(MOTOR CITY TOUR)
Do you
know where you’re going to
Do you like the things that life is showing you
Where are you going to
Do you
know?
Do you get what you’re hoping for
When you look behind you there’s no open doors
What are you hoping for
Do you know?
(From
the song “Do You Know Where You’re Going To?” from the Diana Ross album Diana
Ross, 1976, composed by Gerry Goffin / Michael Masser)
I
|
co-founded two educational theater
companies during the late 80’s: Umoja SaSa! (Kiswahili for “Unity Now!”) and
Actors Against Drugs (AAD). I
imagined them to be like the Motown “Motor City” bus tours of the 60’s, when
Motown took its acts on the road to perform at small venues across the
country. My little Nissan Sentra
hauled the actors, costumes, props, and sets of my theater companies up and
down the east coast, stopping at schools, churches, festivals, businesses, and
occasional street corners.
Vanessa “Peaches” Mack, a friend of mine from high
school, was my partner in founding Umoja SaSa! She and I met in 1975 on the corner of Park Heights and
Belvedere, after I had moved from Portsmouth to Baltimore and was attending my
first day at Northwestern High School.
Vanessa was stunning, and looked like the actress Vonetta McGee who
played the character Thomasine in Gordon Parks’ 1974 film Thomasine & Bushrod. (The movie was a blaxploitation classic, intended as a
counterpart to the film Bonnie and Clyde.) Vanessa had the attitude of Angela
Davis, with an Afro to match, was outgoing and talented and knew just about
everybody worth knowing. We were
in the same drama class, and when we met she was stage-managing the school’s
production of the Neil Simon comedy Plaza
Suite. The cast of the play was wonderfully talented, and it was the first
time I recognized several flamboyant gay students. I felt right at home with
the group of young, passionate thespians.
Vanessa was my first real friend in Baltimore. She and I would get an all day pass for the city bus and
ride everywhere. We became so
close that we referred to each other as cousins; it was easier to explain our
relationship that way, and prevented us from inadvertently cock blocking the
other when we socialized. Vanessa
was a party girl, and we drank my favorite Boone’s Farm Apple Berry wine and
smoked weed. I got to hang out
with her older friends in the senior class and became a part of the “artsy”
clique at Northwestern. They loved
to hear me shout out Nikki Giovanni’s poem Ego
Tripping, performed like a Baptist preacher.
Vanessa left Baltimore after high school and moved to
Virginia. But she returned to
Baltimore in 1988, renamed as Nzinga Ama,
(an African name meaning “warrior queen”), and wearing a beautiful head of
strong dreadlocks. I was
performing with the Children’s Theater Association (CTA) in Baltimore, and the
company asked me to stage storytelling performances of African folktales for
Black History Month. When I told Nzinga about it, she suggested that I take it
a step further by forming my own theater troupe. She also suggested that we become partners in the company. “Incorporate and subcontract to CTA,”
she advised. “We’ll retain all
rights to the stories and productions we create.”
She suggested calling our company Umoja Sasa!, a name
borrowed from her college dance troupe. Nzinga’s proposal was empowering and
made good business sense to me, and it also allowed me the freedom to control
my schedule so I could audition for movies and commercials. We became partners and the Umoja SaSa!
Storytellers took off.
Nzinga and I were the perfect business duo; she was steeped in African
culture and business, and I was about art and design. I created elaborate
costumes for our troupe and produced a traveling set piece that provided the
backdrop for our shows; I aged a bolt of canvas fabric and had a map of the
world drawn on it, with the continent of Africa in the center. I began to market our company and
arranged photo shoots, had our logo designed, created postcards and wrote press
releases. Nzinga set about getting our business incorporated, securing a tax ID
number and setting up a bank account.
Our arrangement worked well with CTA for a while, but Nzinga felt that
they tried to exert too much control over our creative choices. It was a white
owned business and, in order to be loyal to our vision as African-American
storytellers, we parted ways with CTA and Nzinga began to book us jobs elsewhere.
Soon, we added two more members to our company -- John Hall and Vell
Wheeler. Vell was a gifted writer
and a brilliant comedienne. John
was just over all talent, energy, drive, and enthusiasm; he danced, sang, and
studied drumming, and as an actor he could create the most amazing voices. Soon
I was sewing for a family of four, and we looked like a regal, African family.
I will never forget when John, Nzinga, and I performed while ill with
the flu. Vell was the only member
of our group untouched by the bug.
The three of us always made a big deal in teasing Vell about her Pepsi
and cigarette breakfast.
Ironically, we kept a strict diet of no pork or red meat, and drank lots
of water and juice. John, Nzinga,
and I would perform our stories for the audiences, then rush backstage to throw
up. We laughed about it later, but
it wasn’t funny at the time.
We worked steadily. Umoja
SaSa! Storytellers traveled to most elementary schools, high schools, and
colleges in the Baltimore area, as well as to local festivals. We appeared on
local talk shows during Black History Month and, as a result of Nzinga’s
tenacity, we had three or four bookings a week throughout the year. Each of our shows consisted of two to
three African tales and ran about forty-five minutes long. Our stories ranged
from traditional African tales, such as Anasi
the Spider, to dramatic tales of black slavery in early America.
One of our most popular stories was our interpretation
of the Virginia Hamilton folktale The
People Could Fly. The story is
about a group of slaves who fly to freedom upon reciting a secret African
word. Our word was “kumbaya,” and
we would have the audience hold hands and sing the song “Come By Here, Lord.” It was always inspiring and moving,
like when Diana Ross performs “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand,” and her
audience joins hands while singing in unison.
We ourselves had a favorite repertoire of tales we would tell, and any
of us could play any of the characters, although I usually was the lead
storyteller. Mr. Umoja and His Two Sons,
The People Could Fly, The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, Underground Railroad, The Story of Kujichagulia and How God Created Butterflies were some of
my personal favorites. We read
lots of books filled with African and African-American tales, and would adapt
those stories, as well as some of Vell’s original stories, to fit our
performance format. Our goal was
always to teach a lesson by the end of each tale. Our performances incorporated song and dance, and John was
always creating new character voices or playing a different instrument. We also included educational elements
in our shows that teachers could use in their basic school curriculum, such as
lessons about African culture or certain vocabulary words. Teachers were amazed at the study
guides we provided to teach kids Kiswahili vocabulary.
There were moments when Nzinga and I struggled with how to share leads
on a story. Our personalities were both aggressive, and sometimes we stepped
over each other when we performed.
When we were in sync, it was magic, but when she was on a personal
mission to teach a certain lesson or give the audience as much information
about our culture as possible, there was no controlling her. I met other griots
who told me I could do well as a solo storyteller. Strangely enough, at the time I did not feel complete
without the group performing alongside me. I think some of the same people were trying to fill Nzinga’s
head with the same ideas, saying that she’d do well on her own. Unlike me, she was listening.
Umoja
SaSa! became so popular that we received invitations to perform at griot
events, Kwanza festivals, and Juneteenth celebrations. If there were black people celebrating
something positive somewhere on the east coast, Umoja SaSa! was there. In 1990,
Newsday, a New York publication, did
a profile on us; we were highlighted in a story about griots all over the
country. I was very proud to be
included, considering we were such a new group.
Although we presented ourselves as one big, happy
family, problems were arising behind the scenes. When you work in close quarters with a group, pressure
builds over time and tension is bound to develop. Nzinga and I would often disagree on creative issues. I felt Umoja SaSa! was a cultural
expression designed to educate people, not make a political statement. However, Nzinga was decidedly more
militant. Although I was afraid of
alienating our audience, I gave in on some things. When Nzinga felt we should use “AFRIKA” instead of “AFRICA”
on our map, I went along with her reasoning, which was that the people on the
continent spell it with a “k.” At
other times, I put my foot down and said “NO.” I got tired of hearing about how “the white man” was always
out to get us. During the reign of
the Supremes, people called Florence Ballard the girl with the soulful voice,
while Diana Ross brought the commercial sound that got the group into the
racially restricted markets of their day.
In Umoja SaSa!, Nzinga was the grittier, soulful storyteller, and I was
the more commercial voice.
Sometimes her style put off the white schools where we performed.
Things became intense one day after a performance at
Bryn Mawr, a prestigious private school in Baltimore. The fight started backstage after two really good shows,
then escalated in the parking lot. I am sure it had something to do with
Nzinga’s overboard behavior. There were times it felt like she was making white
people pay for the sins of their ancestors, for the atrocity of enslaving our
people. Our loud cussing and
fussing prompted a teacher to come out of her classroom and ask us to be
quiet. She said there were
students testing inside who could hear us, so she asked us to leave promptly
and quietly.
It was so embarrassing for John and Vell, especially
since they were not involved in the argument. We got in the car and Nzinga sat in the front seat next to
me. After Vell and John plopped in
the back seat, I peeled out of the parking lot. There was silence.
Finally, I spoke.
“The goal, Nzinga,” I started, “ Is to have the school
want us to return, not feel guilty about being white and privileged.”
“We’ll never return if you keep driving like a
maniac,” Nzinga fired back. “We
will all be dead.”
“Oh, you mean like you will be if you keep drinking
the way you do?”
“Go to hell!” she screamed back.
I slammed on the breaks and balled up my fist. She slowly removed her scarf, stared me
in the eyes and said, "Well, what are you going to do? Hit me?"
Vell and John were petrified, but so amused that they
never let Nzinga or I forget the incident. After that, whenever an argument
started brewing between us, Vell and John would look at each other and say,
“Remember Bryn Mawr?”
Not only had Nzinga been fighting with me, she had
also been fighting her own internal battles. She had gone through several bad
relationships and had suffered an ectopic pregnancy. She loved kids but was
told that she would never be able to have any of her own. To cope with the
sadness, she would often lock herself away for the weekend and drink.
We were so used to her behavior, it was not odd that
she was a no-show for the next few performances. Then she decided to end her association with the group and
took half the money we had in our business account. We only had four thousand
dollars, and her actions left only two thousand of this to provide salary for
three people, gas, and travel expenses.
It was all we had in the world, and Nzinga just took a good chunk
without so much as a face-to-face confrontation. Like a coward, she took her
marbles and ran away from the game, all because we had refused to play it her
way.
Now
looking back at all we planned
We let so many dreams
Just slip through our hands
Why must we wait so long
Before we see
How sad the answers
To those questions can be
We hired a lawyer and filed charges against Nzinga. I hesitated, because I was still hoping
we could work it out. However,
seeing that she was not coming around, I had no choice. Serving her papers was a difficult task
because she avoided us. Then we
learned she was promoting herself as a solo performer and was to perform at an
upcoming Malcolm X celebration. We
showed up to the event, hid around a corner, and waited. When Nzinga appeared, our man sprang up
and served her the summons.
Nzinga never showed up for the court date and defaulted. It was impossible to garnish her wages
because she was self-employed. I
had wasted my time and money, because by then I owed Andre’s sister legal fees.
When Florence Ballard left the Supremes, Berry Gordy, Jr. made her sign away
her rights to use the name “The Supremes,” ever. I wanted to ban Nzinga from ever using the name “Umoja
SaSa!” I felt like I had gotten no
justice. I was angry and disappointed, but I moved on. Nzinga moved to Jamaica and got married,
and I did not hear from her for years.
Eventually,
Nzinga sent John a letter and apologized for leaving the group the way she did.
In 1999, she sent me a postcard of congratulations when I opened my one-man
show in Los Angeles. My friends told me that she and her husband were operating
an African themed restaurant in Baltimore, near Fells Point. Time allows forgiveness and, now that
time has passed, I am glad that she had a happy ending. The last thing I wanted
was to see her on the cover of Jet
magazine, on welfare like Florence Ballard.
The company went
on and things were fine.
Eventually, Vell decided to leave to go teach school, so we found some
talented performers to fill in. We traveled to New York and Virginia and had
some great shows. When the opportunity came for me to work with QVC in 1991, I
turned management of the company over to John. John hired two female performers, Nata’aska Hasan Humminbird
and Valerie White, as new, permanent members of the company. John had to occasionally use other
actors to fill in, and Tracie Thoms, who would go on to appear in the
television series Cold Case and in
the films Rent and The Devil Wears Prada, was a substitute
Umoja SaSa! member at one time.
Unfortunately, Umoja SaSa! had no farewell performance like the Supremes
did, to usher out its old members and introduce its new. Just as Diana left the new Supremes her
old gowns, I turned all the costumes over to John. Diana Ross opened her first solo concert with the statement,
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the let’s see if Diana Ross
can make it on her own show.” It
was time for the “let’s see if Dale can make it on his own show” too.
Do you
get
What you’re hoping for
When you look behind you
There’s no open doors
What are you hoping for
Do you know...?
The other theater company I formed the year after the
inception of Umoja SaSa! was called Actors Against Drugs. My partner in that endeavor was Kay
Lawal, who I met while working as a singing trolley driver. Back then, there was a lot of downtown
redevelopment happening in Baltimore at the Inner Harbor, and the trolley
service gave tours of downtown Baltimore for only twenty-five cents. The
service was supposed to bring out the “old charm” in Baltimore, and create a
public interest in seeing all the wonderful locations of the city. In addition, the trolley service served
at special events. The night I met Kay, we picked up various entertainers and
shuttled them back and forth to different nightclubs across the city, so that
they could do twenty-minute performances before shuttling off to another
club. By the end of the evening,
the performers had performed in at least five clubs. The purpose of the event was to get more nightclub patrons
to support urban entertainment.
Kay was performing that evening with her comedy
partner, Joyce Scott. They had an act called “The Thunder Thigh Review,” a
hilarious show that celebrated lusciously large women. During the ride to each
club, she and I started talking, and I found out that she was the director for
a performance company called Family Circle Theater. She found out that I was an actor, nude model, and sometimes
a stripper. I expressed an
interest in working with her company, and she made me audition for her that
night. However, I didn’t audition as an actor. I instead danced and stripped up
and down the aisle of my trolley bus, showing her just one of my many
talents. We bonded that night and,
in a few days, we were working together at Family Circle Theater, doing
educational shows targeting teen pregnancy prevention.
It was later on that I learned about Kay’s drug problem. She had hit rock bottom while
performing at the International Festival of Fools in Amsterdam. It should have been the high point of
her career. When she sought help for her addiction, she came up with a
brilliant idea -- “What if drugs could talk? What would they say to seduce you?” This idea became the basis of Actors
Against Drugs. Our performance
troupe brought drugs to life by showing the tricks they use to hook people.
After our performances, Kay and other former addicts would share their real
life drug experiences. We got
contracts with several companies that were trying to help their employees with
substance abuse problems. Because of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No!”
drug awareness initiative, we got contracts with organizations like the United
States Postal Service and the Baltimore City Health Department. We also secured a lucrative
contract with the Social Security Headquarters in Baltimore, and the company
mandated that all their employees attend our shows. That contract alone kept us busy for a long, long time, and
covered over three hundred performances.
We also did a national broadcast on their satellite network.
Kay and I incorporated AAD, as Nzinga and I had done with Umoja
SaSa! Then I created publicity
materials, set up photo shoots, and duplicated the process that had gotten
Umoja SaSa! off the ground. With
AAD, I went a step further and secured 501(c)3 status for us as a non-profit
organization, which made us eligible for grants and tax breaks. We did several shows for the IRS, which
in turn guided us through the lengthy and cumbersome process of becoming a
non-profit. We traveled to schools, churches, businesses, colleges, drug rehab
treatment centers, and just about any place where we could attract an audience.
My two theater companies kept me extremely busy from 1988 through
1991. I was my own little Berry
Gordy, Jr., with two acts on the road. Mondays and Wednesdays were dedicated to
African storytelling, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I played the character of
“Alcohol” and taught people about substance abuse. John and Vell also joined, taking on the characters of
heroin and amphetamine.
What I failed to realize during that period was that,
although Kay had beaten her drug addition, other members of AAD were still
active drug users. It reminds me of the naïve innocence Mary Wilson says the
Supremes had when they met the Beatles and smelled pot for the first time. I was naïve to assume that since we
were Actors Against Drugs, none of us
abused drugs. I was sadly mistaken.
I was quite proud of the costumes I made for AAD. My wild imagination inspired me to
create some bizarre fashion statements.
For our big show for Social Security, we hired three actresses to play
coke, crack, and freebase, the cocaine trio. They danced and sang an evil version of “Reach Out and Touch
Somebody’s Hand,” seducing the audience with Supreme-like movements. I made white, stretchy gowns for the
ladies. We dusted their bodies in
white talc, and created fake blood to drip out of their noses.
AAD evolved with the times by addressing relevant
health issues, and we created an HIV performance piece since we were losing so
many of our friends to AIDS. We
immediately got another big contract with the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the
Baltimore City Health Department contract called for us to create a traveling
show that dealt with HIV testing.
Our AIDS shows were even more powerful than our drug
shows, and our prison AIDS shows were my favorite. It has always been half a
joke, half a fact that some of the hottest, sexiest men can be found behind
bars. Our sexy audience was
literally “held captive,” and this turned me on. Wortham Tinsley, our technical director, claimed he was
worried about a prison breakout, but I later discovered he was more nervous
about running into some of his former drug dealers. They locked us inside for two performances, with a break in
between shows. Upon arrival to the
facility, I was searched, which I loved.
In fact, I secretly felt like a star of a Baltimore version of the HBO
series Oz. It was a neurotic, kinky, and erotic experience I shall
never forget.
One of the last gigs I did with Kay was during a summer when the
Baltimore Family League contracted us to participate in the East Baltimore
Domestic Violence Prevention Project.
We taught kids how to use stories from their lives to create theater
that would teach audiences about the impact and pain of domestic violence. The
kids used a number of creative devices to express themselves, including rap,
dance, poetry, and song.
After leaving Baltimore to work for QVC, I continued making occasional
appearances with AAD. Kay eventually restructured the group into another
company called Womb Work Productions, Inc. She partnered with two other positive women, Nata’aska Hasan
Humminbird, formerly of Umoja SaSa!, and Rashida Forman-Bey, and today she
continues to use theater to educate audiences on important health issues. She
also continues to stay clean and sober.
Kids call her “Mama Kay.”
As
the years have passed, new generations of performers have picked up where AAD
left off. Womb Work birthed
another company called Nu World Art Ensemble, and Kay’s children, (my God --
we’ve grown old enough to have children!), Ola and Kola, now perform in that
company. My niece, Danielle, and Vell’s nephew also perform with the company
from time to time. Having passed
our torch on to our talented youth is one of my proudest legacies. In April
2007, Womb Work hosted a 10th Anniversary Gala celebrating the
achievements of Nu World Art Ensemble, its premiere youth performing arts
company.
Once we
were standing still in time
Chasing the fantasies
That filled our minds
You knew how I loved you
But my spirit was free
Laughing at the questions
That you once asked of me
G“Never forget the games you play as a kid, it could become your
job as an adult. Never forget the
friends along the way, they are there for a reason.” H
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