Jacques Wakefield

I was a Black actor/poet when Black theater meant Black life–where it lived on the stage and on the page and in the hope of Black progress. The first and most memorable book I read about Black theater was Loften Mitchell’s Black Drama. It helped me to understand theater from a Black perspective and led to monumental and innovative experiences for me with foundational New York Black theater institutions, such as HARYOU-ACT’s theater, directed by Leonard Parker; Harlem School of the Arts, founded by Dorothy Maynor; Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre; and Vinnette Carroll’s Urban Arts Corps.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in 1968, many of us in the Harlem community shot straight to 125th St. and commenced to perform in the “theater of destruction and retaliation” – Black Masks