Stage struggles: Despite growth, black theater in South Florida faces major challenges

One woman is a lonely black seamstress bartering her dreams for a chance at love and a fuller life. The other is a pistol-packin', chain-smoking, very tall black matriarch who shares her tough love with anyone crazy enough to cross her.

It would be hard to find characters more different than Esther, the lingerie maker who is taking GableStage audiences on a painful journey in Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel, and Madea, the tough-talking woman who has made Tyler Perry, the actor-playwright who portrays her onstage and in wildly successful movies, a very wealthy man.

Yet there is a connection. The two embody the range -- some would say the extremes, not to mention the debate over quality vs. low-brow mass appeal -- of black theater in South Florida.

Black theater is an increasingly visible and significant part of the region's stage offerings, but artists trying to build their careers here still face multiple frustrations:

• Many directors won't cast a demonstrably gifted actor in a part not written specifically for a black performer.
• Massive audiences jam the James L. Knight Center whenever Perry's Madea plays or other urban theater productions (aka "gospel plays") come to town, to the chagrin of black artists who would kill for crowds that big and who find those shows both stereotype-driven and badly acted.
• Mainstream companies, if they do black theater at all, still tend to shove a single production into grant-friendly Black History Month.

There's also good news here, to be sure.

Audience size, the level of work and opportunities for black theater artists are all growing.

South Florida's oldest black company, M Ensemble in North Miami, has dramatically raised its game in recent seasons, while more companies dedicated to black or diverse theater -- notably the African American Performing Arts Community Theatre, the BeBop Theater Collective and The Collective -- are being created.

The talent pool of black actors and directors is deepening, and top companies like GableStage, New Theatre and Mosaic are opting to produce challenging, provocative works by younger black playwrights like Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks and Melody Cooper.

For South Florida's growing, entrepreneurial community of black theater artists, the quest for success -- to feel fulfilled, find creative expression, make a living doing what they love -- is the same one every actor, director or playwright faces.

But race can and often does bring an extra dimension to the challenge.

Meshaun Arnold has spent this season working with the PlayGround Theatre for Young Audiences at venues in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. An edgy actor with range, confidence and ambition, Arnold is an artist whose work stands out, winning him great reviews and Carbonell Award nominations.

While he is glad he's being seen by family audiences and earning a steady paycheck, the 32-year-old actor has had to turn down some juicy roles at other theaters because of his passionate commitment to PlayGround.

Nonetheless, the realities of being a black actor in South Florida are clearly wearing away at him.

"People shouldn't just look at me to cast me when they're doing a black show. I've had it with that s - - -," says Arnold. "I'm sick of it. I'm not going to tap dance. For what? So you can call me when you do a black play? The directors in this town disappoint me."

Tara Vodihn and Brandon Morris face a different problem when it comes to getting roles. Today the two wind up their run in Melody Cooper's Day of Reckoning at New Theatre, the small Coral Gables company with a long history of diverse, adventuresome casting. And like the characters they're portraying, both actors have a mixed racial background.

'THEATRICAL APARTHEID'

"The minute you start casting, directors are concerned with external specifics," says Vodihn. "I found a theatrical apartheid when I moved here from Minneapolis... It's who you socialize with. If you don't have a multiracial circle, you won't cast that way."

Says Morris, son of a white mother and a black father: "I can hang out in the ghetto or go to a dinner party. A lot of people think I'm Latino. I have a hard time convincing my agent I'm black."

At GableStage, Kameshia Duncan is playing the best role she's had since she moved back home to be with her dying grandmother.

Starring as Esther in Intimate Apparel, Duncan is adding a significant credit to a resumé that includes roles at a variety of South Florida theaters and work at Atlanta companies. She says she was pleasantly surprised when she returned to South Florida after being away for nearly a decade.

"Miami is truly in a rebirth," Duncan says. "It's extremely rich. I've been surprised by the amount of work here, and it's growing. It's a good sign for African-American actors trying to make a living here."

Still, she knows exactly what actors like Arnold are feeling. For her, one of the things that rankles most is when directors talk about "color-blind" casting.

"I don't like the term," Duncan says. "Either you're good or you're not."

"I have to admit there are times when I cast roles written for white actors that could have been played by black actors. I'm remiss in that, and I don't think I'm alone," he says. "But in some roles, it could resonate in a way the playwright didn't have in mind."

Bechir Sylvain, who plays Esther's husband in Intimate Apparel, and his longtime friend Sheaun McKinney, a Carbonell nominee for GableStage's A Lesson Before Dying in 2002, have worked at several South Florida theaters, but infrequently.

"There's a lot of stuff we go through, being African American," says Sylvain, who finds stereotyping even worse when he auditions for movie and television work. "How many times have Sheaun and me gone up for roles and been seen as Thug No. 1, Gangster No. 1 or Rapper No. 1? I really want to change that image."

"I get offers, but they're all the same [kind of roles]," adds McKinney. "I don't want to perpetuate the stigma that black people can only do some roles."

Another facet of stereotyping, some say, arrives with the touring "gospel" plays by Perry and others. While those shows are undeniably lucrative and hugely popular with black audiences, many South Florida-based black artists argue that they are the qualitative opposite of serious theater.

Plots in those plays change, but the basic formula remains the same: pepper the cast with celebrities the audience knows, even if some performers have little acting experience; lace it with soap-opera sensuality (bare-chested hunks are common) alongside a Christian message; stir in familiar hits and new songs.

"It is very bad theater, very mediocre," says SC2, aka BeBop founder SaMi Chester. 'The performers are under the false impression that they can act. The audience thinks it's seeing legitimate theater. They save up, get dressed up and go out to see Madea Goes to Jail. And the white audience says, 'See. That's the kind of theater those people like.' "

Julia Brown, editor of Urban Theatre and Entertainment Magazine, has helped market those shows in South Florida for years. She begs to differ.

"Most of the shows are thought-provoking and deal with issues that relate to our lives today," Brown says. "Families go. Couples, husbands, wives see their lives onstage. Early on, the shows weren't structured properly, but what has happened as a result of Tyler Perry is a rise in quality. And they're successful. They advertise, have names from gospel, secular music and hip-hop, which draws a fan base." Still, many of the black artists who have committed to theater careers in South Florida aren't interested in the urban genre, nor are they finding enough work at mainstream companies. So some are now creating their own opportunities.

With Arturo Fernandez, a friend from Miami Dade College's Kendall campus, Sylvain and McKinney started The Collective, and next will star in Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog, a ferocious play about the deadly bond between two damaged brothers.

THE CULTURAL MIX

"It's time for us to hear our own voices. We have such a beautiful mix of cultures here, so many stories of struggle from the Haitian community, the Cuban community. We had to form The Collective," says Sylvain, 24, who lived in Haiti until he was 12. "We're all trying to create a new, uplifting, challenging society.'

BeBop's Chester knows what Sylvain means. An actor and director who built his career in Los Angeles and Chicago before moving here, he still believes in the power of theater to prod, provoke, enlighten, change.

Partnering with the Miami-Dade Parks' Division of Arts and Culture, Chester's company produced William Hanley's multiracial Slow Dance on the Killing Ground, at Miami's African Heritage Cultural Arts Center last fall. Next month, he'll stage Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie with an all-black cast.

He hopes to resettle his company in its own space, possibly in Miami's Design District or Wynwood. The Glass Menagerie is part of a programming dream that includes a black and Latino Cherry Orchard.

"I want to do good theater, where black and Hispanic actors can be the hero, not the maid," he says.

Actress Lela Elam, a New World School of the Arts alumna who is in Intimate Apparel, has worked at a number of area theaters, sometimes playing roles meant for a black woman, sometimes not. Her career is unfolding in ways she couldn't imagine when she was growing up in North Miami Beach.

"I've been going to the Coconut Grove Playhouse to see shows since I was little, and I didn't see people like me onstage a lot," Elam says. 'I wondered, 'Can I do this? Will there be opportunities for me?'... There's a new crop of people coming up now. I also feel like there is a sense of, well, we'll do it on our own."

African American Performing Arts Community Theater founder Teddy Harrell Jr. is one of those self-starters. The University of Miami grad recently staged August Wilson's King Hedley II, his 4-year-old company's biggest and most ambitious production so far, at Miami's Carrie P. Meek Cultural Center. Next up is The Taking of Miss Janie, by Obie Award-winner Ed Bullins.

Like Chester, Harrell dreams of having a permanent space for his company, rather than renting a city facility. But he is committed to having that space remain in Liberty City.

"It makes sense for a black theater company to be in this community, especially so we can get kids to come in. There are a lot of at-risk kids. Why should they be bused to other companies to see theater?" he says.

Still, audience-building has been slow and sometimes frustrating.

"We did one performance of King Hedley [which has a cast of six] where we had two people in the audience," Harrell says. "It would be easy to do Ain't Misbehavin' or The Wiz over and over. But we want to make people think... We've tried to do playwrights with a message. If the Coconut Grove Playhouse doesn't do these plays, maybe that's why we have to do them."

That's a mission shared by Patricia Williams and Shirley Richardson, who run the 35-year-old M Ensemble. The company typically attracts between 1,500 and 1,600 theatergoers during the run of a show in its cozy, 68-seat space on West Dixie Highway in North Miami. The second-oldest professional theater in South Florida, after the Coconut Grove Playhouse, it offers its multiracial, multicultural audiences a mix of comedies, small musicals and dramas.

The actors aren't paid much -- $30 to $50 per performance is common -- but modest pay is the rule at most South Florida theaters, and with a continuing infusion of young talent, the quality of M Ensemble's work keeps rising.

Among its important contributions to area theater, the M has provided an ongoing stage for the great, ambitious plays of the late Pulitzer Prize-winner Wilson -- The Piano Lesson, Fences and Two Trains Running already, with Seven Guitars coming up next.

M Ensemble has also nurtured the careers of countless artists from several generations. Keith Wade, who recently finished a run in the theater's Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, is one of them.

"I grew up in this theater. At 13, I was an assistant stage manager in Purlie Victorious," says Wade, who went on to study theater at Albany State University. "If not for M Ensemble, I wouldn't have known what theater was."

Given the passionate determination of its committed artists, black theater in South Florida is moving more boldly toward the spotlight, despite its challenges. And that can only enrich the work all over the region.

"The young black actors and directors who have decided to stay here are going to transform this town," Adler says. "It will become a more vibrant theater community."