael Marinez at the NWT in its New Works for a New World

project; Coyote Gets Sober by Alex Sherker, a workshop performance co-produced

with Josephine White Eagle Cultural Center; Fires in the Mirror, written and

performed by Anna Deveare Smith and presented by Trinity Repertory Theatre; Blue

Blood, a one-act play by George Douglas Johnson; Voices in the Rain by Michael

Keck; Marisol by José Rivera, co-produced with the UMASS Department of Theater;

Radio Mambo—Culture Clash Invade Miami, written and performed by Culture

Clash (Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza); Doña Rosita’s

Jalapeño Kitchen by Rodrigo Duarte Clark, performed by Ruby Nelda Pérez; and a

re-staging of the summer production E Nana ‘Ike Kumu (Look to the Source) I Loko I

Ka Na ‘Au (It is Within You), written and performed by Leïlani Chan in collaboration

with Kumu Hula Clarice Wahinealìi Nuhi.

NWT’s New Works for the New World developed three plays in summer

1998: Clothes by Chitra Divakaruni, co-sponsored by NWT and Mount Holyoke

College Department of Theatre and directed by Roberta Uno; The Doll Plays by Alva

Rogers; and Stories From a Nail Salon by Club O’Noodles. That summer the

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Looking In/To the Future youth outreach project organized by NWT took place on

the UMASS campus.

New WORLD Theater 1998-1999

In the fall of 1998 the NWT embarked on a new project called Intersections.

An October 8-11 NWT gathering included performances, case studies of works in

progress and process, discussion groups and panels. Performances re-staged at the

event included: Borderscape 2000 by Guillermo Gómez-Peña; the bodies between us

by lê the diem thûy; and Quinceañera, created by Alberto “Beto” Antonio Araiza,

Paul Bonin Rodríguez, and Michael Marinez. The case studies included discussions

of: Elijah by Sekou Sundiata and Craig Harris, created at NWT; Civil Sex by Brian

Freeman, co-founder of Pomo Afro Homos; and the indigenous women’s theatre of

San Cristóbal de las Casas (Mexico), FOMMA’s The Strength of Mayan Women

(Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya), discussed by Isabel Juárez Espinoza and Patrona Cruz

Cruz. Other productions of the NWT in the fall of 1998 included SKINning the

SurFACE by Maura Nguyen Donohue and the In Mixed Company; Basa-Mandala,

play with a cobra by Girish Karnad; and a reprise of the Looking In/To the Future

1998 performance.

The highly successful Intersection conference and play festival brought

together scholars and artists of color in various formats to dialogue and explore

connections and differences. 14 The conference presented panels, performances, and

small group discussion. The Artistic Director of Great Leap, Inc., Nobuko Miyamoto,

described the impact of the conference, “New WORLD (Theater) is going beyond

being an outpost, a beacon of hope in the jungle we are surviving in. It’s becoming a

center—a true Intersection, a place of gathering, an ‘ashram’ for the arts” (Notes for a

New World Spring 1999). The importance of a location for dialogue mirrors the

suggestion by critical theorists in education that the discourse from the margin must

take place. Indeed, it must take place at the center. The Intersection Conference

provided such a location.

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New WORLD Theater Spring 1999

The NWT Twentieth Year Anniversary celebration continued in the spring

1999 season, which included Stories from a Nail Salon, a work in progress by Club

O’Noodles; Two Tales From the Boroughs: Hazelle by Hazelle Goodman; Jails,

Hospitals & Hip Hop, a solo show by Danny Hoch; Sanango, written by azande, a co-

production of NWT and the UMASS Theater Department; Things Fall Apart adapted

from Chinua Achebe’s novel by Biyi Bandele and directed by Chuck Mike;

Junebug/Jack by Junebug Productions and Roadside Theater; The Wedding March,

adapted by Rosalba Rolon from Judith Ortiz Cofer’s book Silent Dancing: A Partial

Remembrance of Growing Up Puerto Rican, and performed by Pregones Theater. The

winner of numerous awards, including the OBIE and ACE awards, the Pregones

Theater was founded in 1979. In addition, the Mount Holyoke Theatre Department

and the Five College Multicultural Committee sponsored “WORD! Festival of Staged

Readings.”15 The Committee that selected the plays for that year included Roberta

Uno and faculty from each of the Five College theatre departments.

The NWT described Two Tales From the Boroughs as “two evenings with two

of America’s hottest solo artists.” Hazelle Goodman, a Trinidadian brought up in

Brooklyn, previously had performed her solo show as an HBO special. Hazelle was a

collection of ideas and characters that “caught the playwright’s fancy” incorporating

unique viewpoints and experiences. The solo piece Hazelle engaged the audience

directly. Goodman stated that the audience connected with the piece because “the

characters’ truths are universal” (Notes for a New World Spring 1999). Combining

“political discourse, hip-hop lingo, and social commentary,” New York native Danny

Hoch gave a stunning performance in Jails, Hospitals and Hip Hop. This stark solo

theatrical piece revolved around Andy, a heroin junkie infected with AIDS. Hoch

portrayed the myriad marginalized voices he grew up with in Brooklyn (Notes for a

New World Spring 1999).

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In 1977 African-American Chuck Mike moved to Nigeria to develop his craft

and to find a way to use theatre to foster “a more wholesome understanding between

African and African American on their existence in separate lands” (Notes for a New

World Spring 1999). Mike sought ways to create complex images that represented

Africans in the Diaspora. Mike’s residence at Mount Holyoke, in collaboration with

the NWT and the Five Colleges, provided an opportunity to demonstrate his evolution

in using theatre as a tool to “advance human and social development, dominantly

from within the community.” Mike received his masters degree in philosophy in

theatre arts from the University of Ibadan and taught acting and directing at the

University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) for 14 years. He formed the

Performance Studio workshop in 1991 as “an experimental training, research and

performance arena with a social service orientation.” Mike’s work brought together

various members of the community and their work was performed in markets, rural

dwellings, and schools. Mike directed Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, adapted

by Biyi Bandele. He described the importance of Things Fall Apart: “it speaks to the

specificity of ethnic [Nigerian/Ibo] interests as well as that of mankind” (Notes for a

New World spring 1999). In honor of NWT’s twentieth anniversary, Chinua Achebe

presented a reading of his fiction and poetry. This evening was sponsored by the

NWT with the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of African-American Studies as well as

the UMASS English, Theater, and Anthropology departments; Amherst College’s

departments of Black Studies, English, Anthropology and Theater; Hampshire

College’s Multicultural Education and Atopani; Mount Holyoke College’s

Departments of English and Theatre; Smith College’s Departments of Anthropology

and Theatre; Five College, Inc. and the Five College Department of African Studies.

This effort was another example of Uno’s skill at raising funds to present artists of

color in the broader community.

Junebug/Jack originated as a collaboration between Roadside Theater of

Kentucky and Junebug Productions of New Orleans. The play combined the

storytelling traditions of the two cultures using the dialects and speech patterns of

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each to force the audience to capture the true meaning of each story. The companies

intentionally kept the black and white experiences distinct. The “Jack” of the

Appalachian tradition is the symbol of the “inexhaustible spirit of the common man,”

while JunebugJabboJones of the African American tradition is the “voice that can

overcome the history of oppression.” These characters and their stories were

juxtaposed in order for the audience to confront the differences and the

commonalities in the two cultures (Notes for a New World Spring 1999).

Pregones Theater presented The Wedding March, a play that intermingled

women’s stories (cuentos). The two storytellers were the Mujer (woman) and the

Hombre (man). The play was performed in both Spanish and English and was largely

composed of the memories of the Mujer’s own mother growing up in Puerto Rico.

The summer of 1999 brought two regular projects of the NWT: New Works

for a New World, which presented Anybody Seen Marie Laveau? by Aishah Rahman,

and the summer youth retreat and performance Looking In/To the Future ’99:

Simultaneous Histories. The Bronx-based Universes ensemble also conducted

workshops on spoken-word poetry with participating youth.

New WORLD Theater 1999-2000

Universes opened the fall 1999 NWT Season with a performance of “U”

Fresh Out of the Box. Paul Bonin Rodríguez wrote and performed the second

production of the fall 1999 season: The Texas Trinity, comprised of three solo

performances—Talk of the Town, The Bible Belt and Other Accessories, and Love in

the Time of College. Other fall productions included: HA by Dawn Akemi Saito; a

reading from Urban Tattoo by Marie Humber Clements; and Magdalena Gómez’

Latinas: Remembering and Another Way to See. The last production of 1999 was

Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery by Shay Youngblood.

Uno stated at a Theatre Communications Group annual conference in June of

1999 that the “future of theater may rest with groups like Universes in the Bronx [. . .]

groups of young artists working with different performance genres from innovative

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theater, spoken work, performance poetry, alternative music, hip hop, sketch comedy,

and digital media to energize and expand the contemporary theater and performance”

(Notes for a New World Fall 1999). Universes began at The Point, an arts center in

Hunts Point, South Bronx. Steven Sapp, Flaco Navaja, and Mildred Ruiz incorporated

hip-hop music and theatre into their work, which they saw as a new form of theatre.

They were described as “ an effervescent, racially mixed group [. . .] as likely to kick

some poetry as break out into a cappella singing, to orchestrate a vocal exercise as

they are to burst into a step show” (Notes for New World Fall 1999). Universes

returned in summer of 2000 to work with the youth in Project 2050.

Performance artist, writer, and Butoh dancer Dawn Akemi Saito brought her

solo performance piece HA to the NWT. The play explored the silences and

challenges of communicating through language: “HA is the story of a young girl who

‘swallows her voice the moment she sees her grandfather’s grotesquely disfigured

face.’ Saito performs this intense inter-disciplinary theatre piece incorporating Butoh

movement” (Notes for a New World Fall 1999). Saito described Butoh movement as

“a highly theatrical dance form, involving strong expression through the face and

entering into highly charged states” (Notes for a New World Fall 1999). Saito

continued NWT’s presentation of the synthesis of dance, theatre, and cultural critique

in many forms pointing to the future of theatre.

Urban Tattoo was a Native American tale of Rosemarie’s journey to the city

and home again. Playwright Marie Humber Clements and director Randy Reinholz

presented Urban Tattoo as a reading and led an accompanying discussion designed to

share the artistic process with the NWT audience. Reinholz describes the events of

the play as “tattoos, beauty marks that [Rosemarie] owns with pride” (Notes for a

New World Fall 1999).

Puertorriqueña Magdalena Gómez presented several pieces at NWT in the fall

of 1999. Gómez describes the purpose of her work as empowering women and

reclaiming their voices. Gómez worked with Enchanted Circle Theatre, a Holyoke-

based theatre for young audiences that performed the play at the NWT. Latino

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Voices/Voces Latina: Remembering and Another Way to See were designed to teach

youth and families about the power of words. Gómez explained,

Children are wounded by language, spic, nigger, fag, dyke. Those

words are real and they need to be said and acknowledged for the hate

words they are. I didn’t want to make it pretty, because it’s not pretty,

and children understand that. I want children to have the experience of

looking at the stage and saying, ‘Wow, that happened to me, too.’

Coming out of isolation is what heals people. (Notes for a New World

Fall 1999)

Like Uno, Gómez saw the power of theatre to act as a vehicle for social change.

Paul Bonin Rodríguez presented Texas Trilogy, the story of the adventures,

trials, and triumphs of small town “sissy-boy” Johnny Roy Hobson, Cedar Springs’

first and only openly gay male. The NWT provided the audience with the opportunity

to see the development of the playwright’s work in the three plays of the trilogy. The

three solo performances, all performed over one weekend, trace Johnny Roy

Hobson’s coming of age from high school to college; finding “love, lust and Lady

Bird Johnson at the local Dairy Queen;” and “joining forces with his Chicana

feminist/best friend and his African-American home economics instructor to protest a

Religious Right movement that has penetrated their school” (“New WORLD Theater

Announces a 21st Season for the 21st Century” press release). Rodríguez had

returned to the NWT having developed the multi-disciplinary project, Quinceañera,

in 1998, with Antonio “Beto” Araiza, Michael Marinez, and Danny Saldovar.

The NWT and the Mount Holyoke Theatre Department produced Shay

Youngblood’s Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery. Celia Hilson, a former actress and

director of NWT productions, directed the play. The play tells the story of Daughter,

raised by the Mamas—a sisterhood of women, who came home to honor the Mamas

after their death. The play honored the African American oral tradition.

The NWT spring 2000 season included Clothes by Chitra Divakaruni, co-

sponsored by NWT and Mount Holyoke College Theatre Department; Civil Sex by

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Brian Freeman; a repeat of the Looking In/To the Future 1999 performance; and

Mary Stuart by Brazilian solo performer Denise Stoklos.

The first production of the spring season, Clothes, began as a short story in

Divakaruni’s collection of stories, Arranged Marriage. The production was supported

by a grant from Arts International. Uno worked with choreographer and performer

Aparna Sindhoor to create this interdisciplinary piece performed at Mount Holyoke.

Sindhoor, a classically trained Bharatananatyam dancer from Mysore, India, was

known for choreography inspired by writings with a political edge. The play is about

a young Indian woman who comes to America after her arranged marriage. The

themes of migration and women’s relationship with freedom attracted Uno and

Sindhoor to the story. Clothes was performed by Sindhoor and New York actress

Purva Bedi and designed by Leandro Soto as an installation. The production was

invited to the Fifth International Women’s Playwright’s Conference in October 2000

in Athens, Greece (Notes for a New World Spring 2000).

Civil Sex was a co-presentation of the NWT and the Stonewall Center. One of

the founders of Pomo Afro Homos, Brian Freeman, wrote the play about Bayard

Rustin’s life after interviewing numerous persons in his life. Rustin was a civil rights

activist, secretary to Martin Luther King, Jr., and a gay Black man. He is known as

the principal organizer of the landmark 1963 March on Washington. He was a

controversial figure in the civil rights movement because of his sexual orientation and

his membership in the Communist party for a number of years. Freeman said of

Rustin, “He was very much an architect of [the Civil Rights movement], a strategist, a

theorist. It would have been a very different struggle without him . . . And you also

recognize the very ambivalent relationship between the black leadership and Rustin;

they needed him, yet he was a gay man.” Civil Sex won the 1997 Will Glickman

Award for Best New Play when it was first produced at the Wooly Mammoth Theater

in Washington, D.C. The play was further developed at Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre

and was produced by the Berkeley Repertory Theatre before its production at the

NWT (Notes for a New World Spring 2000).

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In April 2000, the NWT presented Simultaneous Histories, a play created by

youths who participated in NWT’s summer 1999 Looking In/To the Future project.

The youths worked with themes drawn from historical and social events from 1968,

1975, and 1999 to create an imaginary 2061. The young people from various

Western Massachusetts communities investigated the different cultural perspectives.

The Looking In/To the Future youth retreat was held at Amherst College in summer

of 1999 and brought together twenty-five Latino, Asian, and African American youth

from Springfield, Holyoke, Northampton, and Amherst. This project will be

discussed in the next chapter.

Brazilian Denise Stoklos presented her solo performance piece Mary Stuart.

While in exile from the oppression of her homeland, Stoklos honed her skills as a

multilingual artist and focused on the “dynamics of the oppressor and the oppressed,

and the universality of the struggle for freedom.” Her work was both physically

demanding and “consumed by the function of language in performance . . . the

experience of ‘feeling in Portuguese and expressing in English’ revealed the denial of

that emotional flowing that happens simultaneously when using the music of the first

language” (Notes for a New World Spring 2000). Though Mary Stuart was framed by

European history, it incorporated contemporary references, such as Nelson Mandela

and a cell phone call to Stoklos from Mary Stuart herself.

The last play of the spring season was Polaroid Stories, a co-production of the

NWT and the UMASS Theater Department. Written by Naomi Iizuka, the play uses

Ovid’s Metamorphosis and Jim Goldberg’s Raised by Wolves as a framework for the

story of the lives of youth that live on the streets. Inspired by a photo essay on

homeless kids, Iizuka uses photographs in the production. Gil McCauley had worked

with NWT in 1989 and after a period working in California returned as a faculty

member in the UMASS Department of Theater. Polaroid Stories was his first

directing opportunity. McCauley stated that although the play was not “race specific,

it represents a vision of hybridity” (Notes for a New World Spring 2000).

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New WORLD Theater 2000-2001

The activities of the NWT in the fall and spring of 2000-2001 were announced

as one season and included numerous productions and included Intersection II, a

three-and-one-half-day gathering focusing on international, interdisciplinary and

intercultural work; and Project 2050. The fall 2000 performances included Antígona,

by the Peruvian group Yuyachkani; Somewhere in the Dream by the Everett Dance

Theater of Rhode Island, featuring youth from the Mount Hope neighborhood in

Rhode Island; Uttar Priyadarshi: The Final Beatitude by Ratan Thiyam’s Chorus

Repertory Theatre of Manipur, India; Yerma by Federico García Lorca, presented by

the NWT in collaboration with Mount Holyoke College Department of Theatre;

House of Wives by Fatima Gallaire, co-sponsored by the NWT with the UMASS

Department of Theater; and three open studio/open dialogue programs of the Project

2050 Youth. Spring performances included Universes’ Slanguage; Diana Son’s Stop

Kiss, a co-production of the NWT and the UMASS Theater Department; Culture

Class: Coast to Coast, a pastiche of past performances of Radio Mambo, The

Mission, and Nuyorican Stories, written and performed by Culture Clash; and I

Remember Mapa, Alec Mapa’s one-man show.

Rhode Island’s Everett Dance Company brought Somewhere in the Dream to

the NWT. The production integrated theatre, circus, hip-hop, dance, and stories of

the urban ghetto to explore education, race, and the American dream. The Everett

Dance Theater thrived in their Mount Hope community center, the Carriage House,

offering classes in ballet, hip-hop, break dancing, and modern dance. The actors were

of various ages and cultures and the performance combined diverse styles in an

ensemble that balanced assorted themes.

The Culture Clash performance was arranged chronologically to allow the

audience to see the group’s developing theatrical maturity. Their performances were

as varied as the Latino culture itself, reflecting the cultures of Chicanos, Cubans,

Central Americans, and Puerto Ricans.

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New WORLD Theater 2001-2002

Fall 2001 brought the Pan-Asian spoken word group “I Was Born With Two

Tongues” to the NWT. Members of the group facilitated an “open mic” program.

They described their work as “at the crossroads between art and activism, personal

identity and cultural heritage to unearth the rich histories of Asian people in America

and participate in the crafting of a new Asian American identity” (“I Was Born With

Two Tongues” press release 2001). The youth from the 2050 Project participated in

this open mic session, held at the W.E.B. DuBois Library on the UMASS campus. 16

Spring season 2002 included On the Difficulty of Sustaining Compassion for

Chrome Magnum Man, written and performed by Alberto “Beto” Araiza; the New

England premiere of Slanguage, written and performed by Universes and directed and

developed by Jo Bonney; Hair Stories by Urban Bush Women, a collaboration with

UMASS Residential Arts; and Peaches, a staged essay, dream sequence, slave

narrative, theatrical hodgepodge inspired by a song by Nina Simone, written by

Cristal Chanelle Truscott; and “Intersection: Future Aesthetics,” a two-day gathering

exploring the intersection of theatre, poetry, spoken word, and Hip Hop culture.

Araiza’s On the Difficulty of Sustaining Compassion for Chrome Magnum

Man was set in the neighborhood and streets of Los Angeles and utilized storytelling,

poetry, satire, and tragedy in a solo work that explored the relationship between two

brothers. This solo piece was developed in residence at the NWT in the summer of

2001. Both funny and explosive, the piece vividly portrayed the brothers’ contrasting

points of view on domestic and gang violence, AIDS, manhood and familia.

Universes, a five-member ensemble of multi-talented performers, combined

poetry, spoken word, theatre, politics, blues, and Spanish boleros in Slanguage.

Universes developed this work at the NWT in the “New Works for a New World”

project. The ensemble members also worked with the Looking In/To The

Future/Project 2050 in the summer of 2000. Two members of the group, Stephen

Sapp and Mildred Ruiz, received a grant from NWT to continue to develop their new

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work in association with the 2050 Project. They worked with the educational project

in the summer of 2001 and 2002.

Urban Bush Women’s Hair Stories looked at the relationships between

African American women, their hair, and self-image, social and economic status, and

cultural identity. The last production of the NWT season, Peaches, occurred during

the Intersection conference. This original work confronted the stereotyping of the

female African-American identity from the time of slavery to the present, creating a

complex portrait of the female Black experience. Although Peaches was inspired by a

Nina Simone song, it referred to scholarly and popular discourse on identity (“New

WORLD Theater Spring Season 2002” brochure).

“Intersection: Future Aesthetic” was a two-day conference that brought

together diverse artists and scholars for performance, dialogue, and workshops. Poet

Sekou Sundiata was the keynote speaker for the event. Sundiata was a Sundance Film

Festival fellow and professor at Eugene Lange College. His work was featured in the

Bill Moyers’ PBS special, Language of Life. NWT workshops included “Lyricism

for Life” with Rha Goddess, “Beatboxing and Playback Theater with Baba Israel, and

“Take it to the Stage: the Emergence of Hip Hop Theater” with Will Power. In

various sessions entitled “Dialogue and Insight,” conversations between artist and

collaborators focused on the process of developing new work. These dialogues

featured Luis Alfaro with Marisela Norte, Alec Mapa with Jessica Hagedorn, and

Danny Hoch with Mark Russell. Along with the dialogues, workshops, and

presentations, forums were presented for the discussion of innovative programming,

approaches, and priorities, involving various producers, curators, and producers from

groups such as the Miami Light Project, Florida; Mass MoCA, Massachusetts;

Intersection for the Arts, California; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, California;

Bates Dance Festival, Maine; Hip Hop Theater Junction, Washington DC; the

Foundry, New York City; Mark Taper Forum, California; and New Jersey Performing

Arts Center. The Intersection: Future Aesthetic conference was supported by the

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Rockefeller Foundation and the National Performance Network (“New WORLD

Theater Spring Season 2002” brochure).

The summer of 2002 brought a variety of projects and performances to the

NWT. New Works for a New World continued the development of new works by

artists of color. Martín Espada and Rubi Theater presented Imagine the Angels of

Bread, a Hip Hop inspired, concert-version of Espada’s book of poems. The play was

created in New York at Rubi Theater and had further development in residency at the

NWT. The NWT commissioned Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas’ Shoplifting Oxygen, a

“chamber piece that explores the quiet surrealism of living in an apartment we can’t

afford and working at temp jobs that never end” (“New WORLD Theater Summer

02” brochure). Cortiñas was a playwright in residence at the NWT and supported by

the National Endowment for the Arts and Theatre Communication Group. Cortiñas

also worked with the educational outreach Project 2050.

Sekou Sundiata brought a work in progress to the NWT with his Blessing the

Boats. Based on his life, the poetic play bore witness to “a time when the scope of his

achievements was matched only by a constant barrage of medical traumas” (“New

WORLD Theater Summer 02” brochure). Project 2050 continued its outstanding

youth program with a youth retreat on issues facing the world’s future at Amherst

College, culminating in a performance of their original work. In addition, the

Amherst Theater and Dance Department and the NWT presented Condominium: A

Nightcap for Redcap by Peter Lobdell and The Belly Incantation by Constance

Congdon and Judyie Al-Bilali (“New WORLD Theater Summer 02” brochure).

Twenty-Four Years of the New WORLD Theater

In its twenty-four year history, the New WORLD Theater has presented plays,

solo performance artists, and production companies from across the United States and

around the world. The NWT’s commitment to developing and presenting works by

artists of color, which began in the Student Activities Office at the University of

Massachusetts, has been realized in the extension of these theatrical works to

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audiences in numerous venues throughout the U.S. and abroad. Roberta Uno’s early

desire to bring theatre by artists of color to students in the Five-College area as well

as to the communities beyond, has been fulfilled in the work of the NWT.

Uno sought every opportunity to create an educational experience beyond the

performances themselves. She was open to the needs of the community and created

projects that would reach out to youths who were badly in need of an opportunity to

understand their own identities and the issues that would shape their future. Uno’s

fearless tackling of subjects that were outside the mainstream added to the character

of the NWT. The group became a safe gathering place for artists of color, where they

could dialogue on common and disparate issues. If any single factor could account for

the longevity and quality of the New WORLD Theater, it would be Roberta Uno.

Twenty-four years later after the inception of the NWT, people at UMASS and in the

Five College community still speak of Uno’s drive, energy, and foresight.

This chapter outlined the remarkable performance history of the New

WORLD Theater. The positive impact of the NWT on numerous production

companies and artists of color is significant and undeniable. More problematic is the

relationship of the NWT to the Five College theatre departments over the NWT’s

many years of existence. Such difficulties may mirror the larger struggle of

communities and higher educations to address and accommodate diversity. The

difficulties faced by the NWT as they integrated themselves into the culture of higher

education are not unusual. Higher education can seem a closed community to the

diverse populations seeking acceptance as students, faculty, and artists. Educational

theorists describe these conflicts in their study of educational reform and diversity.

NWT experienced the early isolation and later the celebration of what they brought to

the table. Coco Fusco warns that much of the celebration of multiculturalism regards

difference “as light but exotic entertainment for the dominant culture” (27). The

NWT understood that warning. Uno sought new paths to explore the potential for

making change through the educational outreach projects.

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Paul Carter Harrison begins the Mother/Word to Totem Voices: Plays from

The Black World Repertory with a quote by Wole Soyinka: 17

When you go into any culture, I don’t care what the culture is, you

have to go with some humility. You have to understand the language,

and by that I do not mean what we speak, you’ve got to understand the

language, the interior language of the people. You’ve got to be able to

enter their philosophy, their world view. You’ve got to speak both the

spoken language and the metalanguage of the people. (xi)

Soyinka’s advice echoed in my thoughts as I investigated the NWT’s history and

interviewed its major players. There was a need to “speak both languages”—the

language of theatre by artists of color and the language of theatre in higher

education—and I found that they are not mutually exclusive.

This chapter touched on the many and varied outreach projects on which the

NWT embarked during the past twenty-four years. The next chapter will explore, in

detailed fashion, several of these projects, specifically the educational outreach

projects known as the Looking In/To The Future and Project 2050.

1 In this dissertation, the term "theater" is spelled either "theatre" or "theater" depending on the preference of the company or department mentioned. 2 The Five College, Inc. consortium includes Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. 3 The consortium hired “Five-College Professors” for a specific period of time in a field that is not covered by any of the schools. In 1979, the author was hired as a Five-College Professor for a three-year contract. During that time the author taught voice and speech studies, text and acting at the five institutions with her home campus in South Hadley at Mount Holyoke College. 4 The interviewer’s impression from the interview with Tillis in 2001 was that his accomplishments were achieved through working within the system. He came to the university with a Ph.D. in Music as a classically trained musician and scholar. Faculty accepted him as a Black scholar and artist. 5 Trinidadian student Sita Rampersad was found dead at a motel in a nearby town. Third World students argued repeatedly that the inquest and treatment of the case was a cover-up. In 1975, Black student Craeman Gethers was allegedly framed and convicted of robbery. Numerous incidents such as these were reported in the student newspaper in the mid- to late-1970s. 6 The U.S. Supreme Court ruling of June 28, 2978, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke held that the “petitioner’s special admission program violated the Equal Protection Clause” (University

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of California v. Bakke). The Bakke decision expanded Civil Rights legislation to include equal rights for Whites. The decision forced universities to stop special admissions programs for minorities. 7 Karen Lederer currently lives in Amherst and works in the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts. 8 Contact was a newsletter distributed at UMASS and in Amherst. 9 The films included: Blacks Britannica, the story of Black West Indians’ struggle for human rights in Britain; I Will Fight No More, a documentary of the brutal 1877 military campaign against the indigenous Nez Pierce; Song of the Canary, a documentary that examined industrial disease in the U.S.; The Nationalists about the activities of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in the 1950s; Paul

Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang, a documentary about the U.S. government suppression of information about health hazards of low level radiation; and Save the Planet, a film that included footage from Three-Mile Island and the protest march in the Black Hills of South Dakota. 10 The Ensemble was a group of students from the Five College Consortium and community members who performed plays with the Third World Theater. 11 “Pilipino” is the spelling of “Philipino” used in the press article by the NWT. 12 The artists receiving the awards and the title of their projects were: Rosa Luisa Marquez—Son Corazon, lê the diem thûy—the bodies between us, Pregones Theater—Translated Women, Rhodessa Jones—Deep Into the Night, Rosa Guy—Mystic Falls, Sekou Sundiata—untitled, Coatlicue Las Colorado/Hortensia and Elvira Colorado—untitled, Rennie Harris—untitled, and Johanna Haigood—untitled. 13 The plays included in the WORD! festival included: Country Dance by Penny Trieu, Mama by Mequitta Ahuja, . . .It’s the Unraveling by Sandra Kuper, Sister Love by Lami S. Badu (Teresa Alexander), Very Offensive Play by Jewel Younge, Sistahs Indeed! by Mariah L. Richardson, Full of

Grace. . . by Joe Salvatore, and Birdsong: A Choreopoem by Jésus MacLean. 14 The Color of Theater: Race, Culture, and Contemporary Performance, edited by Roberta Uno and Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns, presents essays, interviews and performance texts from the Intersections Conference. 15 The plays produced in staged readings on 9-10 March 1999 included: CIC: Contradictory Identity Contradictions by Ruchika Mandhyan (Smith); Circle Journey by Marta Carlson (UMASS); Perspectives by Megan Smith (Mt. Holyoke); an untitled work by John Hamilton White (Hampshire); When the Chickens Come Home to Roost by Iami D. Badu (Smith); Mouthpiece by Shannon Sickels (Smith); Staging the Indian by Margaret Bruchac (Smith); Story of a One-Boat Man by Penny Trieu (Mt. Holyoke); Tijeras by Olga Vaquer de Samalot (Smith); and Visa: It’s Nowhere You Want To Be by Raju Sivasankaran (UMASS). 16 An open mic session included students from the audience reading their poetry and original writings. 17 Harrison, Paul Carter. “Mother/Word: Black Theatre in the African Continuum: Word/Song as Method.” in Totem Voices: Plays from the Black World Repertory. New York: Grove Press, 1989. Harrison describes his use of “Mother/Word as in fore/word or first/word or the word as in truth.”

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CHAPTER FOUR

New WORLD Theater Projects

While the New WORLD Theater has conducted numerous projects over the past

twenty-four years, this chapter will concentrate on the NWT outreach project called

Looking In/To the Future/2050 Project. 1 The project is an extension of the NWT

mission to educate students of color, and to develop, produce, and present plays by

artists of color. This chapter traces the origins of the Looking In/To the Future and

Project 2050 in the earlier NWT Latino and Asian Theater Projects. In addition, it

describes the early years of the Looking In/To the Future projects and its eventual

transformation into Project 2050.

This study suggests that the methods employed in the Looking In/To the Future

project encourage youth to matriculate to higher education. Twenty-four years ago,

Roberta Uno and the NWT began to create opportunities for young people of color

not only to see works by artists of color but also to participate in the production of

those works. Uno describes the NWT's present work as educational, accessible, and

community-based. She characterizes the NWT's early work as a "desegregation

project rather than integration" (Personal interview, 1-2 May 2000). 2 Just as regional

and national awareness and action related to diversity has increased, so too the work

of the NWT has grown (Uno, "The Way of Inclusiveness" 25). The Looking In/To

the Future project is one example of the commitment of the NWT to young people of

color.

Origins of the Looking In/To the Future Project

The NWT youth projects began in 1996, though their roots can be seen in earlier

NWT projects, such as the Latino and Asian Theater projects. In an April 2000

interview, Roberta Uno described how the NWT assessed the changing demographics

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of the Five College Consortium region in 1994 and targeted the largest community of

color, the Latino population. Through grant funding by the Lila Wallace Reader’s

Digest Foundation and support from other sources, the NWT brought its expertise in

community organizing and artistic production to the nearby Holyoke and Springfield

communities. 3

The Latino Theater Project

The goals of the Latino Theater Project (LTP) were to increase Latino theatre

activity, to create and strengthen collaboration and partnerships with community

organizations, and to share professional Latino theatre methods with the local artistic

community. 4 Through the LTP, the NWT brought together two professional theatre

companies (New York City’s GRUPO BRIDGES and Denver’s Su Teatro) and two

local companies (Teatro Morivivi, an adult company, and New Visions, a youth

theatre troupe from the Teen Resource Project [TRP] in Holyoke, Massachusetts).

The professional theatres worked with the local companies using community-based

theatre techniques, some of which were based on Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the

Oppressed exercises.

GRUPO BRIDGES director Sandra Rodriguez and playwright Gloria Zelaya

worked with local companies in a six-week residency held June and July 1995. 5 The

LTP hosted two residencies by Su Teatro in September 1995 and in February 1996.

Su Teatro artistic director Tony Garcia and Managing Director Rudy Bustos designed

and facilitated “capacity building workshops for human resource workers, teachers

and other Latino organizations in the area” (Latino Theater Project: Final Report

1995-1996). The plays developed by these groups were presented at annual Latino

Festivals in Holyoke and Springfield and were presented as part of the NWT season

in Amherst, Massachusetts. 6

The experience of the NWT with the LTP would influence its planning for the

future Looking In/To the Future project. Although problems arose related to the

commitment of and communication between all partners, these issues ultimately

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proved instructive for the NWT. The LTP included in its activities the production of a

booklet, Notes on a Process, prepared by Gloria Zalaya and Sandra Rodriguez. Notes

documented the process of creating Tales From the Flats: Two Plays in One Act:

Colors & Familias. Grupo Bridges utilized techniques from a variety of familiar

sources, including Augusto Boal, Paulo Freire, Viola Spolin, Uta Hagen, Constantin

Stanislavski, and others, to develop the exercises and resulting plays. In particular, the

exercises from Boal’s Games for Actors and Non-Actors and Spolin’s Improvisation

for the Theater provided the core of the exercises used in working with the actors

from the local companies.

The LTP advisory group brought together people from various departments

and centers at UMASS, as well as Five College faculty, regional artists, and advisors

from Casa Latino in Northampton and the Teen Resource Project (TRP) in Holyoke

(later to partner with NWT in the Looking In/To the Future project). In more than one

interview and casual conversation, Uno mentioned the importance of establishing

community partnerships in order to maintain NWT projects (Uno, Personal

Interviews 2000, 2001, 2002). The continuing partnership between the NWT and the

TRP in Holyoke is the result of deliberate relationship to enhance the work of both

the TRP and the NWT. 7 The TRP’s goals are still in line with those of the NWT, that

is, “to help youth develop positive self-esteem and give them tools they can use for

prevention of drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and gang involvement” (“Latino Theater

Project Final Report” 19). The Latino Theater Project opened up new audience

members for the NWT and furthered its desire to involve the community in political

action.

The Asian Theater Project

Following the ultimate success of the LTP, the NWT began planning the “Asian

Theater Project” (ATP). An announcement was made in the local Daily Hampshire

Gazette that workshops with nationally known theatre artists and local Vietnamese

and Cambodian groups would begin in February 1996. The announcement also stated

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that the project was funded by a grant from the “American Festival Project, an

Appalachia-based coalition of artists and activists” (Watson, “New World Plans

Asian Theater Project” 1). 8 The two local community groups working on this project

were the Khmer Organizing Project of the Hampshire Community Action

Commission in Northampton and the Vietnamese-American Civic Association

(VACA) in Springfield. In the spring of 1996, four theatre artists presented

workshops as part of the Asian Theater Project: Smith College faculty member Dong

Il Lee; performance artist Ping Chong of New York; Indian actor Shishir Kurup of the

Cornerstone Theatre in Los Angeles; and Hung Nguyen, director of the Vietnamese

theatre group Club O’Noodles in Los Angeles (Watson, “New World Plans Asian

Theater Project” 1).

Unlike the NWT, the community organizations participating in the Asian

Theater Project did not hold the arts as integral to their missions. Rather they were

primarily concerned with political advocacy, outreach, organizing, and skill building

for new immigrants. For example, VACA’s projects included SAT preparation, after-

school tutoring, and youth education in such health issues as teen pregnancy and

smoking. The work of the ATP, then, mainly involved skill-building and community

education.

In addition to the artists and the community groups participating in the Asian

Theater Project, CIRCLE, one of its collective partners, participated in the

documentation and evaluation of the workshops throughout the spring 1996 semester.

The CIRCLE Student Advisory Council (SAC) was said to consist of refugee and

immigrant undergraduates who are in leadership training for promoting grassroots

community building” (Ly, Natividad, and Xiong, “American Festival Project”). The

SAC students provided peer mentorship, and “through active participation in the

workshops and interaction with the youth in and outside of the workshop spaces,”

produced a written evaluation (“American Festival Project”). The evaluation report

outlined the methods they used and the outcomes of the numerous workshops, 9 and

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chronicled the techniques used by the NWT to investigate its practices and revise or

re-organize future projects.

The SAC evaluation was based on four factors related to the artists and their

workshops: general rapport with youth and other participants; accessibility of material

and exercises; flexibility and versatility of the artist; and understanding,

acknowledgement, and integration of the project’s purposes and goals (“American

Festival Project”). The reasons these factors were chosen bear on the role they might

play in future outreach projects sponsored by the NWT or other community groups.

The level of general rapport with youth and other participants was deemed as

important because, according to the SAC report, “relationship” is significant when

working with youth “because an artist must be able to not only grab their attention but

also garner their respect” (“American Festival Project”). Hung Nguyen opened his

workshop by speaking Vietnamese and urging youth to feel free to speak Vietnamese

if it made them more comfortable. The SAC report indicated that the youth

participating in the project identified with and respected Nguyen, but were less

respectful of other artists. The SAC students also noted that the only woman artist in

the spring workshops was Page Leong, who worked with Shishir Kurup. They

observed that the girls in the project responded well to Leong and to the women of the

NWT. They commented that Leong and Kurup used laughter to break down

inhibitions.

The accessibility of materials and exercises was a problem for some of the

artists involved in the project. The SAC report mentioned that Dong Il used

meditation and traditional Korean theatre exercises, though it observed that

meditation was not appropriate for the high energy level of the youth. The Korean

theatre exercises worked better with the Khmer youth, since they were from a

traditional Khmer dance troupe. SAC maintained that the exercises that were based

on the participants’ lives and experiences were more successful than others. They

suggested that artists should be sensitive to issues of gender, ethnicity and language.

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The flexibility and versatility of the artist in responding spontaneously to space,

group energy levels, and language difficulty was another factor that was used to

evaluate the artists. Some artists used exercises that were language heavy and

required greater English proficiency than some youth could handle. Translators were

used in some cases, but the artists’ ease in using the translators was noted as a

concern. SAC again noted that Dong Il, because he never did change his original

plan, used unsuccessful meditation exercise with both of the groups with whom he

worked. The SAC report also noted that some artists did not remember names, were

rigid in their approaches, or did not allow for the variation in ages of those in their

groups, which affected the motivation of the youth with whom they worked.

The SAC report highlighted the responsibility of NWT and the artists to

understand, acknowledge, and integrate the goals of the project within the workshops.

While some artists reportedly were better than others at achieving the objectives of

the project, SAC believed that all artists could have heightened their effectiveness by

insuring that the youth in the project understood the objectives of the workshop

process. SAC suggested that in the future the NWT staff provide the youth with an

orientation to the project, one that defined theatre generally and described the kind of

theatre they were hoping to create. According to the report, such an orientation would

enhance the artists’ ability to clearly communicate the intended outcomes of the

project. The SAC evaluation report was used in making decisions about which artists

would be used in the ensuing summer project. The observation that the objectives of a

particular project should be explicit and communicated to the participants eventually

proved to be an important point impacting a number of NTW outreach projects.

Thus, groups of at-risk youths and youths of color began sharing their cultural

backgrounds in workshops designed to expose the youth to theatre methods as a

means for cross-cultural dialogue and creative expression. The spring of 1996 was

considered the planning phase of the project. Guest artists presented two four-day

workshops with the groups. In April of 1996 the NWT held a planning meeting with

the Teen Resources Project’s New Visions Troupe about joining the project. 10

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Originally the NWT had met and intended to work with Artist Celia Hilson from New

Visions. When she moved to California, Brenda Cotto-Escalera and Noelia Cortiz

were selected to work with New Visions. 11

In May 1996, work completed thus far was evaluated. The local Khmer and

Vietnamese groups put together an evaluation of the artists with whom they had

worked.12 VACA and the Khmer Classical and Folk Dance troupe selected Hung

Nguyen as the artist with whom they wished to continue working. At this time the

project was re-named the “Looking In/To the Future: New WORLD Theater’s

Community-Based Youth Theater Project” (“Looking In/To the Future” flyer and

timeline). The project now included New Visions of the Teen Resource Project, the

Khmer Classical and Folk Dance Troupe of Western Massachusetts from the

Hampshire County Action Commission, and the Center for Immigrant and Refugee

Community Leadership and Empowerment (CIRCLE), a statewide organization

based at the University of Massachusetts.

Looking In/To the Future Project: 1996

In the summer and fall of 1996 Looking In/To the Future emphasized themes

of identity using theatre as a tool for encouraging young people to participate in

society. 13 Uno stated that projects such as Looking In/To the Future “afford minority

groups a way of finding their own voice instead of being lumped together” (Gordon,

“Cambodian Students Talk Out Their Pasts”). The groups shared experiences, taught

each other culturally-based social dances, and became better acquainted through

various theatre techniques. The Vietnamese youth performance was shaped by a

group of artists that included Vietnamese artists Hiep Mai of Club O’Noodles,

performance artist lê the diem thûy, and choreographer Maura Nguyen Donohue, and

was led by Hung Nguyen. The performance was based on “improvisations, singing

songs, dancing with different parts of their bodies, sharing stories in a circle, and

breathing exercises” that incorporated the participants’ stories into performance

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themes of life in Viet Nam, the journey to the United States and life in the United

States (Bao, “Community Acts Up” 13).

The next phase of the project was to identify issues that would allow them to

create a collaborative work. Hung Nguyen conducted a three-week residency with

VACA, which concluded with a performance of their original work, “The Good Guys

Gang & Queen Renee,” on 27 July 1996 at the Holy Name Social Center in

Springfield, Massachusetts. The VACA youth interviewed their elders in order to

bridge the gap between the Vietnamese elders and the young people and to bring the

elders closer to the American culture. Van Nguyen, executive director of VACA,

affirmed that the theatre project was a first step in bringing the youth and elders

together to work on this issue (Hamel, “Youth Group Explores Theatre Craft.”). Hung

Nguyen recounted the effect working with the youth had on him,

I remember one of the young men said to me on the first day that we

met that he had no stories to tell. He repeated that he had “nothing”

interesting to say. Two weeks later that same young man, standing in

front of his peers and the audience shared his memories of growing up

in Vietnam and his journey to America. He danced as his voice moved

with emotion. Many laughter and tears were shared during the process

of sharing stories. (Burns, “Voices of Vietnamese American Youth” 7)

The artists and counselors were inspired by their experience with the young

participants. They described the work as transformative, difficult, and courageous.

The success of the summer workshops encouraged the NWT to continue moving

forward with the planning for Looking In/To the Future.

In August and September 1996, Hung Nguyen conducted two two-week

residencies with the Khmer Classical and Folk Dance Troupe and a performance was

held 29 September 1996 in Northampton, at the Jackson Street High School gym. The

youth participating in this workshop were of the Cambodian American communities

of Amherst and Northampton. The performance incorporated dance training with

Sokpeth Ding— dance director for the Khmer Classical and Folk Dance Troupe—and

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work with Hung Nguyen of Club O’Noodles. The youth in the Cambodian group

were nine to eighteen years of age. The majority of the performers were in elementary

or middle school at the time of the workshop and performance.

Brenda Cotto-Escalera and Noelia Cortiz conducted numerous workshops

with New Visions between September 1996 and May 1997. The NWT conducted

cross-cultural workshops and a video workshop with all the groups in Holyoke

October and December 1996. In order to expand the theatrical awareness of the

participants, the NWT invited the groups to attend performances that included thûy

lê’s bodies between us, Diana Son’s R. A. W.’s Cause I’m a Woman, Lisa Jones’

Combination Skin, and Maura Nguyen Donohue’s dance group In Mixed Company. 14

The NWT also used portions of the youth group’s performance work at a fund-raising

event in Amherst November 1996. The groups participated in a third cross-cultural

workshop in Northampton in January 1997, during which the youth led theatre games.

Looking In/To the Future: 1997

The planning process for the 1997 Looking In/To the Future summer retreat

involved numerous participants. A meeting with American Festival artists Linda

Parris-Bailey and Raniero Daza Medina was held February 1997. All artists and

groups attending the meeting participated in a cross-cultural workshop entitled

“Creative Process and Ways We Get to Performance,” led by Brenda Cotto-Escalera

and Hung Nguyen (“Looking In/To the Future” timeline). The planning meeting

defined the participation and structure of a projected camp. The notes from that

meeting, titled “Summer Youth Theater Camp,” outlined the issues needing

consideration, such as participation, transportation, schedule and artists. Rough notes

and brainstorming by the community groups, artists, youth, and the NWT evolved

into a full schedule, with each person’s responsibilities outlined and a roster of

participating youth drawn up.

Cross-cultural workshops with students and artists continued through the

spring of 1997. New Visions youth performed in Holyoke in May 1997. The goals of

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the 1997 summer retreat, as stated in the program copy, were “to create a

collaborative work, exploring issues they identify, and to create a laboratory for

leadership training using theater for youth and community organizers to use beyond

the parameters of the project.”

The intensive six-day theatre retreat with all the groups occurred at the

Bement Campsite and Recreation Center in Charlton Depot, Massachusetts on 17-23

August 1997. The NWT hoped that by bringing the groups together “out of their

everyday urban setting and into a more natural environment, they [youths] could

reflect on their experiences as young people of color growing up in America and

discover what they have in common” (Robinson and San Pablo, "Honoring the

Voices of our Foremothers"). Three lead artists, Hung Nguyen, Linda Parris Bailey,

and Brenda Cotto-Escalera worked with the youth to create a collaborative inter-

cultural performance piece (Uno, Letter to Dora Robinson). 15 The retreat began with

a planning meeting on 16 August 1997 with the staff, artists, community organizers

and counselors. That afternoon they all participated in “Cross Cultural Mediation”

with Richard Ford. The camp provided opportunities for the groups to work

separately with an artist and to come together into mixed groups.

A person was assigned to each activity to document the work of the group.

The artists were responsible for facilitating the workshops and for helping each group

create a twenty-minute performance piece and a framing piece. 16 The community

organizers were responsible for assisting the artists and supervising the youth in non-

theatre activities. 17 The NWT staff was responsible for documenting the artist

workshops, assisting with the technical and production aspects of the performances,

and supervising youth in their non-theatre activities. 18 Counselors were to coordinate

with the Camp Bement staff to provide the non-theatre activities, document those

activities and present a slide presentation.

The youth participants included ten Vietnamese youth (six males and four

females), seven Khmer youth (four males and three females), and nine New Vision

youth (three males and six females). The schedule provided time for swimming, team

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and board games, hoops (basketball), nature activities, dancing, and art activities.

The youth also organized a Talent Night performance.

The collaborative work, described in the press release as “a gripping and

honest exploration of cross cultural dialogue and contemporary issues that confront

youth of our community,” was performed at the conclusion of the workshop, followed

by a discussion with the audience. The performance was repeated during the NWT’s

fall season, as well as in numerous community venues such as high schools and

community centers. 19 The youth groups met to rehearse the performance pieces

September through November at various community locations.

The production in the NWT fall 1997 season was titled “Looking In/To the

Future 1997.” It included a restaging of the summer’s Homelands: Stories for

Tomorrow and the New Visions’ Society Unmasked (Robinson, “The Making of

Homeland: Stories for Tomorrow”). Homelands incorporated games, songs, dances

and the languages of the youths’ homelands into the production. The reprised

performance took place during the NWT spring 1998 season and at community

venues, including the Southeast Asian American Theater Festival. The youth groups

continued to meet to explore theatre skills and work with other artists brought to the

NWT.

The NWT leveraged the continuing work of the Asian youth into a grant-

funded audience development project titled “Viet New: A Generation Emerges.”

Funded by Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest, “Viet New” brought three Vietnamese

artists to the NWT for play development residencies: Hung Nguyen of Club

O’Noodles, choreographer Maura Nguyen Donohue and In Mixed Company, and solo

performer thûy lê. The NWT utilized their ongoing play development project, New

Works for a New World, to combine funding, thereby overlapping the projects, goals,

and outcomes of the various programs. Hung Nguyen and Club O’Noodles continued

to work with the Looking In/To the Future project in conjunction with their work in

the NWT’s New Works for a New World project. In the New Works project, Nguyen

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and Club O’Noodles developed a new script, Tales From the Nail Salon. These works

and performances would be featured in the first Intersections Conference in fall 1998.

Uno corresponded with and met with various groups in an effort to expand the

Looking In/To the Future project to include an African-American community partner.

In a letter to Dora Robinson of the MLK Community Center in Springfield, Uno

describes the benefits of participation with the Looking In/To the Future project as

opportunities for youth to attend

youth-appropriate productions and youth workshops with guest artists

. . .an artistic outlet for youth that focuses on self-discovery,

empowerment and peer mentorship; access to artistic resources

including nationally recognized artists and various forms of technical

support; continuous access to information on grants that may apply to

our partnership; and substantive connection with other community

organizations working with youth populations. (Uno Letter to Dora

Robinson)

She further outlined the criteria that the NWT would use to choose a community

partner for the project:

• the level and ease of communication between the community

organization and the New WORLD theatre

• the commitment of the organization to the use of theater as a tool

for the empowerment of their youth and to cross-cultural partnership

• the organization’s capacity to meet regularly, organize community

events, and the investment of their time to this project. (Uno, Letter to

Dora Robinson)

The community performances increased the participants’ self esteem and broadened

their capacity to mentor other youth. New Visions youth not only performed their

work dealing with gang violence in high schools and community sites, they “canvas

their city offering help and straight talk to other teens about the dangers youth face in

relationships, at home and on the street” (Norris 13 June 1996).

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The NWT’s goals for Looking In/To the Future were as follows: to build the

skills and capacity of the partner organizations; to explore the issues and identify

primary voices; to give the participating artists the opportunity to build on their

artistic skills through collaboration with other artists and through working with the

community; to create cross cultural dialogue; and to explore tools of peer mentorship

(“Looking In/To the Future” participants list). The local newspaper articles, press

releases, and reports located in the NWT archives proclaim their achievement of

those early goals. Uno remembered that, in this early project with the VACA, there

were concerns related to the selection of the participants:

We had all those bad gang boys and we had all that pressure from the

Vietnamese community, “why are you working with these boys and

not our honor students?” Well, one of the most . . . moving things was

last year when one of the boys, Khoi, came to my office and said, “I

want you to be the first person to know I got into UMASS.” He’s a

UMASS student. (Uno personal interview 2000)

The notion that the project would result in students’ attending college was not clearly

stated at the beginning. However, by the summer of 2000, Uno was aware of the

additional benefit of introducing youth to a site of higher education.

Looking In/To the Future: 1998 and 1999

Looking In/To the Future moved to the UMASS campus in the summer of 1998.

Housed in the Southwest Dormitory, students walked the campus from workshop to

dorm to cafeteria to Hampden Theater. Though the activity on the UMASS campus

diminished during the summer, students gained a sense of university life. The retreat

followed the same pattern as the previous summer. The youth were separated into

groups based on their race or ethnicity. Each group focused on issues that were

integral to their particular culture.

The Khmer group discussed and did improvisations around the theme of

relationships with parents. In addressing this issue they discussed living through the

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war, treating their parents poorly, coming from two different worlds, and not

understanding each other. (Such ideas might be similar in each group, but each

culture might have specific ways of coping. Each group contained participants who

were immigrants.) In discussing relationships, the Khmer group covered issues

related to their community and the tensions between the Khmer and American

culture. Some topics that arose in the work with the participants included: the use of

ghost stories to frighten the youth; parents’ suspicions about education and fears that

it might make young persons disrespectful to their parents; parents’ repeated talk

about the past, which the young people characterized as “guilt trips;” and parents’

statements that “only white people are good” and “only elders have knowledge”

(“Khmer Notes”). Discussions and improvisations centered on these themes and

ultimately were developed into a performance piece for the final presentation.

New Visions, the Latino youth group from the Holyoke Teen Resource

Center, also participated in the 1998 Looking In/To the Future retreat at UMASS. The

work of these young persons drew from their dreams and the condescending and

racist treatment they experienced at school. For example, one scene, which was

enacted for the final performance, began with a meeting between a student and a

counselor to discuss what the student would do following graduation. The student

presented a list of performing arts schools. The counselor dismissed her ideas in a

discouraging and racist manner and suggested she consider trade schools. The scene

continued with the students at the youth center discussing colleges, performing arts

schools, and trade schools with encouragement from the youth center supervisor. The

scenes that followed allowed the youth to present their dreams and talents. The final

scene of the New Vision youth section of the performance was their presentation of

“Ending Poem:”

I am what I am.

A child of the Americas.

A light-skinned mestiza of the Caribbean.

A child of many diaspora, born into this continent at a crossroads.

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I am Puerto Rican. I am U.S. American.

I am New York Manhattan and the Bronx.

A mountain-born, country-bred, homegrown jibara child,

A product of New York ghettos, I have never known.

I am an immigrant

and the daughter and granddaughter of immigrants.

We didn’t know our forbears’ names with a certainty.

They aren’t written anywhere.

First names only, or miga, negra, ne, honey, sugar, dear.

I come from the dirt where the cane was grown.

My people didn’t go to dinner parties. They weren’t invited.

I am Caribeña, Island grown.

Spanish is my flesh, ripples from my tongue, lodges in my hips.

the language of garlic and mangoes.

Boricua. As Boricuas come from the isle of Manhattan

I am latinamerica , rooted in the history of my continent.

I speak from that body, just brown and pink and full of drums inside.

I am not African

Africa waters the roots of my tree.

And my roots reach into the soil of two Americas.

Taino is in me, but there is no way back.

I am not European, though I have dreamt of those cities.

Each plate is different.

Wood, clay, papier mache, metal, basketry, a leaf, a coconut shell.

Europe lives in me but I have no home there.

The table has a cloth woven by one, dyed by another,

embroidered by another still.

I am a child of many mothers

They have kept it all going

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all the civilizations erected on their backs.

All the dinner parties given with their labor.

We are new

they gave us life, kept us going,

brought us to where we are.

Born at the crossroads.

Come, lay that dishcloth down, eat, dear, eat.

History made us.

We will not eat ourselves up inside anymore.

And we are whole. (“New Visions Notes”)

Young participants Rosario Morales and Aurora Levins Morales wrote this poem

during the retreat. The poem’s performance was an example of the youth’s

transformation through discussion, improvisation, and artistic development

workshops provided by the Looking In/To the Future artists and staff.

The 1998 final performance brought the various groups together. The

development of the final project provided an opportunity for each group to see the

others work. In addition to this formal collaboration, the students interacted in the

activities outside of the workshop, at meals, and in the dormitory, where the youths

lived together.

Due to the closing of the Hampden Theater (for fire code violations) the

Looking In/To the Future Project moved to the Amherst College campus in summer

1999. Twenty-five Latino, Asian and African American youths participated in the

retreat. The youths from Northampton, Springfield, Holyoke, and Amherst were

from the same community resource organizations as in the Looking In/To the Future

1998 project. They were nominated by their respective community organizations and

accepted by the NWT staff. As in the past, there were youths returning to the Looking

In/To the Future project from previous summer retreats.

In the year prior to the turn of the millennium, the media reflected on the past

and tried to imagine the future. Participants in the 1998 retreat had begun looking

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ahead to the future in discussions and workshops, but the themes in 1999 were more

clearly focused on the future. Youths and artists Kate Nugent, Phyllis Robinson,

Greg Alexander, and Olga Vaquer investigated historical and social events from

1968, 1975 and 1999, and imagined their world in 2061. The nine-day workshop

allowed for time to do research at the Amherst College Jones Library and to develop

the research into a performance. The group created Simultaneous Histories, a

performance piece that explored their cross-cultural experiences. They presented

Simultaneous Histories in July and again in April, in the UMASS Bowker

Auditorium during the NWT 2000 season. The 1999 Looking In/To the Future

Project was funded by the SURDNA Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and

received support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (Mendez, “NWT

Bulletin”). Uno saw the potential to move this community-based project to the next

step. After attending the Ford Foundation’s Animating Democracy Initiative

symposium, she clarified the objectives and methods and sought funding to ensure the

future of the project as a multi-year program.

Looking In/To the Future/Project 2050: 2000

Supported by additional funding from the Animating Democracy Initiative (a

program of Americans for the Arts at the Ford Foundation) the summer 2000 Looking

In/To the Future youth retreat took the new title Project 2050. The millennium change

and census data reports influenced journalists writing popular articles in newspapers

and magazines. They commented on projections that by 2050 people of color would

be in the majority in the U.S. (See appendix C.) At the same time, it was noted that

racial and ethnic hybridity would begin to blur racial categories. The NWT realized

the potential implications for its youth project, with its focus on identity, cross-

cultural communication, and self-esteem, and now felt pressure to address such

projections. It was evident to Uno and others that the school-age population in

Western Massachusetts was already diverse and that this diversity increased the

tensions in the communities. The NWT sought funding that would allow them to

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combine their continuing work with diverse youth groups and artists, with the

additional input of scholars. The inclusion of scholars in the project was designed to

provide deeper understanding of the project’s themes and lead to an original theatre

work that imagined “a variety of future scenarios, with the explicit intention of

stimulating wide-ranging discussions of their implications and creating a broader

basis for cross-cultural understanding” (“Massachusetts Foundation for the

Humanities Grant Narrative”).

The 2000 youth retreat experimented with new methods for creating

intergenerational, cross-geographic, and cross-cultural dialogue. Artists participating

in the 2000 Project 2050 included: theatre directors Phyllis Robinson, Gil McCauley

and Roberta Uno; playwrights Alice Tuan, Jorge Ignatio Cortiñas, and Carl Hancock

Rux; Hip Hop theatre company Universes led by Mildred Ruiz and Steven Sapp; and

Hip Hop/Break Dancers Millicent Johnnie, Rocafella and Kwikstep. 20 Scholars

participating in the workshop included professors Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, Deirdre

Royster, and Louis Prissock III. 21 During the one-week retreat, scholars, artists, and

college-age counselors worked together with participating youth to create an artistic

response to the scholar’s ideas about such topics as lies, money, power, and space.

Housed once again on the Amherst College campus, the workshop allowed the

young persons in the project access to the private space of the campus, where they

had never entered, though they lived nearby. The youths ate at the cafeteria, roomed

in a dormitory, and attended classes in studios on campus. The environment at

Amherst differed from UMASS. The campus is much smaller and thus provided easy

access to the workshop spaces. The Georgian brick and ivy-covered buildings

contrasted with the bare modern gray construction at UMASS. Amherst is clearly an

East Coast Ivy-League liberal arts college, and the retreat afforded these youths rare

access to the elite campus. Artists and scholars did not reside with the youths on

campus in the 2000 retreat. Most scholars lived in the area and only participated in

their assigned sessions, though some attended the youth talent show and project

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performance. Artists were housed in a local bed-and-breakfast establishment close to

the Amherst campus.

The first day of the 2000 workshop made available time for the counselors,

artists, and scholars to get acquainted and to hold meetings related to the structure of

sessions, and policies for youth and staff. (See appendix D—Retreat Policies.) The

young participants arrived on 4 July to a full schedule of introductory workshops with

the artists and orientation to the rules. The group went to a fireworks display that

evening. The regular schedule for the retreat began the next day, with an opening

scholar session by Deirdre Royster focusing on the theme of “Lies.” This session was

followed by workshops with the artists. Students were divided into groups and

attended sessions based upon their track. The counselors provided mini-workshops in

DJ-ing, Stepping, Caribbean dance and singing.22 Free time for the youths allowed

them to experience the Amherst campus—swimming, basketball, indoor tennis

courts, football and a fitness center for youth fifteen and older. Another scholar

session was held after dinner and followed by some collaboration time.

The researcher’s observations of the 2000 youth retreat revealed that while

some of the scholars connected with the youths in their presentations, others did not.

23 In spring 2000 and just prior to the retreat, the NWT attempted to meet with the

scholars in order to discuss the project and their expectations—though not all scholars

attended these sessions. This made the integration between the scholars’ material and

the artists’ workshops more difficult. For example, sociology professor Dr. Louis

Prissock, III presented a session on money. He mentioned the word “hegemony”

during his presentation but, when questioned by a youth at the session, was not able

to clearly define the term. Later, in Hip-Hop dancer Millicent Johnnie’s class, the

researcher observed a missed opportunity to help the youth understand the morning

scholar session. The dance instructor described a movement that related to the

African warrior woman’s pushing aside the sheaves of grass in a powerful way. If the

dance instructor had mentioned the idea of power, linking it back to the concept of

hegemony, the student might have had a visceral experience of the word. Since

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students learn in multiple ways, the physical experience of the concept of hegemony

or power might have been a potent lesson. Had such an integration of scholarly

notions and artistic experiences been accomplished, the twelve-year-old retreat

participant might have experienced a moment of recognition. The day after Prissock’s

scholar session, Sunaina Maira, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, and

Alice Nash, Assistant Professor of Native American History, co-facilitated a

workshop at the retreat that focused on power. They utilized scenarios from different

social contexts, which allowed the youth to think about relationships of power in their

own lives, and to enact strategic responses to the situations. Maira described the role-

playing exercise as having: “emphasized creative skills but it also led into a critical

discussion of the meaning of power, notions of hegemony, and the role of social

structures” (Maira, letter 28 March 2001). This workshop was a more active

exploration of power. One youth participant wrote about this scholar workshop in her

evaluation comments:

I liked professor Sunaina Maira, who split us up to do role-plays about

race and power. We had different roles where we showed our

prejudice. People make assumptions about me because I look Spanish

but I have grown up in a white neighborhood. I am living in a world

that is very divided. It made me think about culture and ethnicity in a

different way. We talked about how we all have prejudices and

assumptions about other people. I don’t need a label. I am just me. Our

society puts up dividers but really we are one humankind. —Damaris

Delgado (Project 2050 Evaluations 2000).

This young person’s comments demonstrate the impact of the scholar sessions on the

development of critical thinking skills in the participating youth.24 All the scholars

were faculty at institutions of higher learning and most were unfamiliar with the

needs of a younger audience. Yet in the course of their involvement with the project,

they became aware of the need for a different kind of preparation for the retreat

activity.

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The youth participating in the retreat were sponsored by numerous community

organizations, including: ABC House/Violence Prevention; Amherst College

Community Outreach Program; Amherst-Pelham Regional Middle School; New

Visions/Nueva Visiones Theatre at the Teen Resource Project; and RadioActive

Youth, sponsored by the Men’s Resource Center of Western Massachusetts (See

appendix E—Biographies of youth participants). The age range of the participants

was twelve to eighteen years. Older students may have understood more of the

information presented by the scholars. By the end of the retreat the youth reported

favorably on the addition of the scholars, though the artists’ workshops were favored

overall, as the following excerpted evaluations demonstrate:

It was very interesting to hear everyone’s opinions during the scholar

sessions. Everyone felt comfortable to disagree or give another point

of view. I learned that in many cases I can have power. In some case, I

might not, but I will try my best to achieve that power. I also learned

the world is changing every minute, . . . it is the youths’ responsibility

to shape a better future. —Hao Pham

Before I met [UMASS sociologist] Dee Royster I thought about race

mostly in terms of myself as an African American, and about racism

separately from being who I am. I thought it was really interesting

when she talked about “phenotype” and about how your culture and

environment affects who you define yourself as and how other people

define you. I’m still thinking about what she said about culture and

behavior. I don’t know if I agree with her, but what she says makes me

think about different people I know. At first I thought some of the

ideas were too abstract, but the examples they gave helped me to relate

what they were saying to my own life. —Jamille Hazard

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Some of the scholars didn’t know how to talk to us. I really didn’t like

it when one of them acted like what she was saying was so important,

when it was so obvious. One I really liked was Alberto Sandoval

because he said some really interesting things about how people “read”

you in different social spaces. It was interesting to see how spaces

change by who is there and that we can also change the spaces we are

in. I also thought it was a good point to talk about emergency rooms

and social class. In my theatre workshop after, we used that for an

improv, setting it in the future. —Mikiko Thelwell

I really liked that I got to meet a scholar who is Latino, who showed

me that a Latino can be educated and do something and become

something. —Tatiana Salgado.

(Project 2050 Summer 2000 Participant Evaluations)

These comments from the youth evaluation forms document the value of including

the scholars in the project. The thoughtful comments of the youth demonstrate their

commitment to the project as well. NWT staff reviewed the information gleaned from

the evaluations, and evaluated the commitment and activity levels of the youth during

the retreat in selecting eighteen participants to return the next summer.

The artists’ responses in the final evaluation also indicated the value of adding

the scholars to the project:

The scholars were very articulate and able to guide us through seeing a

life of the mind. It allowed me to see how academia need not be dry,

but that it can be moisturized by the humanity of ideas. It really took

the students, and myself, to a higher level of thinking and observation,

especially without the encumbrance and clutter of pop media. —Alice

Tuan

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Too often arts-related programs get us in touch with the place we

already are. That’s important, but not enough. The scholars helped us

to take it to the next level. They troubled our too-easy conclusions and

conventional ways of thinking around issues like race, class and

citizenship. The scholars gave us a new set of tools to continue that

dialogue, they helped strip the superficial patina off those issues. They

got us in touch with where we are, but also helped us imagine where

we might want to go and how to start getting there. —Jorge Cortinas

(Project 2050 Summer 2000 Participant Evaluations)

The comments by the artists show the dynamic relationship the artists, students, and

scholars. They also hint at the prior perceptions of the youth and artists toward the

scholars. The NWT discussions with the artists and scholars during the retreat,

evaluations completed by them, and observation of their work with the youths

influenced the selection of artists and scholars who would be invited to return the

following summer.

Due to a long performance and the need to turn the space over to another

performing group, there was no discussion following the closing performance at the

2000 summer Project 2050 retreat. However, the NWT held community forums in

community settings in Holyoke, Springfield, and Amherst following performances of

the “works-in-progress” during fall 2000. The youths were invited to participate in a

re-staging of several of the performance pieces done in the summer. Steven Sapp and

Mildred Ruiz of Universes and Roberta Uno directed the re-staging. The rehearsals

took place at the Amherst Middle School with transportation provided by the NWT

student interns. The youths received twenty-five dollars for the performance.

Professional facilitator Dr. Patricia Romney stimulated the discussion and deepened

the thematic content for the youth and the audience at community performances and

forums. Artists Alice Tuan, Carl Hancock Rux, and Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas and

scholars Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, Deirdre Royster, and Louis Prissock, III

participated in the fall community sessions entitled “Project 2050: Open Studio/Open

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Dialogue.” These forums provided an opportunity for the NWT to develop its

understanding of the dynamics of public dialogue. Uno was not satisfied with the

level of the dialogue at the retreat and in public forums and was determined to

improve that aspect of the project in the next cycle. She did not feel that the dialogue

explored the underlying issues and the future implications of the content presented by

the youth in performance.

Project 2050: 2001

The NWT used evaluation and observation of the retreat and community

experiences to plan changes for the next stage of the Project 2050.25 A planning

meeting was held 28 February 2001 to discuss the possible themes, development of

additional scholars and the role of dialogue in the upcoming project.26 Greater effort

was put into selecting the right scholars for the 2001 Project 2050. The NWT sought

scholars who had the “talent, experience, and know-how to make effective

connections with [the] youth participants and the general public, and who can exploit

the potential of their humanities disciplines to provide a bridge between cultures and

generations” (“Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities Grant Narrative”). The

scholars included: Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, Professor of Spanish Literature, Mount

Holyoke College; Daniel Banks, Adjunct Professor of Performance Studies, New

York University; Jennifer Ho, Visiting Lecturer in English and Asian Studies, Mount

Holyoke; Agustin Laó-Montes, Instructor of Sociology, Center for Latin American,

Caribbean, and Latino Studies, University of Massachusetts; James Loewen,

independent scholar, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me; and Michelle Stephens,

Assistant Professor of English, American and African-American Studies, Mount

Holyoke. In addition, they added a dialogue facilitator, Diana Coryat, who had

experience in the arts and humanities, with youth, and with social change work.27

Coryat worked with the artists, scholars and youth to develop the retreat curriculum.

The goal was to create a performance that would be a “catalyst for serious

engagement with the issues as they relate to the spectators’ lives” (“Massachusetts

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Foundation for the Humanities Grant Narrative”). The 2001 Project 2050 artists

included: playwrights Alice Tuan, Ricardo Braccho, and Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas;

performance poets Mariposa and Rha Goddess; dancer/choreographers Rocafela and

Kwikstep; and theatre directors Gilbert McCauley, Kamilah Forbes, and Roberta

Uno. (See appendix F Artists biographies.) Artists Tuan, Cortiñas, Rocafela,

Kwikstep, McCauley, and Uno continued from the 2000 retreat. The continuing

scholars, artists and participants added stability to the project and demonstrated

commitment to the goals.

While the performances were seen by the families, peers, local community

groups, and Five College audiences, the intended outcomes of the project remained

focused on the forty-five youth participants. Participants were chosen through

nominations from a number of social service agencies, schools and individuals

throughout the area. The eighteen youths continuing from the 2000 retreat were

designated as Youth Leaders. The Youth Leaders acted as peer counselors and

received additional training in critical thinking and civic dialogue. They also worked

with the scholars and artists as co-facilitators in the dialogue sessions.

The staff from NWT, some of the youth from the 2000 retreat, scholars, and

artists met during spring 2001 to decide on the themes for the upcoming retreat.28

The chosen topics included: Immigration, Identification, Incarceration, Exploitation,

and Negotiation. The themes revolved around the power struggles the youths faced

and what they perceived as issues they would continue to face in the future.

Immigration and Identification addressed continuing issues from past retreats.

Incarceration was selected based on the increasing number of young Black males in

prison or on parole. Most of the youths chosen to participate in the retreat were

working in the service sector. The youths were concerned about issues related to the

exploitation of workers of color in the United States and abroad. Finally, Negotiation

was defined as a strategy to aid civic participation. Through Project 2050, the NWT

hoped to explore these themes and to find new ways to “overcome differences

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through creative dialogue” (“Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities Grant

Narrative”).

Project 2050 began with a final planning day on 4 July 2001 and included the

participating artists, scholars, Youth Leaders, and counselors. Dialogue facilitator

Coryat held a training workshop. The exploration involved information presented by

the scholars, which was explored in exercises and used as a basis for the theatre

pieces the youth would create. In order to make the theoretical information accessible

to the youth, scholars incorporated poems, literature, dramatic video/films, music, and

song lyrics into their presentations. The personal experiences of the youths were

investigated through dialogue and movement, and in creative exercises. The youths’

creative skills were developed through workshops with the artists in writing, acting,

movement, and improvisation. The nine-day residential retreat at Amherst College

ended with a performance and dialogue in the Amherst College Experimental

Theater. New work by the Project 2050 youths was developed and remounted at the

Bowker Auditorium at UMASS 30 October through 9 November 2001 as part of the

NWT Season.

This chapter described the Looking In/To the Future and Project 2050. By

understanding the history of these projects, it is possible to evaluate their usefulness

as a model for other diversity-related outreach projects at institutions of higher

education, particularly those designed to enhance access and equity in higher

education for at-risk youths and youths of color. The next chapter will examine the

potential of the NWT activities to serve as such a model, and explore in some detail

how such a proposed model might be actualized.

1 Additional NWT Projects include: New Works for a New World, a play development project; Asian American Women Playwrights Archive, housed in the W. E. B. Dubois Library at the University of Massachusetts; the Latino Theater Project, a community and artistic project resulting in the development of plays/performances; Asian Theater Project; helping community groups dramatize social issues; and Viet New: A Generation Emerges, an audience development project to confirm and celebrate a new generation of Vietnamese American artists in theatre (Conway personal interview, 1-22-98).

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2 Uno referred to the NWT’s early works as a “desegregation project” because the activities were designed for the minority students and the audiences tended to align with the particular group for which the activity was planned. 3The Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund granted $120,000 to the NWT for the Latino Theater Project. It was the largest single grant that the NWT had received to date. Other funding sources for the Latino Theater Project include: Massachusetts Cultural Council; Eugene A. Dester Charitable Fund (administered by the Association of Performing Arts); the Nan and Matilda Heydt Fund (administered by BayBank as trustee); the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts; the UMASS Vice Chancellor for Research, Graduate Education and Economic Development; and the UMASS Office of the Chancellor. 4 LTP community organization partners included: Proyesto Vida, Brightwood Elementary School, Kensington Ave. School, and Nueva Esperanza. 5 Puerto Rican actress, singer, and director Sandra Rodriguez is the artistic director of Grupo Bridges. She is an alumna of Pregones Theater in New York. Gloria Zelaya has collaborated with the Pregones Theater, LaMama E.T.C., the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and Mass Transit Theater; was the artistic director of the Latino Experimental Fantastic Theatre; and was a founding member of the Augusto Boal Theatre Lab in NYC. 6 The plays developed by Grupo Bridges in the LTP are Tales From the Flats: Two Plays in One Act:

Colors y Familias. Su Teatro developed The Night of the Barrio Moon. In addition, Su Teatro performed their production of La Carpa Aztlan Presents: I Don’t Speak English Only at the NWT and in local high schools. 7 The Teen Resource Center was to become the one community group that maintained a relationship with NWT projects on a continuing basis through 2003. 8 The American Festival Project is “a national coalition of artists, community-based organizations, presenters, community activists, educators, and cultural workers whose work is rooted in the belief that cultural exchange can provide a context in which diverse communities can begin to understand and respect one another” (Burns, “Voices of Vietnamese American Youth” 7). 9 The SAC also produced a Handbook of Techniques in Community Theater (Ly et al., “American Festival Project”). The Handbook described the exercises used in the various workshops and was meant to be used by other community groups. 10 The Teen Resource Project was involved with the Latino Theater Project and was a natural addition to this project. 11 The artists selected to work with the youth groups were Hung Nguyen, artistic director of Club O’Noodles, and Brenda Cotto-Escalera, director, dramaturg, and professor of theatre at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 12 The Asian-American artists included: Ping Chong, Shishir Kurup, Dong Il Lee, Page Leong, Hung Nguyen, and Hiep Mai. 13 Roberta Uno continued to be successful in putting together funding for the NWT projects. The early stages of the project were funded by the American Festival Project, the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Youth Reach Program, the Healey Public Service Grant of the University of Massachusetts, the Nan and Matilda Heydt Fund, the Eugene A. Dexter Charitable Fund (administered by BayBank as trustee), and the Western Mass Community Foundation.

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14 In Mixed Company presented by the UMASS Asian Dance and Music Program. 15 Linda Parris-Bailey was added to the project representing the American Festival Project. She was the Executive and Artistic Director of the Carpetbag Theatre, Inc. 16 Each artist was assigned to a primary group: Hung Nguyen to the Vietnamese Americans, Linda Parris Bailey to the Khmer, and Brenda Cotto-Escalera and Noelia Ortiz-Cortes to New Visions. 17 The community organizers included: Elsie Reyes of New Visions; Sokcheat Chen and Sokhen Mao of the Khmer; and Uyen Nguyen, Nhac Troung, and Khoi Dinh Vo of CIRCLE, working with the Vietnamese Americans. 18 The NWT staff included: Roberto Uno (Artistic Director), Karimah Robinson (Education and Access Director), Lisa Hori-Garcia (Production and Resident Manager), and Lucy Burn (Literary Manager). 19 The Looking In/To the Future theatre performance piece was presented 20-22 November 1997 at the Hampden Theater on the UMASS campus as part of the NWT fall season. 20 Universes is a five-member troupe of performers who fuse poetry, theatre, jazz, Hip Hop, politics, blues, and Spanish Boleros to create theatrical works. The members include Steven Sapp, Flaco Navaja, Gamal Abdel Chasten, Lemon, and Mildred Ruiz. Universes performed at Performance Space 122 in New York, the New York Workshops Summer Play Lab, and the Mark Taper Forum. They also performed at the NWT in the New Works for a New World series, and at the Intersection II conference. Their performance of Slanguage, directed by Jo Bonney, was presented at the New York Theatre Workshop in spring 2001. 21 Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez is a Professor of Latin American Literature at Mount Holyoke College. Deirdre Royster is professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts. Louis Prissock III is professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts. 22 Counselor Marcus Pinn conducted a workshop in DJ’ing. Mikiko Thelwell and Nuk Thann (Jamie) led Stepping workshops. Evelyn Aquino led a Caribbean dance workshop. Heather A. Lord and Josh Arond led a singing workshop. Each workshop presented a performance in the final production of Project 2050. 23 Comments that follow are taken from my notes of observations July 2000. 24 The Delgado twins, Damaris and Christine, participated in several 2050 projects. The author observed them in 2000 and again in 2002. 25 Funding for the project was provided by: Ford Foundation’s Animating Democracy program, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Western Massachusetts Community Foundation, NPN Community Fund, Office of the President of Amherst College and the University of Massachusetts. 26 Attending the meeting were: scholars Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, James Loewen, and Agustin Laó Montez; artists Steven Sapp and Mildred Ruiz; and NWT Artistic Director Roberta Uno, Managing Director José Tolson, and Literary Manager Cathy Schlund.

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27 Diana Coryat was the Co-Executive Director and Co-founder of Global Action Project, Inc., an internationally recognized media arts organization that trains New York youth to produce videos and new media on social and cultural issues that concern them. 28 Diana Coryat facilitated several meetings in May and June 2001 with the scholars and artists to explore collaboration between the two parties to widen their methodologies. She also led workshops for the Youth Leaders and two college counselors to train them in their role as dialogue co-facilitators.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Analysis and Conclusions

Introduction

This dissertation examined the background, production history, and outreach

projects of the New WORLD Theater (NWT) in terms of its usefulness as a model for

diversifying theatre programs and, more importantly, for utilizing the work of theatre

programs to address issues of access and equity in higher education for at-risk

students and students of color. Determining how theatre might be used as a tool to

encourage young people to participate in society and eventually matriculate to higher

education was integral to the motivation behind this study. The researcher’s

extensive experience in both theatre and higher education, and awareness of equity

and access issues among both students and faculty informed the goals for this study as

well. The production history and background presented in Chapter Three provides the

context through which the outreach projects were developed. This is the first time that

the NWT significant production history has been presented in published form. This

chapter presents an analysis of the extensive data collected in the course of this study,

specifically in terms of its applicability to current efforts to promote matriculation to

college among at-risk students and students of color.

The Intersection of Praxis and Theory

Roberta Uno and the NWT created opportunities for young people of color--

not just to view works by artists of color but also to participate in the production of

those works. During the past twenty-four years the NWT has evolved into an

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internationally recognized theatre organization known for its development of new

works and innovative outreach programs.

In Chapter Two, theoretical issues related to diversity and education as a

process of liberation were discussed. bell hooks proposes “engaged pedagogy” as a

means of transforming curriculum so that it “does not reflect biases or reinforce

systems of domination” and allows students and teachers to take risks that make the

classroom a site of resistance (Teaching to Transgress 21). Through the work of the

NWT, Uno established a place where students of color could feel safe in the

classroom and in theatre production. Students, faculty, and staff of color achieved

agency in their work with the NWT. This was not accomplished without a struggle.

Over the course of the NWT’s history, times of conflict within the home institution

coincided with particular developments within the UMASS and Five College

community. The problems encountered by the NWT emerged from a lack of

understanding among various players, issues related to space and location, and the

choice to present diverse theatre productions rather than those of the predominantly

Western theatrical canon.

In Killing Rage: Ending Racism, hooks makes a case for the necessity of

exposing and eradicating racism and sexism, and argues that we have not confronted

the colonialism in our own country. Theorists such as Giroux, Gates, Banks, Fusco,

and Moraga contend that artists and scholars must overcome the colonialism in higher

education. The NWT challenged the colonialism at UMASS. Despite the difficulties

encountered, the NWT shared such goals to reduce racism and confront colonialism,

and its determination resulted in a twenty-four-year history of developing works and

presenting productions by artists of color.

The NWT's outreach work with young students correlates to the objective of

this researcher to connect theatre and the work of theatre departments to higher

education’s obligation to increase successful matriculation among at-risk and students

of color. Uno described the NWT's work as educational, accessible, and community-

based. Although she characterized the NWT’s early work as a "desegregation project

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rather than integration," the growth of the NWT paralleled increases in awareness of

diversity issues at both regional and national levels (personal interview 20 June

2001). The NWT's mission, to present diverse theatrical experiences and provide

outreach to young people in the community, corresponds with the researcher’s own

experience in theatre in higher education and as a dean at the University of the

Incarnate Word (UIW). The diverse nature of the UIW student body has heightened

the researcher’s concern with issues related to diversity and theatre, and provided

impetus for encouraging students of color to break the boundaries of traditional

expectations in higher education and in the limitations of the Western theatrical

canon. The NWT’s Looking In/To the Future/Project 2050 is an example of the way

theatre can be used to enhance access and equity among at-risk students and students

of color.

Exploring the Potential of the Looking In/To the Future/Project 2050 Model

As discussed in Chapter Four, the community-based Latino and Asian Theatre

Projects led to a refining of the educational focus of the community-based work of the

NWT. The Looking In/To the Future project’s initial goal was to take the young

people out of their environments and help them to develop their personal stories of

identity. Students were not selected by audition but rather by the community groups

with which the NWT worked. The artists and cultural workers who worked with the

youth in this project were committed to using their skills to help to realize the

potential of the young people involved.

In the beginning, the community groups involved with the NWT did not see

the potential benefits of the collaboration. At first, the work centered on immediate

issues and problems facing the youth. One community group was concerned that the

youth involved in the NWT project were problem students who would give a bad

impression of the group as a whole. Uno commented in various interviews and

conversations that the success or failure of the relationship with the community center

hinged on the extent to which the supervisors of the community center saw the work

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of the NWT project as valuable. The Teen Resource Center in Holyoke,

Massachusetts, was one such collaborator. The Center’s relationship with the NWT

was strong from the outset and remains strong to this day. The directors of this

program continue to support the NWT by participating in planning, facilitating the

selection process, and supporting the teen’s participation in other work of the NWT.

Looking In/To the Future was a model project that brought artists and youths

together to explore issues of identity. The artists used techniques based loosely on

Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and other theatre-related games and

activities. Early exercises also incorporated the songs and dance of the students’

particular cultures into the project. Research indicates that by exploring their stories

and cultures, the students’ self-esteem benefited. Centering the work on identity

allowed students to develop a heightened appreciation of their culture in relationship

to the cultures of other groups represented. Whether the artists’ skills were enhanced

by this collaboration is difficult to determine. From the archival material studied, it

appears any artist whose work with the youth was deemed inadequate or

inappropriate was not asked to return the following year. Such determinations were

based on observations made by NWT staff and others working with the group.

Determination of staffing was finalized by Roberta Uno.

The summer of 2000 brought a change to the NWT’s outreach project. Project

2050 shifted the direction of the Looking In/To the Future Project, adding scholars to

the mix of artists, youth, and NWT staff. The scholars were added to provide a base

of knowledge for the issue to be explored by the artists and youth. The decision to

add scholars to the project was made following participation by Uno in an Animating

Democracy meeting, which brought together a number of groups conducting projects

supported by the Ford Foundation. 1 Uno remarked to this researcher that at that

meeting she became aware of the potential of the project to move beyond issues of

identity. Uno claimed that too many groups were working in that area and that she

wanted to expand the project’s political potential. This new objective increased the

need for both youth and artists to become aware of concepts fundamental to action for

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social change. The outreach project’s new political focus coincides with bell hooks’

call to action against the colonizing nature of higher education.

In the first summer of transition from the Looking In/To the Future project to

Project 2050, the theme of a working retreat centered on issues that might be

important to youth in 2050. (See Appendix C.) In one morning session, scholars

presented their views of social issues that might affect youth in the future. The youth

then proceeded to various workshops and classes throughout the day. Scholars were

not truly integrated into the actual work of the artists and students, however.

According to Uno, this deficiency was due to lack of planning time set aside for artist

and scholars to collaborate and the failure of the scholars to adapt their presentations

to the younger audience. 2 For example, scholars used vocabulary that was

unfamiliar to the students and some of the artists. Therefore, the artists were often

unable or unwilling to fully incorporate the scholars’ concepts into their own work

with the students. Alternatively, the artists were not committed to fully exploring the

academic material presented at the scholar’s sessions. There appeared to be an anti-

intellectual bias on the part of some artists that made it difficult to accomplish true

integration of theory and practice.

Following the 2000 summer transition retreat, Uno developed the Project

2050 planning process, which added a facilitator to the project in subsequent

summers. In addition, youth from the project participated in the planning. These

subsequent workshops were described in detail in Chapter Four.

After observing and studying the materials of Project 2050, it is clear that this

format could be used as a model for increasing access and equity among at-risk and

youth of color. Using the same framework—scholars, artists, and youths working

together on a college campus for a week to ten days followed by continuous

collaboration over the following year—higher education theatre practitioners would

add activities related to college attendance; the youths’ families; the education of

scholars, artists, and staff about access and equity; and the project’s objectives. In

applying the Project 2050 model to access and equity in higher education, the

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personnel of the workshop would include staff from college admissions and financial

assistance offices, and college-age peer mentors.

The theatre activities and writing, dance, and music workshops that formed

the structure of the NWT's Project 2050 would be an integral part of such a higher

education-related project. Artists leading these sessions would participate in a

thorough orientation to the issues related to access and equity and to the themes of the

particular session. Such orientations would be conducted by experts in the field of

education theory as it relates to diversity and reform. In addition, the orientation

sessions would provide time for scholars and artists to work together in order to better

prepare the artists to incorporate the concepts presented by the scholars and for the

scholars to grasp the artistic content to be explored in the workshop. Artists

participating in such a project would need to understand the reasons for the

participation of scholars in the workshop and appreciate the value of higher

education. 3 These criteria for artist selection might more fully involve artists

working in education settings and the various arts departments on campus. Scholars

would be selected based upon their disciplinary area, research, and ability to work

with younger students. Further, it would be vital that the scholars and artists involved

be presented equally as role models.

As presented in Chapter Two, research has shown that successful students

bring with them the cultural capital needed to succeed in higher education. At-risk

students and students of color often do not have the cultural capital to succeed. They

do not have the background, appropriate high school curriculum, cultural

opportunities, or parental support and expectations that their upper- and middle-class

counterparts have. A project modeled after Project 2050, which already has

successful scholarly and artistic components in place, could provide some of that

cultural capital and potentially open the door to higher education.

The NWT realized early on the value of theatre pedagogy and performance as

avenues to raising the consciousness and improving the skills and self-esteem of at-

risk students and students of color. This is evident in the numerous educational

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components linked to the productions throughout its twenty-four year history. The

added elements described in this dissertation’s research concerning access and equity

and the demographics of a changing majority would allow other theatre programs to

replicate this successful project with the intention of increasing the diversity of their

institutions and theatre programs. Workshops such as those conducted by the NWT

would additionally position theatre departments at the center of the effort in higher

education to increase not only access and equity but also retention and persistence

among at-risk students and students of color.

Using Theatre to Promote Access and Equity: A Model

The model being suggested in this dissertation relies upon the research of

several scholars presented in Chapter Two. According to Linda Serra Hagedorn and

William G. Tierney, studies of equal access to higher education indicate that outreach

projects may promote the matriculation of at-risk students into college (Increasing

Access to College 1-8). Key elements of successful outreach projects include:

community partnerships, college awareness, development of social skills, campus

visits, cultural activities, and training in study-skills. Alexander Jun identified five

factors for student academic success: (a) begin early, (b) focus on academics, (c)

involve everyone, (d) address financial realities, and (e) create an environment for

success (From Here to University 120-21). These researchers indicate important

essentials to creating any outreach project aimed at increasing access and equity for

at-risk students and students of color. Student identification with the college or

university, as well as the student’s personal educational goals and financial support,

remain significant factors in the retention of students in higher education. Using a

number of these features and the NWT’s Project 2050 as a model, this researcher

sought to develop a model geared to promote access, equity, and successful

matriculation among at-risk students and students of color.

For a model utilizing theatre to enhance access and equity in higher education,

the project director or participating theatre department should first establish criteria

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for the identification of participating artists and scholars. Factors such as location,

expertise, ability to work with young people, knowledge of the themes of the

workshop, and desire or commitment to the project as a whole should be included in

such criteria. It is critical that the artists and scholars selected for this project be

respectful of the other’s expertise and willing to invest in their own personal and

professional development during the process. In addition to artists and scholars,

personnel who might be needed to provide additional activities related to the goals of

the program should be identified. Such personnel might include individuals from the

offices of admissions, financial assistance, and career services, as well as student

leadership organizations on campus.

Students should also be selected for the workshop based on characteristics

important to the institution conducting the workshop. Criteria for selection may

include such items as income range, potential first-generation college student,

ethnicity, recommendation by high school teacher or counselor, affiliation with

community center, and academic potential. Students may also show interest in

theatre, creative writing, dance, music, or the visual arts. At this early stage of

development of the project, it would be ill-advised to base student acceptance solely

on an audition.

The administrators of the workshop must complete all arrangements for room

and board for participants, space reservations for workshops, and finalize

appointments with the additional personnel (such as admissions, financial assistance,

and career services) that might be utilized during the workshop. Additionally, student

mentors or counselors should be hired to assist with supervision of the participants.

The orientation to the project would enlist facilitators and experts from

various community and university locations. The orientation for scholars and artists

might offer:

• sessions by faculty in the education department on issues of access and equity

and educational reform;

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• sessions by scholars in areas related to the themes and concepts to be

presented at the workshop;

• sessions by artists to explore the techniques and methods they will be

presenting;

• collaborative sessions with artists and scholars to explore the workshop

themes and concepts in the format of theatrical pedagogy;

• sessions with admissions, financial assistance, and career services personnel

to discuss the importance of bringing this information to the students

participating in the workshop and their families and the methods that might be

used to present that information; and

• sessions with college-age peer mentors to orient them to the goals of the

workshop and the rules of participation.

The adult participants in the workshop should be identified early in order to

participate in an orientation workshop to take place at different times during the

semester prior to the workshop, or all at once in the week prior to the workshop. It is

critical that all adult participants be present at the orientation sessions for any

workshop to be successful. Given the typically busy schedules of those who might be

involved, it may be easiest to obtain such a commitment if the orientation is built into

the initial agreement with the participants. 4 It would be useful to invite the peer

mentors or counselors to portions of the orientation as appropriate. They should

understand the concept of the workshop and their role in achieving the goals.

Following the adult orientation, the youths would arrive on campus. Their

orientation would begin immediately following their move-in with a session

presenting the “rules” of the workshop. These rules must be set up in advance and

have clear consequences for students who fail to comply. (See Appendix D for a

sample of Project 2050 policies.) The next session would introduce all the

participants in the workshop to one another. In this way, the students can meet the

artists, scholars, peer mentors, and other personnel with whom they will be in contact

over the course of the workshop. The NWT’s Project 2050 also includes an artist

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presentation, in which each artist does a short performance by way of introduction. In

Project 2050, the scholars only participate if they do so in the form of a performance.

This arrangement may or may not be successful in another setting. Scholars may be

more comfortable presenting a brief account of their backgrounds and interests

instead of a performance. Another alternative might be the use of an exercise that

would allow all participants to introduce themselves and engage with one another.

Such an activity might take the form of a theatre game or a Theatre of the Oppressed

exercise in the tradition of Augusto Boal.

A model program of the sort proposed here would incorporate a tour of the

campus and the locations that would be available to students during their time on

campus. Such a tour should include the library, computer laboratories, classrooms,

gymnasium, swimming pool, cafeteria, and student center, as well as studios, shops,

and theatres. In order for the students to envision themselves as college students on

campus, it would be helpful to enlist the participation of the Admissions Office in this

activity, since admissions personnel frequently offer tours to prospective students.

The staff or project director and peer mentors should accompany the students on any

such tour to ensure they are aware of the information delivered to the students. Artists

and scholars might also be included, particularly if they are not from the campus.

If the program includes research activities, the group may need a special tour

of the library by librarians who could explain the resources available to the students

and how they might gain access to them during their time on campus. 5 The entire

workshop should last a minimum of ten days to two weeks, as it takes time for

students to assimilate the many new experiences offered by the activities and

environment. The objectives of the workshop should be reinforced throughout the

period of the students’ stay. For example, when the students are eating at the

cafeteria or enjoying break time in the dormitory, the program mentors may take time

to speak about their experiences at college.

The project director and adult participants also should evaluate the sites of

activity. If one goal of the program is to provide an opportunity for students to “see

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themselves in the environment,” then helping students to “read” the environment may

be important. For example, Project 2050 took place for a number of years on the

Amherst College campus. When eating with the artists and scholars, the researcher

noticed that the cafeteria walls were covered with pictures of men in sporting

activities. Women were not evident in the displays, though Amherst has been

coeducational for over twenty years. How might a female student interpret that

omission? If such overt sexism were apparent in a campus setting where a workshop

was to occur, the facilitators might have to discuss related issues in the cafeteria. Very

likely, the discourse would be educational for the students and would mitigate the

impact of any sense of exclusion.

If a model workshop were to follow the format of Project 2050, students

would move along on “tracks” through workshops following scholarly sessions to

provide some background to the themes selected. The “tracks” would be simply

divisions of students into paths through the workshop sessions. Students may have

expressed interest in writing, as opposed to acting or dance, and may be assigned with

a group to work with specific artist and scholars in those fields. This would become

especially important as the number of students involved in the workshop increases.

Scholars should be integrated into the artist’s workshops as observers but as

participants in the discussion. A longer workshop would create time for relaxation

and enable students to use the campus facilities. This extended period would also

create time for sessions such as, “How to Apply to College” or “How Can I Afford

College?” The admissions and financial assistance office staff should present these

sessions.

Parents and other family members ought to be involved in sessions related to

admission to college and financial assistance. Special sessions for the families of

participating students could be created. Sessions with students and families prior to

the workshop would be beneficial to all involved, helping to establish relationships

with families early on and allowing for discussion of what families could do to assist

their students in matriculation to higher education. The family sessions should

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include information about K-12 curricula and how to assist their student’s successful

entrance to and graduation from college. For example, research indicates that

tracking at the K-12 level places at-risk students and students of color in classes that

do not provide the knowledge required for admittance to and graduation from college.

At-risk students and students of color are frequently advised to take lower-level math

rather than algebra in middle school, a choice that could derail the student’s progress

toward higher education. Parents and families should be made of aware of these

contingencies as early as possible, and be provided with such information at a family

session of the workshop. Sessions with the families of younger participants would be

particularly important.

The workshop should have a culminating experience. Project 2050 held a

performance on its final evening. When possible, Project 2050 engaged the audience

in a community discussion following the performance. Such a performance would

present the activities of the workshop to the students’ families and the community. It

would be valuable to invite admissions counselors, high school guidance counselors,

and project funding organizations to such an event as well. Just after the final

performance the students, artists and scholars should be asked to complete a

workshop evaluation form. (See Appendices G, H, and I for a sample of Project 2050

Evaluations.) The evaluations should be completed on-site and collected for the best

return rate. The evaluations should be tailored to each audience: students, scholars,

and artists. Evaluations should be analyzed to determine success, problems, and

potential changes to be made in the next year’s workshop.

Project 2050’s final performance was rehearsed and restaged later in the NWT

season. In addition, the performance was presented at community sites and open

discussion followed. The model proposed here would include such a performance, as

well as performances at high schools and middle schools, which would extend the

objectives of the project. Moreover, the continuing relationship with the students and

their families that would result from these extended performances would enhance

their identification with the sponsoring higher education institution, a factor that has

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been shown to increase the likelihood that a student will complete college. Finally,

the performance component of the project could provide an opportunity for the

institution’s theatre program to contribute to increased enrollment and retention.

Thus, the NWT’s Project 2050 model seems easily adaptable to the goal of

increasing access and equity to higher education among at-risk students and students

of color. The NWT has developed a workable, creative approach to theatre-related

educational outreach. With a few added elements specific to the issue of increased

access, equity, and diversity to higher education, the NWT projects provide a useful

model for theatre programs wishing to join in the outreach efforts of their institutions.

Conclusion

The first chapter of this dissertation introduced the NWT, the demographics

of the communities it serves, its location within the Five College, Inc. Consortium,

the intent of this study, and the methodology used to gather the data. Chapter Two

provided a literature review and the theoretical framework for the study, including a

description of several concepts critical to the final study recommendations, that is, the

concepts of cultural capital, diversity, and access and equity in higher education.

Interviews and observation, along with archival research, enabled the

researcher to place events in local and national perspectives. The combination of

sources of evidence provided a variety of views of the same events and allowed the

researcher to draw conclusions regarding the value of the NWT as a model for

increasing cultural opportunities for audiences and artists of color.

A review of the research on issues of gender, diversity, and multiculturalism

in higher education reveals that little research has been conducted on the relationship

between programs of theatre in higher education and issues related to gender,

diversity, and multiculturalism. As indicated in Chapter Two, critical education

theorists have called for the reform of educational institutions. Paulo Freire's work on

radical education and his text Education for Critical Consciousness, for example,

seem particularly appropriate to this study of the NWT and its goal of presenting

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works from the periphery. bell hooks, drawing upon Freire's work, also speaks to the

education of students of color in her book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the

Practice of Freedom. Other authors such as James A. Banks, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,

Michael W. Apple, Stanley Aronowitz, and Henry A. Giroux have joined in the

scholarly debate of issues of diversity, radical education, and educational reform. All

of these theorists have contributed to the analysis of the data and conclusions drawn

in this study. Further, current national questions and discussions related to the

recruitment and retention of students of color, the lack of qualified professors of

color, and the diversity of the curriculum can all be tied to the twenty-four year

history of NWT.

Chapters Three and Four were chronological accounts of the work of the

NWT. Chapter Three provided the NWT’s background and production history. The

history of the productions and companies produced and presented at the NWT

represents a remarkable accomplishment, which heretofore had not been published.

Chapter Three also chronicled the prominent companies and performers who have

worked with the NWT, as well as the numerous original plays created under the

auspices of the NWT. Many of these plays have been published and performed in

other theatres across the United States. Roberta Uno and Kathy Perkins edited,

Contemporary Plays by Women of Color, a collection of plays performed at the

NWT. Uno and Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns edited, The Color of Theater: Race,

Culture, and Contemporary Performance, a collection of essays and plays from the

first Intersection Conference. The NWT continues to provide opportunities for artists

of color to have the time, space, and performers needed to develop their original

works. Frequently the artists developing new work at the NWT were also working

with the various educational outreach projects. Chapter Four described the outreach

projects of the NWT beginning with the Latino Theatre Project and the Asian Theatre

Project, two projects that set the stage for the Looking In/To the Future project.

Chapter Four also provided a detailed description of the Looking In/To the

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Future/Project 2050, as well as a detailed description of the activities of and changes

to the outreach program over a three-year period.

Finally, Chapter Five concerned the applicability of the NWT’s outreach

projects to the national issue of student and faculty recruitment and retention and the

usefulness of the NWT as a model for expanding diversity in theatre programs at

institutions of higher education.

The goals of the NWT’s Looking In/To the Future project included building

the skills and capacity of partner organizations, exploring issues and identifying

primary voices, creating cross-cultural dialogue, exploring tools of peer mentorship,

and helping participating artists to build on their artistic skills through collaboration

with other artists and the community. (See Appendix E “Looking In/To the Future”

participants list.) Local newspaper articles, press releases, and reports located in the

NWT archives support their achievement of those early goals. Beyond these stated

goals of the project is the added potential of the NWT model to assist at-risk students

and students of color with successful matriculation to college. The NWT's community

and educational outreach programs illustrate its continuing commitment to crossing

borders, developing audiences, and nurturing new works by artists of color.

This study found that the NWT’s Looking In/To The Future/Project 2050

correlates well with current national issues related to diversity, access, and equity in

higher education institutions. By bringing together marginalized artists and scholars

of color, the NWT has provided a site for continued discourse providing access and

equity. The Looking In/To the Future Project, later re-named Project 2050, was

designed as educational outreach to at-risk students and students of color. The work

of the project seeks to politicize the discourse of at-risk students and students of

color, and as such, is situated in the politics of performance. In observing the project,

the researcher noted that the work strengthened the political stance of the participants.

The students increased their knowledge of political issues relevant to their lives and

were articulate in expressing their opinions in discussions at the workshop. Early

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feminist theorists proclaimed that the personal was political; clearly this is true of the

NWT and its operations.

The significance of this study lies in its documentation of the work of the

NWT, a unique institution operating within an equally unique five-college

consortium. The NWT's twenty-four year history of productions, workshops,

educational outreach projects, successful external funding, and national and

international attention is evidence of its importance as a theatre, and merits an

examination of even greater depth than this study, which barely begins the process.

Further research would assist the NWT in securing funding and continuing service to

the regional and national communities.

A great need exists for the study of existing cultural projects with the potential

to increase access and equity to higher education. Theatre programs could use the

model created by NWT to develop their own projects. By involving themselves in the

university’s goals of increasing diversity and preparing at-risk students and students

of color for college, theatre programs could position themselves for greater visibility

and become indispensable to the life of the campus and the larger community.

1 “Animating Democracy was established by the Americans for the Arts Institute for Community Development and the Arts in 1999 with support from the Ford Foundation. The initiative fosters artistic activity that encourages civic dialogue on important contemporary issues” (Animating Democracy). As an Animating Democracy initiative, Project 2050 is described on the Arts USA website:

Project2050 was an artistic exploration of the post-millennium demographic shift in which racial and ethnic hybridity will progressively blur racial categories. Dialogues considered the effects of this shift on the future of today's youth and on power relationships, politics, and social change as a whole. New theater pieces created by the ensemble Universes, led by Stephen Sapp and Mildred Ruiz and guest playwrights Alice Tuan, Carl Hancock Rux, and Jorge Cortiñas played out a variety of future scenarios using popular culture aesthetics. Community-based theater pieces engaging the 2050 theme were created by 40 African-American, Latino, and Asian-American youth from western Massachusetts communities in collaboration with noted scholars, lead and guest artists, and local theater directors. Works in progress provided the impetus for issue-based discussion and dialogues that, in turn, informed the artistic works. Some dialogues and post-performance discussions were facilitated by a multi-cultural interactions specialist; some by scholars whose expertise, experience with youth and diverse cultures, and ability to illuminate the issues in a deep yet accessible way assured exploration of the issues transcending

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ethnic and cultural differences. Project 2050 examined the creative relationship between artists, scholars, and youth and specifically pursued a more effective model for engaging scholars to connect their scholarship in practical terms to the creative process and to civic dialogue.” (Animating Democracy)

2 In the course of conducting the research for this study, Uno and this researcher had several conversations about how to incorporate scholars into future workshops. She was unhappy with the lack of the scholars’ commitment to the project. As a result, later selection of scholars required a commitment that they would participate in advance planning. 3 After observing several Project 2050 workshops it became apparent to the researcher that the balance between the scholars and artists was a delicate one. Because of an apparent lack of preparation of the scholars, their participation was not received respectfully or in a way that would allow for students to identify with the scholars as role models. In fact, some scholars shared with the researcher that they felt the workshop seemed anti-intellectual. The scholars’ sessions were marginalized and mediated by a person hand picked to relate each scholar’s presentation to the artists and scholars at active discussions. 4 Such a project would benefit from early work with the admissions and financial assistance personnel, as they would most likely be involved in summer orientations and other programs for the coming academic year. 5 The project director should investigate the need for temporary identification cards for the students and guests involved with this project for the length of their participation on campus. This will need to be arranged prior to the workshop and built into the schedule.

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APPENDIX A

Amherst Demographic Information

Amherst, the city in which the Amherst and Hampshire Colleges, the

University of Massachusetts, and the NWT, are located almost doubled its population

from 1980 to 1990. The number of foreign-born persons living in Amherst rose from

7 percent to 12.4 percent in 1980-1990 and grew only about one percent from 1990-

2000. While the Black and Hispanic populations in Amherst grew moderately

between 1990 and 2000, the largest growth was seen in the Asian community.

According to 2000 Census data, the Black, Hispanic, and Asian communities made-

up 22.8 percent of the population of Amherst. The poverty level there jumped from

20.6 percent in 1980 to 26.5 percent in 1990, and decreased to 20.2 percent in 2000.

This change may indicate that the large group of immigrants who moved into

Amherst lifted themselves above the poverty income level between 1990 and 2000.

The level of education attained by the population over twenty-five-years of age also

shifted downwards in 1990 while the number of those completing a bachelor’s degree

or higher increased by almost 20 percent in the 2000 census. The Asian population of

Amherst is comprised of persons from China, India, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the

Philippines, in descending order. The aggregate Asian population of Amherst more

than doubled in the years from 1990 to 2000. (See Table 1.)

Northampton Demographic Information

The population of the city of Northampton, home to Smith College, remained

stable over the last three census periods, fluctuating by just over three hundred. The

Black, Asian, and Hispanic populations are relatively low, comprising only 10.4

percent of the total population in 2000. The major ethnic groups represented in the

2000 statistics are Chinese, Indian, Korean, and Puerto Rican. The 1990 statistics also

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included a large group from Cambodia that is not represented in the 2000 data. This

change may be attributable to the area’s reputation as a “gateway” for Asian

immigrants. Thus, the Cambodians living in Northampton in 1990 may have

dispersed across the region by the year 2000. It is interesting to note that although

only 8.3 percent of the population reported as Asian and Hispanic in 2000, 12.5

percent reported speaking a language other than English in the home.

The census data collected in 1980, 1990, and 2000 all indicate a high

percentage of the population twenty-five-years or older completing high school or

higher education. The percentage is also high for those completing four years or more

of college. In Northampton, the highest percentage of those completing four or more

years of college occurred in the 1980 census (55.4); the lowest percentage occurred in

1990 (32.9); and the percentage rose again in 2000 (46.1). Poverty statistics for

Northampton indicate a steady decrease in the percentage of those living below the

poverty line: 20.6 in 1980, 11.5 in 1990, and 9.8 in the 2000 census data.

Northampton is the not the least diverse of the communities served by the NWT. The

least diverse and the smallest in population is South Hadley. (See Table 2.)

South Hadley Demographic Information

Mount Holyoke College, another member of the Five College consortium, is

located in South Hadley. The population of South Hadley has remained steady since

1980. Neither the 1980 nor 1990 census collections showed a large percentage of

foreign-born persons living in South Hadley, and the poverty level is low. In the past

two censuses, the percentage of the population below poverty level was 4.4 in 1990

and 5.9 in the 2000. The Black, Asian, and Hispanic populations totaled only 7

percent of the total population in 2000, a rise from 3.8 of the total in 1990, but not a

significant number overall. The two largest groups in the Asian community reporting

in 2000 were Asian Indian and Chinese. Of the 405 members of the Hispanic

population reporting in 2000, the Puerto Rican community of 207 was the largest

group. It is interesting to note that while the Asian and Hispanic populations comprise

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5.3 percent of South Hadley’s total population in 2000, twelve percent reported that a

language other than English is spoken in the home. South Hadley is the most

geographically isolated of the three communities that house the Five College

Consortium. Of the cities served by the NWT, Springfield and Holyoke are more

urban and South Hadley is more rural. (See Table 3.)

Holyoke Demographic Information

In close proximity to South Hadley, the town of Holyoke has maintained a

relatively stable population over the past twenty years—44,678 in 1980, 43,704 in

1990, and 39,838 according to the 2000 Census. The Black, Asian, and Hispanic

populations comprised 47 percent of the total population in 2000, with the Hispanic

group representing 41.4 of that total. Of the Hispanic population of Holyoke, Puerto

Ricans represented 36.5 in 2000. Of the foreign-born residents of the community,

31.3 percent entered the United States between 1980 and 1990. Only 1.4 percent

reported that they had entered between 1990 and March 2000. Perhaps reflecting the

significant number of Hispanics in the census data, the percentage of foreign-born

reporting that a language other than English is spoken in the home was 42.8 in the

2000 data—up from 35.3 percent in the 1990 census figures. Almost one- quarter of

the population was below the poverty level in both the 1990 and 2000 census data.

Holyoke residents participated in the outreach projects sponsored by the NWT. (See

Table 4.)

Springfield Demographic Information

Springfield is the largest city in the region served by the NWT. The

population experienced a slight shift upward in the 1990 census, but receded to the

1980 total in the 2000 census data. The percentage of foreign-born residents of

Springfield also remained relatively consistent. The largest number of foreign-born

were from Latin America. The percentage of individuals at or below the poverty level

shifted from 17.8 percent in 1980 to 23.1 percent in 2000.

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The Springfield population included a large percentage of Hispanics (27.2)

and Blacks (22.9) in the 2000 census. In fact, in the year 2000 the Black, Asian, and

Hispanic population combined represented over half the population of the city. The

largest increase was in the Hispanic population, which was reported at 16.3 percent in

1990. The overwhelmingly largest of all Hispanic groups was the Puerto Rican

(23.2). In the year 2000, the Black community of Springfield made-up almost a

quarter of the population. Compared with Amherst, where 55.4 percent of those

twenty-five years of age or older have completed four or more years of college,

Springfield has a low percent of residents (11.8) completing four or more years of

college.. One other characteristic of the Springfield community that may be

significant is that 31.6 percent of the population in the 2000 census reported speaking

a language other than English in the home. (See Table 5.)

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TABLE 1. Demographic Census Data for city of Amherst, Massachusetts.  

City 1980 1990 2000 Amherst

Total population 17,773 35,228 34,874

% Foreign-born 7.0% 12.4% 13.2

%Entered 1980-1990 72.8

% Entered 1990-March 2000 7.7

Persons 25 years or more

% High school or better 89.9 88.9 95.1

% 4 years or more of college 55.4 49.2 68.7

% Income below poverty level 20.6 26.5 20.2

% Black 4.6 6.4

% Asian 8.0 10.2

% Hispanic 5.1 6.2

Asian population 1,138 3,570

Chinese 550 1,188

Filipino 49 73

Vietnamese 47 188

Japan 108 205

India 104 556

Korea 133 448

Hispanic population 1,796 2,159

Mexican .4%

Puerto Rico 2.5% 983

Cuban .3% 92

Other Hispanic or Latino 1.9 895

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   TABLE 2. Demographic Census Data for city of Northampton, Massachusetts.

City 1980 1990 2000

Northampton

Total population 29,286 29,242 28,978

% Foreign-born 5.1% 6.4% 1,870

%Entered between 1980-1990 31.3

% Entered 1990-March 2000 2.6

% Speak language other than English at home 11.7 12.5

Persons 25 years or more

% High school or better 89.9 81.9 88.7

% 4 years or more of college 55.4 32.9 46.1

% Income below poverty level 20.6 11.5 9.8

% Black 444 or 1.5 2.1

% Asian 825 or 2.8 3.1

% Hispanic 999 or 3.4 5.2

Asian or Pacific Islander population 825 906

Chinese 258 217

Cambodia 228

India 76 225

Korea 101 155

Vietnam 22 56

Philippines 13 38

Thailand 8

Other Asian 74 160

Pacific Islander 6

Hispanic population 999 or 3.4% 1,518 or 5.2%

Mexico 92 or .3% 106 or 0.4%

Cuba 15 or.1% 37 or 0.1%

Puerto Rico 746 or 2.6% 1,011 or 3.5%

Other Hispanic 74 or .5% 364 or 1.3%

 

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   TABLE 3. Demographic Census Data for city of South Hadley, Massachusetts.

City 1980 1990 2000

South Hadley

Total population 16,685 17,196

% or # Foreign-born ---- 5.2% 1,170 or 6.8%

% Foreign-born from Europe 41.7

% Foreign-born from Asia 29.3

% Foreign-born from Latin America 7.5

%Entered 1980-1990 4.2%

% Entered 1990-March 2000 392 or 2.3%

% Speak language other than English at home 11.3% 12.0%

Persons 25 years or more

% High school or better ---- 83.4% 89.4%

% Four years or more of college ---- 25.6% 32.9%

% Income below poverty level ---- 4.4% 5.9%

% Black 219 or1.3% 290 or 1.7%

% Asian 321 or 1.9% 499 or 2.9%

% Hispanic 102 or .6% 405 or 2.4%

Asian population 321 499

China 24 82

Philippines 27 37

Japan 43 30

India 84 99

Korea 59 53

Vietnamese - 20

Cambodia 23 -

Hmong - -

Laos - -

Thailand 14 -

Other Asian 47 114

Hispanic population 102 or .6% 405 or 2.4%

Mexico 15 or .1% 54 or 0.3%

Puerto Rico 42or .3% 207 or 1.2%

Cuban 5 6

Other Hispanic 67 or .2% 138 or 0.8%

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   TABLE 4. Demographic Census Data for city of Holyoke, Massachusetts.

City 1980 1990 2000

Holyoke

Total population 44,678 43,704 39,838

% Foreign-born 7.1% 5.6% 2,152

% Foreign-born from Europe 44.6

% Foreign-born from Asia 15.2

% Foreign-born from Latin America 29.9

% Entered 1980-1990 31.3%

% Entered 1990-March 2000 1.4

% Speak language other than English at home 35.3% 42.8

Persons 25 years or more

% High school or better 59.7 84.3 70.0

% Four years or more of college 10.4 28.2 16.9

% Income below poverty level 19.3 25.7 26.4

% Black 1,472 1,828 or 4.6%

% Asian 500 or 1.0 399 or 1.0%

% Hispanic 5.1 16,485 or 41.4%

From Latin America 41.4

Asian or Pacific Islander population 500 or 1.1% 399 or 1.0%

Chinese 20 64 or 0.2%

Philippines 44 30 or 0.1%

Cambodia 163 -

Japan 30 7

India 22 83 or 0.2%

Korea 23 25 or 0.1%

Vietnam 74 14

Other Asian 86 101 or 0.3%

Pacific Islander 38

Hispanic population 13,200 or 30.2 16,485 or 41.4

Mexico 58 or .1 85 or 0.2%

Puerto Rico 12,343 or 28.2% 14,539 or 36.5%

Cuba 18 or .1 58 or 0.1%

Other Hispanic 781 or .5 1,803 or 4.5%

  177

   TABLE 5. Demographic Census Data for city of Springfield, Massachusetts.

City 1980 1990 2000

Springfield

Total population 152,319 156,983 152,082

% or # Foreign-born 8.4% 7.4% 12,159 or 8.0%

% Foreign-born from Europe 33.0

% Foreign-born from Asia 24.0

% Foreign-born from Latin America 33.5

%Entered 1980-1990 33.7%

% Entered 1990-March 2000 4,661 or 3.1%

% Speak language other than English at home 24.1% 31.6%

Persons 25 years or more

% High school or better 63.5 69.6% 73.4%

% Four years or more of college 11.8 15.0% 15.4%

% Income below poverty level 17.8 20.1% 23.1%

% Black 30,289 or19.3% 34,863 or 22.9%

% Asian 1,322 or .9% 3,468 or 2.4%

% Hispanic 25,642 or16.3% 41,343 or 27.2%

Asian population 1,322 3,468

China 150 404

Philippines 51 115

Japan 145 73

India 147 205

Korea 39 104

Vietnamese 588 1,501

Cambodia 7 -

Hmong 46 -

Laos 79 -

Other Asian 70 514

Hispanic population 25,642 or 16.3% 41,343 or 27.2%

Mexico 249 or .2% 630 or 0.4%

Puerto Rico 23,396 or 14.9% 35,251 or 23.2%

Cuban 172 or .1% 232 or 0.2%

Other Hispanic 1,825 or 1.2% 5,230 or 3.4%

  178

APPENDIX B

New WORLD Theater 2050 Project Student Survey

It has been my pleasure to observe the 2050 Project in 2000 and 2002. My observations will be used to write a dissertation (book) about the New WORLD Theater. It would be helpful for me to have your personal thoughts and/or feelings about your experiences in the 2050 Project. In order for me to be able to use your comments, you will need to sign and return a “Consent Form.” I have provided one copy of the form for you to keep and one to return, signed, with your completed survey. Please fill out this form and the survey and return to Donna Aronson, or to Irma Mayorga. Please write as clearly as possible. If you need more room use the back of the page. Name: Date:

Address:

Telephone: Age:

E-mail:

What years did you participate in the 2050 Project? 2000 2001 2002 How did you get involved with the 2050 Project (i.e., TRC, school, person, etc.)?

If you were involved in more than one workshop, describe the changes from one year to the next? What made them important to you?

179

Name the people who were most important to you in the 2050 Project and explain why they were important (such as a particular artist, scholar, counselor, etc.)

Describe the activities (or people) that have most influenced you between workshops?

Describe your experience of living in the dorm and being on the Amherst College campus.

What do you plan to do after you graduate from high school? Go to college Get a job Other (describe)

Has anything about the 2050 Project influenced your attitudes or feelings about going to college? Please describe these influences and your plans?

180

If you are now a counselor, please describe what this leadership position means to you.

Additional comments?

181

APPENDIX C

Project 2050 Statements

IN THE YEAR 2050 IT IS PROJECTED THAT:

A BILLION PRIVATE CARS WILL BE ON THE ROAD • ROBOTS WILL WORK IN FAST

FOOD PREPARATION • ALMOST 100% OF THE TROPICAL RAIN FORESTS IN THE

WORLD WILL BE DEPLETED • WHITES WILL BECOME A MINORITY IN THE U.S. BYT

THE YEAR 2050 • THE OLD DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN FIRST AND THIRD WORLDS

WILL BE MEANINGLESS IN CYBERSPACE • AN AFRICAN AMERICAN WILL BE

ELECTED TOT HE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT OR VICE PRESIDENT IN THE UNITED

STATES • AT LEAST HALF OF THE WORLD’S 6,000 LANGUAGES WILL BE EXTINCT BY

THE YEAR 2050 • SOLAR, GEOTHERMAL ENERGY, AND WIND WILL BE THE

DOMINANT ENERGY SOURCES • AIDS WILL BE ELIMINATED • THE AVERAGE

HOUSEHOLD WILL CONSIST OF 1.9 PEOPLE • AFRICA WILL SEE 34% OF THE

GLOBE’S POPULATION INCREASE. CHINA AND INDIA WILL ACCOUNT FOR 25% •

GLOBAL POPULATION WILL TOTAL 8.9 BILLION • THERE WILL BE PIONEER

COMMUNITITES ON MARS AND A LUNAR BASE • ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES

NUMBER 150 MILLION BY 2050 BECAUSE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES • THE

NUMBER OF AMERICANS AGED 65 AND OLDER WILL INCREASE 135% BETWEEN

1995 AND 2050 • THERE WILL BE LONG-TERM MALE CONTRACEPTION • LARGE

SCALE FACTORIES USING GENETIC TECHNIQUES WILL PRODUCE MUCH OF THE

WORLD’S FOOD • THE HISPANIC AMERICAN POPULATION WILL MAKE UP 24.5% OF

THE TOTAL U.S. POPULATION • USE OF NON-LETHAL WEAPONS SUCH AS STICKY

FOAMS AND AEROSOLS THAT INDUCE SLEEP WILL INCREASE • VIRTUAL WINDOWS

WILL ALLOW EVERYONE TO HAVE A GREAT VIEW IN THE OFFICE: A CITISCAPE ONE

DAY, A COUNTRY SCENE THE NEXT • PCS AND PHONES WILL HAVE VANISHED INTO

THE WALLS • GLOBAL TEMPERATURES ARE SET TO RISE UP TO FOUR DEGREES

CELSIUS BY 2050 • ALL MONEY WILL BE ELECTRONIC PROJECT 2050

NEW WORLD THEATER

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APPENDIX D

Biographies of Project 2050 Youth: Open Studio/Open Dialogue

Claude Brown—Youth from GTFT, Inc. He has been a part of New WORLD Theater’s Looking In/To the Future Project for the past four years. Currently lives in and attends school in Springfield. Michelle Brooks is a junior at Amherst Regional High School (ARHS), graduating a year ahead of her class. She is the choral director of the ARHS gospel choir, which she founded. Tiffany Nicole Campbell—I am Jamaican. I live in Springfield and attend Central High School. I am athletic and I love to write. Peter Chhum—I like to play tennis and soccer. I’m in the 8th grade at Amherst Middle School. Christina Delgado—I am 14 years old. I go to Amherst Regional High School. I enjoy theater and dance. I am interested in being a psychologist or sociologist. But, the arts is something I’ve been doing all my life. I am part of the Amherst High Theater Company. Damaris Delgado— I am 14 years old. I go to Amherst Regional High School (ARHS). I love to sing and write music and lyrics. right now my family, schoolwork, my religion and my music are the most important things in my life. Jamille Hazard—Jamille Hazard attends ARHS where she is coach of the drill team, member of the gospel choir and People of Color United (POCU). She comes from a family of seven siblings and is proud to say that she does not consume alcohol. Aisha Jordan—I love to sing and perform. Doing this makes my life complete. Cassie Madera—I am sixteen years old and live in Holyoke, MA. the New Visions theater group is my only after school/extracurricular activity because is takes up most of my week. I hope to do something in the performing arts as a future career. Andre McPherson—Age 16, attends Holyoke High School. I was raised in Flatbush and when I finish with high school I want to go to college. Making people laugh and dancing are my hobbies. I have been in new Visions of Holyoke for one year. David Ortiz—I am a Puerto Rican male from the South Bronx, NY. I love to sing and dance and express myself. Jessica Robies—I am 18 and I enjoy performing. I have learned how to understand, communicate and be with new people through this project. that’s why I love it. Edward Rueda—I am an actor, I’m a comic, I’m half of a poet, I’m devilishly handsome, and boy do I know it. Tatiana Salgado—I’m 14 and enjoy acting. I also like working with new people and learning new things about them and what they are about. Nuk Thann (Jamie)—I am very wired. I like to eat, dance, and act. I am in the sixth grade at Shutesbury Elementary School. Mikiko Thelwell—I am a sophomore at ARHS, a coach of the drill team, dancer at Amherst Ballet, and work part time at Zoots. I hope to someday be an established spoken-word poet.

(“Project 2050: Open Studio/Open Dialogue” program. 2000)

183

APPENDIX E

This list of artists was included in a grant proposal to the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities sent by Roberta Uno and the NWT April 2001. The proposal also included curriculum vitae and “scholar statements” for the proposed scholars.

The Artists

Baba, born and bred in New York City, was raised in the Living Theater, a world-traveled political performance group. He is a skilled emcee/poet, beatboxer, producer, musician, and actor. He has worked as a street performer in the Hip-Hop poetry world, and as a community activist and educator. Baba has shared the stage with acts as diverse as Common, Mos Def, Outkast, Black Eyed Peas, Kool Keith, Jurassic 5, Soulive, Rhazal, Shuman, DJ Logic, Afrika Bambatta, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Vernon Reid. He has performed at the Rocksteady Anniversary with the pioneers of Hip-Hop culture and with jazz greats John Scofield, Lester Bowie, and Anthony Braxton. The title of Baba’s debut album is Mind Music. Richard A. Bracho is an educator, organizer, and playwright. For the past decade he has taught theater and creative writing workshops to lesbian and gay youth of color and Latino gay and bisexual men in community contexts, while also lecturing and teaching at universities in the Bay Area and around the country. He has recently taught Hip-Hop Hybrid, a playwriting workshop for Hip-Hop artists at Intersection while also working on the Hip-Hop Project (Health in Prison, Health Outta

Prison) at San Quentin Prison for men. He is a recipient of a Creative Work Fund grant from the Walter and Elsie Haas Fund and a 1999 NEA/TCG Playwright’s Residency. Jorge Ignacio Cortinas’ fiction has been awarded first prize in the 1998 Bay Guardian Fiction Contest, the 1999 Jmes Asstly Memorial Prize, and the 2000 Beth Lisa Feldman Prize. He has published in Puerto Del Sol, Ciptali, Frontera, Socialist Review, and Modern Words. His plays include Maleta Mulata (Campo Santo Theatre Company, San Francisco), Odieso, could you stop for some

bread and eggs on your way home? (INTAR, New York), and Sleepwalkers (Area Stage, Miami, Carbonell Award, Best New Work). He was recently named ‘playwright of the year’ by El Nuevo Herald’s year-end list. Kamilah Forbes is a director, actress, and playwright. She is a graduate of Howard University’s Theatre Arts Department and is co-founder of the group, Hip Hop Theatre Junction, founded in August, 1999 in Washington, D.C. Hip Hop theatre Junction puts a spin on theatre arts by including graffiti, b-boys, and twelve dj’s during their performances. Hip Hop theatre Junction incorporates Hip-Hop performance and theater techniques, creating a crossroads upon which two traditionally separate forms come together. Kamilah Forbes is currently the Artistic Director of Hip Hop Theatre Junction and the author and director of its most recent publication, Ryhme Deferred. Michael Edo Keane is an actor, playwright, and the Co-Artistic Director of San Francisco’s KaiHsin Productions. As an actor, Michael has performed at the Next Wave Festival, and toured the United States, Japan, and Singapore with Ping Chong and Co. in Deshima and Chinoiserie. He has also performed at Theatre Des Amadiers in Paris, Huntington Theatre, American Repertory theatre, Berkeley Repertory, San Jose Repertory, and the Music theatre of Oregon.

184

A Bronx native, Mariposa is a poet, spoken word performance artist, free-lance writer, painter, educator, and human rights activist. She has rocked audiences with her brand of poetry and spoken word performance art since 1989 in such venues as the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, Tramps, the Joseph Papp Public theatre, The Cotton Club, Irving Plaza, C.B.G.B.’s, El Instituto de Cultura Puertoriquena in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as well as colleges and universities throughout the Northeast including Brown, Yale, and NYU. Her paintings have been exhibited at the Longfellow Arts Gallery in the Bronx. Mariposa’s poetry is featured in Americanos: Life: Latino Life in the U.S., a documentary produced by Edward James Olmos and Time Warner. It premiered on HBO in May 2000 and featured Carlos Santana, Tito Puente, Amigos de la Plena, the Taco Poets, and El Vez.

Gilbert McCauley has directed at the National Theater of Ghana , American Conservatory Theater, where he served as Artistic Director. His recent directing credits include Polaroid Stories by Naomi Iizuka, Ball by Bertolt Brecht, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson. He is an associate professor in the Department of Theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Rha Goddess is a world-renowned pioneer performance/recording artist known for her unique blend of “spoken word consciousness and Hip-Hop energy.” Rha Goddess has collaborated and performed with such artists as Weldon Irvine, The Last Poets, Nona Hendryx, Olu Dara, Angelique Kidjo, A Tribe Called Quest, Mos Def, Erykah Badu, Public Enemy, and KRS-ONE. She has recently been a featured artist in Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam Tour, CD compilation, and forthcoming HBO series. Rha also penned and performed the Def Poetry Jam theme song. In May 2000, Essence

Magazine recognized Rha as on of the “30 women to Watch” in the new millennium. Rocafella and Kwikstep lead Urban elements, a specialized Hip-Hop dance class that breaks doen the dance forms which make up a larger part of Hip-Hop freestyle, funk, and videography. Rocafella and Kwikstep have recently appeared in BET’s Rap City, Malcolm McLaren’s “Buffalo Gals (Remix)” video, Maria Carey’s “Rooftop” video, and KRS-ONE’s “Step Into a world” video. James Everett

(Jazzy), also renowned for his Hip-Hop freestyle and locking and popping dance style, will be working with Rocafella and Kwikstep in the Summer 2001 Project 2050 Retreat. Alice Tuan is the author of Last of the Suns and Ikebana, which were produced at Berkeley Repertory theatre and East West Players. She is the 2000 recipient of the Mark Taper Forum’s Robert Sherwood Award and also a writer in ACT/Hedgebrook Women Playwright’s Festival. A graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Brown University, Ms. Tuan is a recipient of the NEW/TCG Playwright Residency Grant at East West Players. Ms. Tuan is also the resident playwright at Los Angeles theatre Center. Roberta Uno is the artistic director of the New WORLD Theater, which for over twenty years has produced, presented, developed and commissioned works by artists of color in the theater. She is also a professor in the Department of Theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is the editor of Unbroken Thread: An Anthology of Plays by Asian American Women, Monologues for Actors of

Color: Men and Women, and co-editor of the forthcoming The Color of Theater: A Critical

Sourcebook on Race and Performance.

185

APPENDIX F

This list of artists was included in a grant proposal to the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities sent by Roberta Uno and the NWT April 2001. The proposal also included curriculum vitae and “scholar statements” for the proposed scholars.

The Artists

Baba, born and bred in New York City, was raised in the Living Theater, a world-traveled political performance group. He is a skilled emcee/poet, beatboxer, producer, musician, and actor. He has worked as a street performer in the Hip-Hop poetry world, and as a community activist and educator. Baba has shared the stage with acts as diverse as Common, Mos Def, Outkast, Black Eyed Peas, Kool Keith, Jurassic 5, Soulive, Rhazal, Shuman, DJ Logic, Afrika Bambatta, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Vernon Reid. He has performed at the Rocksteady Anniversary with the pioneers of Hip-Hop culture and with jazz greats John Scofield, Lester Bowie, and Anthony Braxton. The title of Baba’s debut album is Mind Music. Richard A. Bracho is an educator, organizer, and playwright. For the past decade he has taught theater and creative writing workshops to lesbian and gay youth of color and Latino gay and bisexual men in community contexts, while also lecturing and teaching at universities in the Bay Area and around the country. He has recently taught Hip-Hop Hybrid, a playwriting workshop for Hip-Hop artists at Intersection while also working on the Hip-Hop Project (Health in Prison, Health Outta

Prison) at San Quentin Prison for men. He is a recipient of a Creative Work Fund grant from the Walter and Elsie Haas Fund and a 1999 NEA/TCG Playwright’s Residency. Jorge Ignacio Cortinas’ fiction has been awarded first prize in the 1998 Bay Guardian Fiction Contest, the 1999 Jmes Asstly Memorial Prize, and the 2000 Beth Lisa Feldman Prize. He has published in Puerto Del Sol, Ciptali, Frontera, Socialist Review, and Modern Words. His plays include Maleta Mulata (Campo Santo Theatre Company, San Francisco), Odieso, could you stop for some

bread and eggs on your way home? (INTAR, New York), and Sleepwalkers (Area Stage, Miami, Carbonell Award, Best New Work). He was recently named ‘playwright of the year’ by El Nuevo Herald’s year-end list. Kamilah Forbes is a director, actress, and playwright. She is a graduate of Howard University’s Theatre Arts Department and is co-founder of the group, Hip Hop Theatre Junction, founded in August, 1999 in Washington, D.C. Hip Hop theatre Junction puts a spin on theatre arts by including graffiti, b-boys, and twelve dj’s during their performances. Hip Hop theatre Junction incorporates Hip-Hop performance and theater techniques, creating a crossroads upon which two traditionally separate forms come together. Kamilah Forbes is currently the Artistic Director of Hip Hop Theatre Junction and the author and director of its most recent publication, Ryhme Deferred. Michael Edo Keane is an actor, playwright, and the Co-Artistic Director of San Francisco’s KaiHsin Productions. As an actor, Michael has performed at the Next Wave Festival, and toured the United States, Japan, and Singapore with Ping Chong and Co. in Deshima and Chinoiserie. He has also performed at Theatre Des Amadiers in Paris, Huntington Theatre, American Repertory theatre, Berkeley Repertory, San Jose Repertory, and the Music theatre of Oregon.

186

A Bronx native, Mariposa is a poet, spoken word performance artist, free-lance writer, painter, educator, and human rights activist. She has rocked audiences with her brand of poetry and spoken word performance art since 1989 in such venues as the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, Tramps, the Joseph Papp Public theatre, The Cotton Club, Irving Plaza, C.B.G.B.’s, El Instituto de Cultura Puertoriquena in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as well as colleges and universities throughout the Northeast including Brown, Yale, and NYU. Her paintings have been exhibited at the Longfellow Arts Gallery in the Bronx. Mariposa’s poetry is featured in Americanos: Life: Latino Life in the U.S., a documentary produced by Edward James Olmos and Time Warner. It premiered on HBO in May 2000 and featured Carlos Santana, Tito Puente, Amigos de la Plena, the Taco Poets, and El Vez.

Gilbert McCauley has directed at the National Theater of Ghana , American Conservatory Theater, where he served as Artistic Director. His recent directing credits include Polaroid Stories by Naomi Iizuka, Ball by Bertolt Brecht, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson. He is an associate professor in the Department of Theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Rha Goddess is a world-renowned pioneer performance/recording artist known for her unique blend of “spoken word consciousness and Hip-Hop energy.” Rha Goddess has collaborated and performed with such artists as Weldon Irvine, The Last Poets, Nona Hendryx, Olu Dara, Angelique Kidjo, A Tribe Called Quest, Mos Def, Erykah Badu, Public Enemy, and KRS-ONE. She has recently been a featured artist in Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam Tour, CD compilation, and forthcoming HBO series. Rha also penned and performed the Def Poetry Jam theme song. In May 2000, Essence

Magazine recognized Rha as on of the “30 women to Watch” in the new millennium. Rocafella and Kwikstep lead Urban elements, a specialized Hip-Hop dance class that breaks doen the dance forms which make up a larger part of Hip-Hop freestyle, funk, and videography. Rocafella and Kwikstep have recently appeared in BET’s Rap City, Malcolm McLaren’s “Buffalo Gals (Remix)” video, Maria Carey’s “Rooftop” video, and KRS-ONE’s “Step Into a world” video. James Everett

(Jazzy), also renowned for his Hip-Hop freestyle and locking and popping dance style, will be working with Rocafella and Kwikstep in the Summer 2001 Project 2050 Retreat. Alice Tuan is the author of Last of the Suns and Ikebana, which were produced at Berkeley Repertory theatre and East West Players. She is the 2000 recipient of the Mark Taper Forum’s Robert Sherwood Award and also a writer in ACT/Hedgebrook Women Playwright’s Festival. A graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Brown University, Ms. Tuan is a recipient of the NEW/TCG Playwright Residency Grant at East West Players. Ms. Tuan is also the resident playwright at Los Angeles theatre Center. Roberta Uno is the artistic director of the New WORLD Theater, which for over twenty years has produced, presented, developed and commissioned works by artists of color in the theater. She is also a professor in the Department of Theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is the editor of Unbroken Thread: An Anthology of Plays by Asian American Women, Monologues for Actors of

Color: Men and Women, and co-editor of the forthcoming The Color of Theater: A Critical

Sourcebook on Race and Performance.

187

188

Appendix G

Project 2050 Summer Youth Retreat 2002

Questionnaire for youth

This short questionnaire is part of the process of getting your voice heard at Project 2050. It will also help us to improve our program. Please take time to fill this out as completely as you can! Feel free to use the back of the sheet. Thanks!! 1. Name:

2. Did you attend Project 2050 last year? yes________ no________ 3. What are some of the things you hope to get out of Project 2050? (for each item, please check your answer.) Important Not Important Don’t know, or have

not thought about it

Circle whether you will ‘learn’ or ‘improve’ Learn to/improve acting and performing Learn to/improve dancing/movement Learn to/improve my singing Learn to/improve my writing Learn to/improve my DJing skills Learn to/improve my drumming skills Learn to/improve my visual arts skills Learn to/improve my beatboxing/lyricism skills Learn to/improve my speaking in public Important Not Important Don’t know, or have

not thought about it

Work with people from other cultures Work with artists and activists Learn about important national and global issues Express how I feel about issues that concern me Acquire leadership skills/communication skills What else do you hope to get out of this experience? 4. Have you ever performed in public? If you have, please describe when/where: 5. Do you consider yourself to be an artist? 6. What are your plans after you finish high school? 7. Do you plan to go to college? If not, please describe why (feel free to use the back of this sheet).

189

APPENDIX H

Project 2050 Summer Youth Retreat 2002

Questionnaire for youth, pt. 2

We’ve given you back the form you filled out on the first day. Take a look at it. Has this project met your expectations that you had? PLEASE FEEL FREE TO USE THE BACK OF THESE PAGES IF YOU WANT TO WRITE MORE!! 1. What are some of the things you got out of Project 2050? (please mark “X” with your answer) YES! a lot A little bit Not at all Learned to/improved performing theatrically Learned to/improved my dancing/movement Learned to/improved my singing Learned to/improved my writing Learned to/improved DJing skills Learned to/improved drumming skills Learned to/improved beatboxing/lyricism skills Learned to/improved visual arts skills Worked with people from other cultures Worked with artists/activists Learned/improved how I communicate Learned about important global issues Expressed how I feel about issues that concern me Learned/improved my speaking in public Acquired leadership skills Improved my self-esteem/confidence I improved my (you fill in the blank)

2. Name 3 things that you really liked about Project 2050. 1. 2. 3.

3. Name 3 things that you would change about Project 2050. Give us some advice for next summer. 1. 2. 3.

190

4. Project 2050 is about mixing art-making and dialogue, or speaking out. Did that happen? Why or why not? 5. Did this experience affect your future plans? In what way? 6. Rate how you liked these different parts of Project 2050 from 1 to 5, 5 being the highest score, 1 being the lowest score. Intro-day (orientation, introductions, ice-breakers Open Mic Morning warm-ups Knowledge for Power Sessions Artist Workshops Collaboration time in the evening Talent Showcase 7. Would you like to return next year? yes________ no________ not sure________ 8. Were there artists, scholar/activists or counselors that you felt were REALLY effective, please list them here: 9. Why were these persons especially effective—please be specific about them! 10. How do you feel you demonstrated leadership during Project 2050? 11. How did you challenge yourself during Project 2050? 12. Would you like to return as a Peer Leader, or a future counselor? 13. Would you like to nominate a youth to be a peer leader? Who, and why? 1. 2. 3.

191

APPENDIX I

Project 2050 Summer Youth Retreat 2002

Evaluation form for Artists, Scholar/Activists, and Counselors

We really value your feedback. Feel free to use the back of this sheet if you need more room. 1. Name (optional):

2. Role (circle one): Artist Scholar/Activist Counselor NWT staff 3. Name three things that you got out of Project 2050: 1. 2. 3.

4. What didn’t work for you? Please suggest ideas to make these components better: 5. What would you change about Project 2050? 6. In your opinion, was art and dialogue successfully interwoven? Why or why not? 7. The following are some of the objectives we though were important for artists, scholar/activists, and counselors to get out of this experience. Please rate your experience in each category, on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 the highest score and 1 the lowest. You— Were able to lead or collaborate in the creation of art/performance of a high standard Developed your ability to relate with youth Engaged in cross cultural, intergenerational dialogue Enlarged your own skills as educators, artists, or organizers

8. Rate how you liked these different parts of Project 2050 from 1 to 5, 5 being the highest score, 1 being the lowest score. Put “X” if you didn’t attend certain parts. Intro-day (orientation, introductions, ice-breakers) Open Mic Morning warm-ups Knowledge for Power Sessions Artist Workshops Collaboration time in the evening Talent Showcase Final Performance

192

9. Would you like to return next year? yes________ no________ not sure________ 10. Would you like to recommend a scholar, artist, or counselor to us? (If you cannot think of one at the moment please indicate that we should contact you for follow up.) Name Area/Genre 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

11. Would you like to nominate any “first year” youths to be a peer leaders for next year? 12. Are there any youth you would like to make special mention of, please describe? 13. How could New WORLD Theater lend more assistance or support to artists/scholars/counselors?

BIBLIOGRAPY

New WORLD Theatre

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“Alternate Visions.” Valley Advocate 27 October 1992. N. pag. “Amherst Third World Theater Makes it New World Theater.” New England

Entertainment Digest 7 September 1984. N. pag.

Animating Democracy Initiative home page. 4 November 2003. http://www.artsusa.org/animatingdemocracy/adilab/lab_content.asp?id=164

“April Student to Student Calendar.” April 1980. New WORLD Theater archives. Amherst.

“Area Alumni return in Voices in the Rain” press release. 25 November 1985. New WORLD Theater archives. Amherst.

Are You Ready My Sister? flyer. March 1992. New WORLD Theater archives. Amherst.

“Asian American Theater Company” press release. Spring 1989. New WORLD Theater archives. Amherst.

“A Sunday Visit” press release. Spring 1984. New WORLD Theater archives. Amherst.

“A Symposium—Mr. Baldwin’s Blues: The Politics of Theater” press release. October 1988. New WORLD Theater archives. Amherst.

“Auditions Set for New WORLD Theater” press release. 1 January 1985. New WORLD Theater archives. Amherst.

Bao, Quang. “Community Acts Up.” Viet Now November/December 1996. Bermiss, Anita. “New World Theater’s 10th Anniversary Arrives.” Collegian 29

November 1989.

193

Betances Yadira A. “Short Eyes Explored Prison Tension.” Collegian December 1984.

Brown, Humphrey III. “Afro-American Theater Group Comes to University.” Collegian 24 October 1996. 1.

----. “Mason Takes Audience to Haunting Game: The Underseige Stories Tells Gripping Tales of Black Prison Life.” Collegian 28 October 1996. 6.

Bryant, Tracey. “Gullah.” Nummo News April 1984. Burge, Kimberly. “People Receptive to Name Change.” Collegian 21 September

1984.

Burns, Lucy Mae San Pablo. “Voices of Vietnamese American Youth.” Notes For a

New World Fall 1996. 7.

----. “Looking In/To the Future Continues: Building a Repertory from Youth Lives.” Notes For a New World. Fall 1997. 6.

Burns, Lucy and Karima Atiya, editors. Notes For a New World. 23 (1999) : N. pag. ----. Notes For a New World. 24 (1999) : N. pag. ----. Notes for a New World. 25 (2000) : N. pag. “Casa Latina, Inc.” press release. 18 November 1985. New WORLD Theater

Archives. Amherst.

Chapple, Mascheri. Letter to Roberta Uno. 14 December 1979. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst.

Christopher, Elizabeth. “Panel: Wells’ Courage An Awakening for Blacks.” Collegian 2 November 1992.

“Comedy of Identity in Tokyo Bound at New WORLD Theater” press release. 8 April 1993. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst.

“Committed Artists of Great Britain in Macbeth at Fine Arts Center” press release. 9 October 1992. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst.

“Culture for Credits.” Fall 1982. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst.

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Davis, Ellen. “Third World Theater, Ellington Music Series Being Offered This Fall.” Collegian 4 September 1979 : 1-2.

Dering, Alex. “Latino Satire On Stereotypes.” Daily Hampshire Gazette n.d. October 1991. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst.

Dias, Sandra. "Play Reflects Life of City's Hispanics." Union News Local 3 July 1995 : N. pag. “Do Lord Remember Me Review” Collegian/Nummo News 1 November 1983. Duffey, Joseph. “Duffey Addresses Racism on Campus.” Collegian 16 February 88. “1982 Fall Season Made Possible…” 1982 New WORLD Theater Archives.

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“To Be Young, Gifted, and Black” Five-College Theater News. February 1986. Gillingham, Maya. “There’s a New World Coming: The Development of the New

World Theater at the University of Massachusetts.” An Oral History class project: Methods in Women’s Studies, Professor Daphne Patai. 1991. Roberta Uno Office at UMASS. Amherst.

Gomes, Malkes. “Shabby Treatment of NWT.” Collegian 13 September 1993. Gordon, Ronni. “Actor Plays Actor in Third World Play.” Springfield Morning Union

11 February 1984.

----. “Cambodian Students Talk Out Their Pasts.” Union News (Chicopee & Holyoke) 18 November 1996: 1.

----. “Joining Artistic, Idealistic Forces: Two Daughters of Two Black Leaders.” Springfield Morning Union 18 October 1983.

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Educator February 1988.

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Heroine Reveals a Proud Spirit and a Quick Temper.” ts. New WORLD Archives. Amherst.

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Jackson, Darlene. “‘Proud’ Teaches, Entertains.” Collegian 13 February 1984. Jones, Martin. “This Weekend: Pomo Afro Homos: The Post Modern African

American Homosexuals.” Collegian 18-21 February 1993.

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Laurie, Leslie T. Letter to Maya Gillingham at NWT. 4 December 1989. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst.

Lefsky, Barry. “Myths From Africa.” Collegian 12 March 1986. Ling, Brenda. “The Dynamic Duo of King and Shabazz.” Nummo News 16 October

1983.

----. “Do Remember to See Do Lord Remember Me.” Nummo News 24 October 1983.

Lombardo, Daniel. “A Plot of Land in Foreign Soil.” Curtain Calls. October 1979. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst.

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Madnick, Pam. “No Place like Home.” Collegian 12 October 1982. Maguire, Antonia. “New World Theater Celebrates the Many Talents of Paul

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197

Maloon, Alison. “Lord Makes Audience Feel.” Collegian 8 November 1983. Mambande, Thomas. “Students of Color Find Expression in Theater.” Collegian 17

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Marini, Christine. “Theater for a New Age.” Collegian 5 September 1984. “Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities” grant narrative. 2 April 2001. New

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Maurice, Caroline. “‘Working Theater’-Innovation at UMass.” Collegian 4 September 1979.

McDaneld, Molly. “Wine in the Wilderness Proves a Professional Masterpiece.” Collegian 25 September 1987.

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“New Name for Theater.” The Sunday Reporter 2 September 1984. “New Vision Notes.” New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst. 1998. “New World’s Latest Prize-winning Play on Tap at UMASS.” Daily Hampshire

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“New WORLD Previews Tadashi Suzuki’s Lear.” Daily Hampshire Gazette 9 April 1988.

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198

“New WORLD Theater Announces The African Heritage Program.” November 1988. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst.

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“New World Theater Ensemble.” Both Ears to the Ground March 1986. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst

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“New WORLD Theater Invited to Conference in Australia.” Chronicle 24 June 1994. “New WORLD Theater presents An Evening with Cicely Tyson” press release. 19

February 1988. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst

“New World Theater Presents In Living Color” press release. 24 October 1985 New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst

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“New WORLD Theater Spring Season 1988” brochure. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst

“New World Theater Spring Season 1990” brochure. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst.

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199

“New World Theater to Portray Life of Lorraine Hansberry” press release. 26 March 1986. New WORLD Theater Archives. Amherst

Nguyen, Alexander. “Venezuelan Play Depicts Class Exploitation.” Collegian 2 October 1990.

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202

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203

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Extending Possibilities for All Students. Eds. William G. Tierney and Linda Serra Hagedorn. Albany: State U of New York P, 2002. 145-68. Taped Interviews: Conway, Dennis, Managing Director of NWT. Personal interview. 27 April 2000 at the New WORLD Theater Office In Amherst, MA. ----. Personal interview at his office at the Fine Arts Center at UMASS. 29 September 2000. Dial, Metta and Damon. 2050 Counselors. Personal Interview at restaurant in Amherst, MA. 6 July 2000. Edwards, Lee. Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts. Personal Interview at UMASS Faculty Club. 20 June 2001. Erdman, Dr. Harley, Associate Professor of Theater at UMASS. Personal interview. 1 May 2000 in his office at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA. Kaplan, Dr. Ellen, Chair of Theater Department at Smith College. Personal interview. 29 April 2000 in the Bluebird Diner in Northampton, MA. Lederer, Karen, founding staff of NWT. Personal Interview, in her office at UMASS,

Amherst, MA. 20 June 2001.

Lemly, Dr. John, Chair of English and Theater Departments at Mount Holyoke College. Personal interview. 29 April 2000 in the lobby of the Howard Johnson's Inn in Amherst, MA. Lobdell, Dr. Peter, Chair of Theater Department at Amherst College. Personal interview. 1 May 2000 in his office at Amherst College in Amherst, MA.

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Mendez, Yvonne, first Managing Director and currently Director of Design and Publicity. Personal interview. 27 April 2000 at the New WORLD Theater Office in Amherst, MA. Page, Priscilla, former literary intern and Literary Manager of the NWT, also MFA Candidate at UMASS. Personal interview. 29 April 2000 at the Lord Jeffrey Inn in Amherst, MA. Robinson, Phyllis. Personal Interview. 5 July 2000. At a restaurant in Amherst, MA. Tillis, Fred. Retired Director of Fine Arts Center at UMASS. Personal Interview. 21 June 2000. At his home in Amherst, MA. Uno, Roberta, founder and Artistic Director of the NWT. Personal interviews. 1-2 May 2000 at the New WORLD Theater Office in Amherst, MA. ----. 20 June 2001 in her office at the New WORLD Theater in Amherst MA. ----. Phone interview. 7 June 2002. Werner, Jenni, former intern, company manager for New Works for a New World and Interim Director of Education and Access of the NWT, also MFA Candidate at UMASS. Personal interview. 27 April 2000 at the New WORLD Theater Office in Amherst, MA. Personal Observations:

Production:

Polaroid Stories. by Naomi Iizuka, Dir. Gil McCauley. Perf. Rand Theater, UMASS. 28 April 2000. Projects:

"Looking In/To The Future: 2050 Project.” July 2000. "Intersections II" September 2000. “2050 Project” July 3-9, 2002.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

DONNA B. ARONSON Professor of Theatre Arts 

Dean, College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences                      EDUCATION    

2004      Florida State University. Ph.D   Dissertation: “Access and Equity: Performing Diversity at the New WORLD Theatre”   

     1974        Master of Fine Arts/Theatre. Florida State University—Asolo Conservatory Program 

1971      Bachelor of Fine Arts. Virginia Commonwealth University 

 CAREER  1999‐present    Tenured Professor and Dean, College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences       University of the Incarnate Word  1997 ‐ 1999    Tenured Associate Professor and Director of Theatre       Department of Theatre Arts:  Directing/Acting/Voice       College of Arts, and Sciences, University of the Incarnate Word  1996 ‐ 1997    Sabbatical Graduate Assistant, Florida State University       1992 ‐ 1998    Tenured Associate Professor and Director of Theatre.         Department of Theatre Arts:  Directing/Acting/Voice, University of the Incarnate Word        1989 ‐ 1992    Assistant Professor and Director of Theatre.         Department of Theatre Arts:  Directing/Acting/Voice, Incarnate Word College              1982 ‐ 1989    Assistant Professor of Theatre, Head of the Voice Program and Director.           Graduate Actor Training Program.  Brandeis University                     1979 ‐ 1982    Assistant Professor of Theatre Voice. Five Colleges Inc.: Amherst, Hampshire, Mount        Holyoke and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts  1978 ‐ 1979    Teacher of Voice Production.  Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, New York City      1976 ‐ 1979    Private Vocal Coach, New York City  1977      Guest Artist ‐ Department of Theatre.  University of California/San Diego.            1974 ‐ 1976    Instructor of Theatre Voice/Acting.  University of Texas/Austin    

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ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE  As Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS), 1999‐2002,  I have:   Developed fund raising strategies for College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences   Developed and supervised budgets ($4,000,000+), including the operating, equipment and salary lines for      HASS   Supervised faculty hiring and evaluation with focus on minority hiring and retention    Provided pro‐active leadership in establishing a positive climate for minorities and women—hired 5      minority faculty and 9 women faculty    Developed new interdisciplinary major and minor in Cultural Studies    Developed a specialization in urban administration for the masters in administration in collaboration      with San Antonio community leaders and the School of Business    Collaborated with School of Education in revisions of programs for K‐12 education   Developed a BlackBoard (Bb) site for HASS faculty communication and information.   Worked in coordination with Instructional Technology to support and promote faculty training and us of      technology   Developed and implemented HASS infrastructure (committees, faculty evaluation, program development     and review, office operations, etc.)     Recruited and evaluated faculty and staff    Supervised the development of academic schedules    Supported faculty development in language, scholarship, assessment, advising, and leadership    As Director of Theatre at the University of the Incarnate Word (1989‐1999), and as Head of the Voice Program in the Brandeis University Graduate Actor Training Program (1982‐1989), my responsibilities were to:  Articulate artistic and academic vision for the theatre program      Develop and implement undergraduate theatre curriculum    Recruit, develop and evaluate faculty and staff   Plan production and academic schedules      Create and implement development and fund raising goals and activities, including grant writing       Direct operating, equipment and production budgets  for theatre    Provide pro‐active leadership in establishing a positive climate for minorities and women     Manage facilities   Conceptualize and implement publications, including promotional, programmatic and archival materials     Oversee public relations activities, including community, donors, alumni and audience      Establish & promote interdisciplinary connections to CORE Curriculum    Recruit, audition, advise and evaluate students    Implement  Scholarship recruitment process     Develop and manage high school outreach program   MEMBERSHIPS     American Association for Higher Education  (AAHE)     Association for Theatre in Higher Education   (ATHE)       Actors  Equity Association   (AEA) Professional Union     Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences (CCAS)     International Council of Fine Arts Deans (ICFAD)     National Association of Schools of Theatre (NAST)     National Conference of Academic Deans (NCAD)     Texas Association of Deans of Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences (TADLAS)     Texas Council for Arts in Education (TCAE)   

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PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES     Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE)     2003‐2004  ‐  Mentor, ATHE Leadership Institute 

2001‐2002  ‐  Past‐President     2001‐2002  ‐  Chair, Nominating Committee     2001    ‐  Chair, Redefining Scholarship for Field of Theatre Task Force     1999‐2001  ‐  President     1997‐1999  ‐  President‐Elect     1997‐1999  ‐  Chair, Management Transition Task Force     1997‐2002  ‐  Governing Council     1997‐1999  ‐  Chair of Strategic Planning Committee     1997‐1998  ‐  Co‐chair of Development Task Force     1997‐2001  ‐  Operations Committee     1995‐1996  ‐  Board of Governors     1995‐1996    ‐  Vice President for Conferences     1991‐1992  ‐   Secretary     1991‐1992  ‐  Board of Governors     1988‐1989  ‐   Vice President for Conferences     1987‐1988  ‐  Associate Vice President for Conferences     1987‐1988  ‐  Theatre FORUM Chair     1987‐1990   ‐   Board of Governors    Council of College of Arts and Sciences (CCAS)     1999‐2002  ‐  Member, Issues and Resolutions Committee    Texas Association of Deans of Liberal Arts and Sciences (TADLAS)     2000‐2003  ‐  Member‐at‐large, Executive Committee    Voice and Speech Trainers Association (VASTA)     1989‐1993  ‐  Board of Directors    Texas Educational Theatre Association (TETA)    1991‐1992  ‐  Committee on Advocacy     American Theatre Association/University and College Theatre Association (ATA/UCTA)    1984‐1985  ‐  Theatre Voice and Speech Committee for Establishing                   Optimum  Standards      1983‐1984  ‐  Finance Committee      1983‐1984  ‐  Governing Council      1982‐1984  ‐  Theatre Voice and Speech Program:  Chairperson      National Committees (Representative)     ATHE Leadership Institute.  Mentor, 2002 and 2003. 

CCAS Issues and Resolutions Committee, 1999‐2002     ATHE Chair, Task Force on Redefining Scholarship for Theatre, 2001     ATHE Operations Committee, 1997‐2001.     ATHE Governing Council, 1997‐2003.     ATHE Chair, Strategic Planning Committee, 1997‐1999. 

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    ATHE, Chair, Digital Technology in Teaching and Performance Review Committee 1997‐99.     ATHE, Chair, Management Transition Team 1997‐1998.     ATHE Task Force on Development, Co‐Chair, 1997‐1998.     ATHE/AATE Joint Conference Committee, 1995‐1996.     ATHE Task Force on Theatre s Role in Educating and Humanizing, 1992‐1994.     ATHE Representative to the  Task Force on Production and Curriculum,             ATHE, National Association for Schools of Theatre (NAST), and the United States        Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT), 1991 ‐ 1992.     ATHE Task Force on Outcomes Assessment, 1990.     VASTA Task Force on Hiring, Retention, Promotion and Tenure, 1989 ‐1992.     ATHE Task Force on Membership, 1989 ‐ 1992.     VASTA Task Force on Promotion and Tenure, 1989 ‐1991.     VASTA Task Force on Promotion and Tenure, 1988 ‐ 1992.      VASTA Committee on Guidelines for Evaluation, 1988 ‐ 1990.        VASTA Liaison Committee, 1987 ‐ 1991.      ATHE Task Force on Promotion and Tenure, 1987 ‐1990.     VASTA Liaison to ATHE THEatre FORUM, 1987 ‐ 1988.     Theatre Voice and Speech Committee Establishing Optimum Standards 1984‐1985.     ATA/UCTA Finance Committee and Governing Council, 1983 ‐ 1984.     ATA/UCTA Theatre Voice and Speech Program, Chairperson, 1982 ‐ 1984.   COLLEGE AND COMMUNITY SERVICE    University Committees (Representative)     Member, Educational Effectiveness Committee, UIW, 1999‐2001     Member, Planning Commission, UIW, 1999‐2004 

Member, Dean s Council, UIW, 1999‐2004     Member, Committee on Probations and Suspensions, 1999‐2004     

Chair, HASS Chairs’ Council 1999‐2004     Member, Assessment Committee, 1999‐2004 Member, Program Review Committee, 2001‐2004 Chair, School of Business, Administration, and Applied Arts Dean s Search Committee, 2001‐2002 

    Member, SACS Accreditation Planning Committee, 2001‐2002     Member, Planning Commission Task Force on Scheduling, Advising, and Registration, 2000‐2002     Member, Academic Policy Committee, 2000‐2001     Member, Post‐Tenure Review Task Force, 2000‐2001     Member, Admissions/Orientations Committee, 2000‐2003     Grants writer, Theatre Arts Department, Written or assisted in over a dozen grants for the        department, regularly received grant of approximately $6,000.00 per year from the        Barbara Bradshaw Stokes foundation,  assisted in the writing of a 1.3 million dollar grant        to the Maddux Foundation 1997,awarded $100,000.00 from the Maddux Foundation 1997,        assisting with the December 1997 request to the Maddux Foundation 1989‐99     Member, Fine Arts Cluster, UIW, 1997‐1999     Member Junior Faculty Mentoring Team, UIW, 1997‐1998     Member, Vision of Integrated College Experience‐VOICE, UIW, 1997‐1998     Editor, FSU School of Theatre “Curtain Call” a weekly newsletter, 1996‐1997     Consultant, FSU School of Theatre Artistic Advisory Committee, 1996‐1997     Chairperson, Performance Position Search Committee, IWC, 1994, 1995     Chairperson, Amy Freeman Lee Chair Search Committee, IWC, 1995‐1996 

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    Member, Vision Statement Steering Committee, 1995‐1996     Member, Admissions Committee, IWC 1995‐1996.     Chairperson, Amy Freeman Lee Chair Search Committee,  IWC  1994‐1995     College of Arts and Science Steering Committee, IWC, 1995‐1996     Football Task Force, IWC, 1995‐1996     Task Force on Vision of the University of the Incarnate Word, IWC, 1995‐1996     Rank and Tenure Committee, IWC, 1995‐1996     Chairperson, Faculty Association, IWC, 1993‐1995     Member of the IWC Board of Trustees, IWC, 1993‐1995     Member of the IWC Board Academic Affairs Committee, 1993‐1995     Academic Council, IWC, 1993‐95     Chairperson, Faculty Executive Committee, IWC,  1993‐1995     Chairperson, Virginia Cerna Joseph Student Award Committee, IWC,  1994     Task Force on the San Antonio Law School, IWC, 1993‐1994     Academic Vice President Search Committee, IWC, 1993‐1994     Student Development Matrix Committee, IWC, 1992‐1993     Grievance Committee, IWC, 1992‐1993     Chair, Performance Position Search Committee, IWC, 1992‐1993     Higher Education Week Planning Committee, Chair/member, IWC, 1991‐1992     Assessment Committee, IWC, 1990‐1991      Amy Freeman Lee Chair Search Committee, IWC, 1990 ‐ 1993     Coordinated the Tenth Anniversary Gala Committee, the Gala included the performance of        Twelfth Night and receptions following. IWC, 1990‐1991.     Curriculum Committee, IWC, 1990‐1992      Faculty Affairs Committee s Task Force on Faculty Salaries, IWC, 1989‐1990      Member, Task Force on the Catholic Television Station, IWC, 1989‐1990      Search Committees for Positions in Speech and Theatre Arts, IWC, 1989‐1992     Theatre Arts Promotion/Tenure Committee, Brandeis University, 1988‐1989     Faculty Senate:  Committee on Nominations,   Brandeis, 1986‐1988     Faculty Senate,  Brandeis, 1985‐1988     Chairperson, Search Committees,  Brandeis and IWC, 1984‐1992     High School Outreach Program,   Brandeis, 1984‐1988     Committee on Academic Standing, Brandeis, 1983 ‐ 1985     Theatre Arts Acting/Directing Committee, Brandeis, 1982‐1989.    State Committees (Representative)         TADLAS Executive Committee, 2000‐2003     University Intercollegiate League, Critic Judge, TETA, 1993‐99     Resource Committee, TETA, 1993‐94     Procedures and Policies Committee, SWTA, 1993‐95     Committee on Advocacy, TETA, February, 1991‐93     University and College Association s Nominations Committee, TETA, 1991    Community Service     Bexar County Arts & Cultural Fund, member of Board 2004 

Women Leadership, Member of Panel, International School of the Americas, NEISD, 1999.     5A Zone A and B One Act Play Contest Critic Judge, March 1998.     Mickee Faust Club Performance Troupe, Consulted on Development of Mission, 1996‐1997 

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    Northside Independent School District, conducted an improvisation workshop for the Gifted and       Talented Program students,  Fall 1997.     Texas Junior College Theatre Association, Critic Judge, Spring 1996.     San Antonio Theatre Coalition, 1995‐1998     31‐5A Zone A and B One Act Play contest Critic Judge, March 1995     Peer Review of Tenure Documents for a faculty member at the University of Dallas, Spring, 1995.     YWCA, Member, Rising Stars Council, honoring “Women in the Arts,” 1995     North East Independent School district, conducted workshop session “The Magnificent Voice:         An Essential for Acting and Interpreting.”  August, 1995.     Northside Independent School District, conducted workshop on Shakespeare and Language  for        the Gifted and Talented Program students,  Fall 1994     District 28‐5A UIL One Act Play Festival, Critic Judge,  September 1991     Delivered Theatre Lecture at the Institute of Texas Cultures.  November 1991.  AWARDS  Voice and Speech Trainer’s Association Award for Leadership and Service.  Chicago, August 1994.  Alamo Theatre Arts Council “Globe Awards”  Best Production, Co‐Direction, and Co‐Costume Design for   Comedy of Errors.  September 1995.   PUBLICATIONS, WORKSHOP, PAPER, AND PANEL PRESENTATIONS  “Deaning the Arts” panel. ICFAD annual conference. Fort Worth, TX. 2003 “NAST Panel” ATHE National Conference. San Diego, CA, 2002. Symposium on Distance Education.  Park University, Parkville, MO. 2002.  Academic Freedom and Security on University Campuses.  TADLAS Annual Conference, Austin, TX, 2002. CCAS Small‐Institutions Deans  Clinic.  CCAS Annual Conference.  Washington, DC. 2001. Past President s Panel:  Future Directions.   ATHE National Conference, Chicago, IL, 2001. Orientation to ATHE and the Annual Conference.   ATHE National Conference, Chicago, IL, 2001. How to Become a Faculty Member.  ATHE National Conference, Chicago, IL, 2001. Diversity: Recruiting and Retention of Faculty and Students of Color.   Chair and Member of Plenary Panel.    ATHE National Conference. 2000. Orientation to ATHE and the Annual conference.   ATHE National Conference. 2000. Assuming the Deanship:  The First Year   NCAD Annual Conference, Denton, TX, July 2000. Theatre and the New University Agenda  NAST Annual Conference, Albuquerque, NM, March 2000 Race, Gender and Class: Diversity s Impact on Theatre Program s in Higher Education and ATHE.  Chair and   Member of Plenary Panel. ATHE National Conference. 1999. Reconsidering Scholarship Reconsidered:  Impact on Theatre Studies in Higher Education.  Respondent to    Panel. ATHE National Conference. 1999. Orientation to ATHE.   Presenter. ATHE National Conference. 1999.   Celebrating Scholarship.   Presented paper. UIW Faculty Workshop.  August 1998. “Roundtable on Race and Gender.   Member of Panel.  ATHE National Conference. 1998.  San Antonio, TX. The Job Interview.   Presented paper.  ATHE National Conference. 1998.  San Antonio, TX. To Improvise or Not To Improvise:  The Creative Nightmare?”  Chair. ATHE National Conference.  1997.   Chicago, IL. Celebrating Diversity.  Co‐Chair of the Conference.  Joint Conference of ATHE and American Alliance for   Theatre Education (AATE).  1996.  New York, NY. 

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Objective Evaluation of Theatrical Voice Data on the Voice Disordered Actor.”   Authors: Pamela Lynn Harvey,   Dr. Robert Coleman, and Donna Aronson.  The Voice Foundation Annual  Symposium.   1993.  Jefferson   Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University.  Philadelphia, PA. Theatre s Role in Educating and Humanizing: Task Force Report.   Chair and presenter.  ATHE National   Conference.  1993.  Philadelphia, PA. Higher Education in the 21st Century:  Impact on Theatre Education.   ATHE National Conference.  1993.    Philadelphia, PA.   Acoustic Evaluation of Actor s Voices: Normative Data.  Authors: Pamela Lynn Harvey, Donna Aronson,  and   Dr. Robert Coleman.  The Voice Foundation Annual Symposium.   1992.  Philadelphia, PA. VASTA Models for Promotion and Tenure.  Co‐author with Marian E. Hampton. VASTA Publication. Bettyann   Leeseberg‐Lange, ed.   July 1991. St. Louis, MO. Presentation of VASTA Models for Promotion and Tenure.   ATHE National Conference.  1991.  Seattle, WA. Workloads and Non‐tenured Colleagues: Overloaded and Undervalued.   ATHE  National Conference.  1991.   Seattle, WA. Acoustic Evaluation of Actors  Voices:  Teaching Applications.     The Voice Foundation Annual Symposium.      1990.  Philadelphia, PA. Objective Analysis of Actors  Voices:  An Initial Report.     Journal of Voice.   1989. Raven Press.   New York Approaches to Violence on the Contemporary Stage: The Sounds of Violence  Chair.  ATHE National   Conference.  1989.  New York City, NY. Challenge to the Profession ‐ The Relationship of Production to the Educational  Mission   Panel.  ATHE   National Conference. 1989.  New York City, NY. Vocal Coaching and Speech Pathology: An Exchange of Ideas    Panel.  The Voice Foundation Annual   Symposium.   1989.   Philadelphia, PA.  Objective Analysis of Actors  Voices:  A Statistical Analysis.   The Voice Foundation Annual Symposium. 1989.     Philadelphia, PA.   The Actor s Voice:  What Can It Teach Us?    Seminar.  American Speech and  Hearing Association National   Convention.    1988.   Boston, MA. The Voice/Speech Specialist:   To Tenure or Not.    Half‐day Panel.   ATHE National Conference.  1988.   San   Diego, CA. Guidelines for Tenure and Promotion for Technical Directors and Voice and Movement Teachers.  Panel. ATHE   National Conference. 1988. San Diego, CA.   Objective Analysis of Actors  Voices.   Paper.  1988.  The Voice Foundation.  Annual Symposium.  New York,   NY. The Objective Analysis of Actors  Voices.     ATHE National Conference. 1987.  Chicago, IL. Directors:  Safeguard Your Performer s Vocal Health.    ATA  Theatre News. April  1984.  Volume 16, Number 2.     K. Weinstein, editor. The Care and Maintenance of the Performer s Voice.   Paper.  New England Theatre Conference. 1984.    Providence, RI. The Care and Treatment of the Performer s Voice.   Developed Program and Chaired One‐day Workshop.   ATA   National Convention.  1984.   San Francisco, CA. Vocal Strain:  What Is It,  How Not To Get It,  and What To Do If You ve Got It.    Chair.  ATA National   Convention.  1984.   San Francisco, CA. ATA/UCTA Theatre Voice and Speech Program Newsletter.   July 1983.   D. Aronson, editor. From Whence the Golden Tones:  Physiology of the Vocal Mechanism.    Chair.  ATA  National Convention.    1983.   Minneapolis, MN. Warming Up For Vocal Health.    Workshop.   New England Theatre Conference Annual Convention (NETC).     1982.   Hartford, CT. Expressing Sensory Perception:  Imagery and Its Physical and Vocal Expression.  Workshop.  ATA  National   Convention. 1982.   New York, NY. 

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A Vocal Warm Up:  How and Why?    Workshop.  American College Theatre Festival XIV (ACTF),  Region I.    1982.   Providence, RI. Voice in the Valley.    Five College Theatre News.   April/May  1981.   Volume 2,  Number 4.  D. Meservey, editor. Forum:  Integrating Voice/Speech and Movement with the Acting Process.   Panel.   ATA National Convention.    1981.  Dallas, TX.   CREATIVITY   DIRECTING  Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare.  Spring 1999.  University of the Incarnate Word. 

Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen.  Fall 1998.  University of the Incarnate Word. 

The Beaux ‘ Stratagem  by George Farquhar.  Spring 1998.  University of the Incarnate Word.    

“Old Testament” and “The Florida Song” March 1997.  Mickee Faust Club Performance Troupe, Tallahassee, FL. 

Macbeth  by  William Shakespeare.   Spring 1996.  University of the Incarnate Word. 

Tons Of Money  by Alan Ayckbourn.  Summer  1995.  Incarnate Word College Summer Theatre. 

I Ought To Be In Pictures   by Neil Simon.  Summer 1994.  Incarnate Word College, Resident Company.  Director 

  and Costume Designer 

Year Of The Duck  by Israel Horovitz.   Summer 1992.  Incarnate Word College, Resident Company.  Director and 

  Costume Designer 

Comedy Of Errors  by  William Shakespeare.   Spring 1995.  Incarnate Word College.  Co‐ Director and Co‐Costume 

  Designer.   

The Trial Of God  by Elie Weisel.  Fall 1994.  Incarnate Word College. 

Antigone by Sophocles, translated by Timberlake Wertenbaker.  Spring  1994.   Incarnate Word College. 

Standing On My Knees  by John Olive.  Spring  1993.  Incarnate Word College. 

Rhinoceros  by Eugene Ionesco.  Fall 1992.  Incarnate Word College. 

Tartuffe   by Moliere, translated by Richard Wilber.  February 20‐29,1992.   Incarnate Word College. 

SmokeScreen  by Sheila Lynch Rinear (original). October 3‐13, 1991 Incarnate Word College. 

Twelfth Night   by  William Shakespeare.  February 21‐24 and March 7‐10, 1991.   Incarnate Word College. 

The Diviners  by Jim Leonard, Jr.  October 4‐14, 1990.  Incarnate Word College. 

The Trojan Women by Euripides.  April 25‐29 and May 2‐5, 1990.  Incarnate Word College. 

The Dining Room   by A. R. Gurney.  October 16‐23, 1988.  Brandeis University. 

A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking  by John Ford Noonan.  March 21‐22, 1988.  Brandeis University. 

Bus Stop   by William Inge.  April 8‐12, 1987.  Brandeis University. 

Passing Game   by Steve Tesich.  February 12‐16, 1986.  Brandeis University. 

Breakdown Lane   by Doug Grissom (original).  April 17‐21, 1985.  Brandeis University. 

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The Diviners   by Jim Leonard, Jr..  February 22‐26, 1984.  Brandeis University. 

Lila Mae  by Doug Grissom (original).  April 6‐10, 1983. Brandeis University. 

Calm Down Mother   by Megan Terry.  Spring 1982.  Mount Holyoke College. 

Cages  by An Evening of One‐Acts. “Epiphany” by Lewis John Carlino.  March 6‐8, 1981.  Mount Holyoke College. 

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.  Spring 1976.  University of Texas at Austin. Adapted and Directed. 

  DRAMATURG  Top Girls by Caryl Churchill. Fall 1996.  Florida State University.    ACTING  “You Can Never Have Too Much Sky”:  An Afternoon of Readings from the Works of Sandra Cisneros.  Fall 1997.    University of the Incarnate Word, Extended Run Players.  Return Engagements  by Bernard Slade.  Summer 1993. Incarnate Word College, Resident Company.  Rumors  by Neil Simon. Summer 1991.  Incarnate Word College, Resident Company.  Actor and  Costume   Designer  The Octette Bridge Club  by Paul Osborn.  Summer 1990. Incarnate Word College, Resident Company.    ACTING COACH  — VOCAL COACH  Incarnate Word College —  1993.       Roosters (director Mary Beth Swofford) Acting and Vocal Coach.  Brandeis University — 1982 ‐ 1989  Vocal Coach       Rhinoceros (director Michael Murray)         Enemies (director Ted Kazanoff)       Twelfth Night (director Danny Gidron)       Private Life of the Master Race  (director Danny Gidron)       Equus  (director James Clay)       The Threepenny Opera  (director Danny Gidron)       An American Clock  (director Danny Gidron)       Summer and Smoke (director Ted Kazanoff)       The Rivals  (director Charles W. Moore)       A Midsummer Nightʹs Dream  (director Danny Gidron)       Good  (director Danny Gidron)       Malcolm  (Director Edward Albee)       The Little Foxes  (director Ted Kazanoff)       Comedy of Errors (director Danny Gidron)       The Matchmaker  (director Danny Gidron)       The Crucible (director Charles W. Moore)       Measure for Measure (director Danny Gidron)       The Time of Your Life  (director José Quintero)       Venus Observed (director Charles W. Moore)    

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University of California/San Diego — 1977       A View From The Bridge (director, Jorge Huerta), Vocal Coach      Mount Holyoke College — 1982       The Trojan Women (director Nancy Enggass) Vocal Director.   TEACHING    COURSES TAUGHT    Fundamentals of Directing       Advanced Directing         Beginning Acting        Intermediate Acting         Advanced Acting        Acting in Verse           Acting Styles:  Restoration, Greek, Commedia   Acting Shakespeare   Scene Study          Voice Studies for Actors   Voice and Imagery        Text:  Verse   Theories of Acting/Directing      Voice and Speech   Dramaturgy          Graduate School Preparation   CONFERENCES ATTENDED   CCAS Annual Conference. 2003.  Orlando, FL   ICFAD Annual Conference 2003. Fort Worth, TX.   ATHE Annual Conference. 2003. New York, NY.   NAST Retreat for Administrators of Theatre Programs in Higher Education, 2003, Snowbird, UT.. 

Annual Meetings of the Texas Association of Deans of Colleges of Liberal Arts and.  TADLAS, 2003,   Austin, TX. 

Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences.  CCAS Annual Conference, November 2002, San Francisco, CA. Annual Meetings of the Texas Association of Deans of Colleges of Liberal Arts and.  TADLAS, 2002,   

Austin, TX. ATHE Annual Conference. 2002 San Diego, CA. 

  AAHE Annual Conference. 2002. Chicago, IL.   Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences.  CCAS Annual Conference, November 2001, Washington, D.C..   Annual Meeting of the Texas Council for Arts in Education, October 2001. Dallas, TX.   Practice, Theory, Technology and the New Student,  ATHE Annual Conference 2001.  Chicago, IL.   NAST Retreat for Administrators of Theatre Programs in Higher Education, 2001, Richmond, VA.   AAHE Annual Conference. 2001. Washington, DC   Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.  CASTL Meeting for Scholarly       Associations.   March 2001, Washington, D.C.   AAHE and Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.  CASTL  Meeting for      Campus Collegium.   2001, Washington, D.C.   Annual Meetings of the Texas Association of Deans of Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the      Texas Association of Colleges of Teacher Education.  TADLAS, 2001, Austin, TX.   Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences.  CCAS Annual Conference, 2000, Toronto, Canada.   ACE and Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.  CASTL   Meeting for      Scholarly Associations.   2000, Washington, D.C.   Dreaming the Century  ATHE Annual Conference 2000.  Washington, D.C.   NCAD Annual Conference, 2000, Denton, TX. 

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  AAHE  Workshop for Chairs and Deans,  June 2000, Washington, D.C.   NAST Retreat for Administrators of Theatre Programs in Higher Education, 2000,      Albuquerque, NM.   Rethinking Theatre Teacher Education.   Invitational Think Tank for Change Makers.          AATE/ATHE/EdTA, 2000, Chattanooga, TN.   The Recovery of Paideia:  the Intellectual, Moral, and Spiritual Formation of Students.   Lilly Foundation      Regional Meeting.  2000.  Waco, TX.   Annual Meetings of the Texas Association of Deans of Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the      Texas Association of Colleges of Teacher Education.  TADLAS, 2000,  College Station, TX.   Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences.  CCAS Annual Conference, 1999, Seattle, WA.   Crossing Borders   ATHE Annual Conference 1999.  Toronto, Canada.   Workshop for New Chairs and Deans.  ACE Conference, 1999, Washington, DC.   NAST Retreat for Administrators of Theatre Programs in Higher Education, 1999,      Pittsburgh, PA.     “Reflections on the Past.” TETA Annual Convention.  1999. Austin, TX.   “Performance Frontiers and Cultural Connections.” ATHE Annual Conference 1998.     San Antonio, TX.   American Society for Theatre Research Annual Conference.  ASTR,  1998, San      Antonio, TX.   “Dramatic Interactions.” ATHE Annual Conference 1997, Chicago, IL.   “Celebrating Diversity.” ATHE Annual Conference 1996, New York, NY.   “Gateways to the Next Millennium,” ATHE Annual Conference 1995, San      Francisco, CA.   “Theatrefest ‘96.” TETA Annual Convention, 1996, Houston, TX.   Texas Thespian Festival, 1995, Denton, TX.   “Making Connections II:  Claiming the Past, Shaping the Future:  Women in Catholic Higher Education,      NAWCHE:  National Association for Women in  Catholic Higher Education, Loyola University,      Chicago, IL.   “Theatrefest ‘95.” TETA Annual Convention, 1995, Houston, TX.   NAST Retreat for Administrators of Theatre Programs in Higher Education, 1994, Houston, TX.   Texas Thespian Festival, 1994, Duncanville, TX.   SWTA Annual Convention, 1994, New Orleans, LA.   “Theatrefest ‘94,” TETA Annual Convention, 1995, Houston, TX.   The Voice Foundation 22nd Annual Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice, 1993, Philadelphia, PA.   Imagine the Future,” ATHE Annual Conference 1993, Philadelphia, PA.   NAST Retreat for Administrators of Theatre Programs in Higher Education, 1993, Atlanta, GA.   Higher Education in the 21st Century:  Impact on Theatre Education.   ATHE Annual Conference 1992,      Atlanta, GA.   “Celebrating Many Cultures.” ATHE Annual Conference 1991, Seattle, WA.   SWTA Annual Convention, 1990, Dallas, TX.   “Theatrefest ‘90.” TETA Annual Convention, 1990, Houston, TX.   Association for Communication Administration, Annual Conference, 1990, Houston, TX.   “ Issues of the Nineties.” ATHE Annual Conference 1990, Chicago, IL.   “Connections.” ATHE Annual Conference 1989, New York, NY.   “Bridging the Gap.” ATHE Annual Conference 1988, San Diego, CA.   ATHE Annual National Conference 1987, Chicago, IL.   

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