Committing to Black Experiences in Theatre with Ron Himes

Ron Himes: As we were building a theatre audience, we also were building a Black dance audience because Black folks would go see dance every other year when they brought Alvin Ailey in. And so, as we began to build a Black dance audience, the funder, the major funder for us, which was the state arts council, decided that because they were now interested that the major dance presenter could do a better job of bringing those companies in than us. And so, they cut our dance funding.

Yura Sapi: You’re listening to Building Our Own Tables, a podcast produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. I’m your host, Yura Sapi, founder of multiple organizations, including LiberArte, a nonprofit nurturing artists for liberated futures; Protectores de La Tierra, a farm and food sovereignty initiative based out of Colombia; Balistikal, an LGBTQ+ healing and art space for communities in Latin America. And through all my programs, workshops, coaching, and this podcast, I’ve helped countless founders and leaders unleash their brilliance and build thriving movements. In this podcast, we share visionary solutions, stories, and snapshots to support you as a leader on your own journey of creation and transformation.

This fifth season is especially meaningful. I’m recording while eight months pregnant, and this experience of bringing a new life into the world has brought a deeper opportunity for lessons in leadership, in legacy, and in creation, all of which I’m sharing in this season alongside the powerful voices you’ll hear from. You’ll hear extraordinary founders building their own tables for their communities, their lineages, and for the planet in this evolutionary time. You are here for a reason, and I'm honored to be on this journey with you. So, stay tuned and enjoy.

Welcome to the Building Our Own Tables podcast, pulling up a seat to our liberation. Today, it's an honor to be joined by Ron Himes, founder of the Black Rep. Thank you so much for being with us today, Ron.

Ron: Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. Excited for this conversation.

Yura: Likewise, I am super excited to hear about your journey, especially. You founded the Black Rep in St. Louis, Missouri in 1976 while a student at Washington University, where you graduated with a degree in business administration. And then since then, have produced, directed more than two hundred plays at the Black Rep, including all ten plays written by August Wilson. Amazing.

Then, the Black Rep, just more info on that organization. So, you are committed to reproducing, reimagining, commissioning works written by Black playwrights, creating opportunities for new voices and youth, and this understanding of how you're distributing, creating an equitable distribution of opportunities and resources for Black professionals and students in theatre. The improved representation on stage, backstage, and then also creating this community culture of support and mentorship. Amazing work. I'm really excited to learn more about everything. I'd love to start off by hearing about that inception story. So, take us back to that moment.

Ron: Actually, it all started prior to 1976. 1976 was actually when I incorporated the company. There was a student organization while I was an undergraduate at Washington University. I was not a theatre major, but I had friends, of course, who were. And they were Black students who were not being cast in mainstage productions by the theatre department, primarily because the theatre department wasn't producing any work by Black writers, and many times, just couldn't figure out what to do with those Black students in the plays that they were producing.

And needless to say, those students, my friends, spent a lot of time complaining about their plight, complaining about the lack of opportunities, complaining about not being an integral part of the theatre department. And being very political at the time, because I had been actually hanging out on the campus as a youth, and I was in high school actually when the Black students took over the administration building in 1968 and was really politicized from my exposure to being on campus and the work that the Black students were doing in the Association of Black Collegians And so, I said to my friends,

Stop complaining. You all are really ruining a lot of parties and a lot of good time complaining always about your plight. So, if the theatre department is not going to put on plays that you can be part of, if they're not going to cast you in the plays that they're doing, you should just start doing your own plays. And we are students, we pay tuition, and that means that we should have access to the facilities.

And so, we formed a student group. And in those days, we began to have rap sessions about how we were going to bring this about. And so, there were those friends of mine who were theatre majors, then in came some dance majors, some creative writing people, some English department people. And we just began to meet on a regular basis and talk about putting this company together.

And so, the student group was actually called the Phoenix Theatre Troupe, and the first play we produced was a play by Ed Bullins called The Gentleman Caller, which we produced in the formal lounge of the women's building on campus. And we just began to regularly apply to use different facilities, different buildings on campus, and we continued to regularly produce work. A lot of the work, initially, was collages of poetry, prose, and music. And as I said, we produced that work on a very regular basis, began to build a bit of a reputation, then began to get invitations from other campuses, Black student union groups, and Black collegiate groups from other campuses.

And so, we formed Martin Luther King program or Malcolm X memorial or some Black History Month celebration. We would get together. We'd put together a collage of poetry, prose and music, and we'd go perform it. Eventually, that began to grow and go out into the community and took churches, community centers. But then after a while, that core group had either matriculated, some had lost interest. The fortunate or unfortunate thing for me was the contact information for the Phoenix Theatre Troupe was my phone number.

So, at a time when most of the other people had lost interest or dropped out, as I said, it was myself and a sister named Geraldine Cole who helped the Phoenix Theatre Troupe going and until she graduated, ultimately, and moved back to Kansas City where she was from. But still on occasion, I would get calls for Black History Month program, Martin Luther King memorials. And I would get on the phone and call people and say, “Hey, we got a show in two weeks. Can you come rehearse? We're going to put something together for a Martin Luther King program, or we're going to put something together for a Malcolm X memorial. We just got a call.”

And we operated that way for a while. Eventually, there were occasions when there were a Black faculty member who had an appointment in the theatre department and a co-appointment in the African and African American Studies department, which was actually just the African American Studies department, and it actually wasn't the department at the time. It was that Black Studies program. And at Washington University, it was the Black Studies program for fifty years. It was fifty years before the Black Studies Program became a department. But when there was a Black faculty member, they would on occasion get to produce or direct a play by a Black writer.

And on a dare by my two good friends, Geraldine and Marsha House, at the time, I auditioned for a play because I was not a theatre major and had no real interest in theatre other than as an observer and a patron. I auditioned for No Place to Be Somebody and got cast in it, and had a good time doing it and was pretty good. And so, I did a couple of more of their student projects, thesis projects. And when I graduated, finally, I decided that I didn't want to be an accountant. Theatre stuff was fun, and so let me give it a try and see if I can make that work. And so, I continued to pursue acting opportunities with local theatre companies, community theatre companies, and all along, keeping the Phoenix Theatre Troupe going when I got a call.

Eventually, I went to incorporate the Phoenix Theatre Troupe, and there was some company or something in the state that was already registered as the Phoenix something, so I couldn't have that name. And so, I incorporated the Phoenix Theatre Troupe as the St. Louis Black Repertory Company. Now take a step back. So, the Phoenix Theatre Troupe, basically the name came about because in one of my marketing classes, we had a simulation assignment where we had to create a company and talk about why we... And so, I developed this theatre company in this simulated marketing exercise. And so, part of my reasoning was the company was named the Phoenix Theatre Troupe after the mythical bird, the Phoenix that rises from its own ashes. But I also said that we would name it the Phoenix Theatre Troupe, because people would think we were from out of town and that we were touring and happened to be in St. Louis and—

And just realized early on from my lack of exposure as a kid, how important it could be to expose young people to the arts, to expose young people to Black theatre, particularly Black kids, at as early in age as possible.

Yura: Okay, business marketing strategy.

Ron: You got to see us before we leave town. It's the Phoenix Theatre Troupe. But then as I said, when it became time to incorporate, that name was not available. And so, I incorporated once again, my logic being that if we call the company the St. Louis Black Repertory Company, surely being naive and idealistic, the city will embrace and support us. And so, in 1976, the Phoenix Theatre Troupe was incorporated as the St. Louis Black Repertory Company.

Yura: Firstly, your story, it sounds so familiar because for me as well, it was in these college undergraduate days talking with other people of different marginalized identities, racial identities, gender, cultures, realizing that no, we're not seeing the representation. We're not experiencing the representation. We're not being taught by people who look like us. And so, wanting to be that change. And then also, I also had a class where we were to create a company. It was a theatre company; it was a theatre management class. And so, that really also was part of that initial spark that had me dream about it, that then now it's like I just have to keep creating.

But I am very curious about this business background that you bring because it seems like you've been able to really harness some of the things that can be helpful about knowing business.

Ron: What I was able to do, and probably back then not realizing that I was doing it, that from a lot of my business courses, I just took away things that seemed to be useful to me in my life, not necessarily things that were leading me to a career in the business field and the business world. I was an undergraduate for a long time, and I had many majors. And so, I spent a lot of time finding myself and finding my path. I say I started school as pre-med. For a while, I was pre-law. For a while, I studied philosophy. For a while, I studied Eastern philosophy and Eastern religions. For a while, I studied psychology.

And then after a while, I took some business courses. And I was able, being on scholarship, but that I was able to flit around from subject to subject, from major to major. And actually, for a long time, not actually declaring a major, but reaching a point where finally I had an advisor say, “Look, you better get out of here. You need to declare a major and buckle down and get out of here.” And so, it just happened. At that point, I had the most credits toward my degree in business administration, so I completed my coursework to be able to graduate with a degree, a BSBA, Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. But I had been a big patron of the arts.

I tell people that I probably started going to Washington University when I was about thirteen years old. Me and the group of guys that I grew up with who hung out in the neighborhood at the neighborhood church, played basketball, and our coaches happened to come from the WashU Campus YMCA. And the first year, we had a white guy from New York who didn't know anything about basketball. He was a fraternity boy coming to do some missionary work in the community. And we just lost a lot of games, didn't have a lot of fun. But occasionally, on a couple of occasions, actually, he took us on campus to the frat house. And so, we were these novelties. These little Black boys running around.

But the next year, we had a coach who was a brother from North Philly, who also happened to be the president of the Association of Black Collegians, really came to redirect us. And so, after practices, after games, he would take us to campus, but he would take us to the campus side of where the Black students hung out. And so, we began to hang out on campus regularly. I did, especially. We would go to lectures; we would go to conferences. I was still in high school when I heard Bobby Seale speak on campus, Julian Bond speak on campus, saw Sonia Sanchez read on campus, Nikki Giovanni on campus. And I was exposed to a lot of culture, a lot of cultural experiences.

In high school, I was in the honors program where of course those students got to go, we got to go to the symphony and to the art museum, to the theatre, and I remember going to the repertory theatre. It was actually called the Loretta Hilton Theatre at the time, which was the white regional theatre in town, to see some seventeenth century restoration comedy that just didn't touch me at all, didn't speak to me at all. And I'm like, “Oh, I don't like theatre at all.” But then once we became exposed and used the National Black Theatre, Barbara Ann Teer brought her company to campus. The Negro Ensemble Company was touring, and I got to see The River Niger,Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, and I'm like, “Oh, this is different. I like this, this know those people. I recognize those people.”

And then there was, in St. Louis, a group called the Black Artist Group, BAG, and it was a conglomeration of artists, musicians primarily, but there were also dancers. They also had a theatre component. And so, I always saw them when they performed and actually began to hang out with those guys who were older, but spent a lot of time on the campus and exposed me to a lot of music, a lot of literature. For a while in high school, I would play hooky from high school because somebody was given a lecture on campus. I wanted to hear the lecture or on the evening would go to campus. I remember Charlie Mingus played on campus in Graham Chapel and got to meet him and listen to his music.

So, it was that exposure that gave wide breadth, cultural awareness. And the other thing that I noticed is that a lot of the guys who I hung out with from age twelve, thirteen through high school, who were not in the honors program like I was, they never saw a play. And some of them never saw a play, until we started the theatre company. And so, that was also one of the reasons that exposing young people to theatre became so important to me. And that was a vital part of how we began, because of course, it was a lot easier to produce and present theatre for young people, for families without a facility, without a real stage. We could put on a performance for kids in the streets, in a church basement, anywhere.

And just realized early on from my lack of exposure as a kid, how important it could be to expose young people to the arts, to expose young people to Black theatre, particularly Black kids, at as early in age as possible. And that's always been a vital part of my work at the Black Rep and a big commitment of the work we do here.

Yura: It sounds like that from high school experience through college, through Washington University, that supported you so much, really gave you that inspiration and gave you that. The seeing of different people, of different artists, of different groups that showed you that something else was possible is probably why it was so easy for you to tell your friends, “We can do it. We could create our own thing. These people have.”

Let's talk about those early years, especially going back to now when you incorporated and are now in the community trying to make an impact, be known, while also doing what you said you want to do about helping young people get access to the arts at an early age. You mentioned that the name you chose, you felt that that would be embraced by the community. Tell us how that panned out. How did that come through over the years?

Ron: After a while, I produced a work by Charles Fuller called The Brownsville Raid, and I rented a space in the city and produced a play for two or three weekends. And one of the final performances, this couple waited for me after the performance and said to me, “That we had really enjoyed the play. We have a space that we think you might be interested in. You should come see it next week.” And so, I did. They were the directors of a facility called the Greeley Community Center. The Greeley Community Center was the outreach program of the Greeley Presbyterian Church. However, the church had left the community, but the community center was still there.

And the community center was using the church sanctuary as a skating rink, and the back half of the building was the community center where they did youth programming. They were a food bank way back then, and they said, “If you like this space, you can have it. All we want you to do is teach theatre to the kids in the community.” We're like, “Great.” After the production of The Brownsville Raid in 1981, we moved into the Greeley Presbyterian Church and renamed it the 23rd Street Theatre, because it was on the corner of 23rd Street in St. Louis Avenue, and it finally became known as The Miracle on 23rd Street. So, having a facility allowed us to be able to plan a season, and so we opened our first full season in 1981. We produced four plays.

We would do six months of theatre. We had a dance company. We did three major dance concerts. And because we had a facility now, we became this cultural clearinghouse. So, we showed Black independent films some nights. We had open mic nights, the spoken word nights. We had cabaret nights, and so we were just constantly programming in this facility where we were now in residence, we had an identity, we had a facility, and we had no bills. Oh, we were able to pretty much do what we wanted to do with limited or little to no real resources. And we were in residence at the 23rd Street Theatre for ten years, from 1981 to 1991. We produced a lot of work there.

And as I mentioned, we had a theatre company that went from four plays to five or six plays a year, and basically a theatre season that ran six months, and then a dance company. We would produce three major dance concerts a year. We eventually went on to present small to midsize Black dance companies. So, during those days, we brought in PHILADANCO, we brought in Dianne McIntyre, we brought in The Dayton Contemporary Dance Company. We brought in the NUBA Dance Company from San Francisco. As we were building a theatre audience, we also were building a Black dance audience because Black folks would go see dance every other year when they brought Alvin Ailey in. And so, as we began to build a Black dance audience, the funder, the major funder for us, which was the state arts council, decided that because they were now interested that the major dance presenter could do a better job of bringing those companies in than us. And so, they cut our dance funding. And that was okay. So, we just pivoted and put more energy into the theatre company, into producing theatre. We became the first company in the Midwest to operate with an equity contract. And so we just poured all our energy into becoming the best theatre company that we could become.

We continue to not only work very hard to keep the canon of African American literature alive, but we worked very hard to continue to contribute to that canon of African American literature for the American state.

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Let's chat about that challenge too. So, I know you said it was okay to lose the funding, but I think it is a common theme today in our time of everything that's going on with the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] and funding to lose funding. And so, how do you get to that point where it's okay? Was that immediate for you, or do you think that you did have to grow into the opportunity of what losing funding can be?

Ron: Yeah, I think that it was okay because we weren't really dependent upon funding. I think that even today, I think with major cultural institutions, not of color, not of particular cultural perspectives, we in many instances were never receiving the kind of funding or support that we became dependent upon. We were always, and still to this day, are funded at a level that allows us to survive and not really thrive. So, we were always in survival mode. And if losing a little bit of funding over here meant that the best thing to do was to cut that programming, so that we could continue to survive, that was a shift that we made.

But one thing that we had going for us, however, was that from our days as a student group, we had built our core audience that followed us. So, if we were doing work on campus, there was a group of students who, our friends, our buddies who came to see everything we did. If we went to another campus, they came, but they showed up at that campus. If we wound up doing something at a community center or a community location, they showed up there. And so, when we got the facility at 23rd Street, we had already had a core. That core began to grow more and more. And so, we always have had a solid base of community support. Now, it's not the same kind of support as the major dance presenter or the white regional theatre or the art museum.

It's not a patron base that is writing big checks, that is supporting or underwriting programming. But there was an audience who thought the work that we was doing was important, and it was important for them to be there to support it at the level that they could support it. So, that's how we've managed, and to this day, like I said, we were on St. Louis Avenue from 1981 to 1991, and I still run into people now who say, “I've been with you since the St. Louis Avenue days.” When somebody says that to me, I know that they go back thirty years or forty years of supporting the theatre.

And though it hasn't been, as I said, major funding, major foundation funding, huge gifts from individuals who could write big checks, it wasn't that. It still isn't that. We have never had and still don't have an individual donor who's making a six-figure contribution as some major institutions do. But we have a bevy of donors and supporters who give all they can to support. Well, it's fifty dollars, sometimes it's a hundred dollars, sometimes it's a thousand dollars, but it's consistent, and it is given in a way that lets us know that the work we're doing is important and that the work we're doing is vital to the community.

Yura: Yeah, it sounds like through this acknowledgement, this gratitude, this appreciation, richness of what you do have—of course in the donations that are coming in—and then also the particular aspect of who is it that's coming and the energy that they're giving beyond the funding, the love and the support. Are there any other tips you have around how you've been able to operate more from this place of abundance than falling into that scarcity mindset?

Ron: We've had the kind of support that has allowed us to continue to do the work that we do, to continue to elevate the work that we do, continue to raise the bar in terms of production values, in terms of getting to a point where we were able to start paying artists, in a way that we were able to put full-time staff in place, in a way that allowed us to build the kind of reputation and the body of work, so that now we also now receive some national foundation support, which has been important. That support grant from a national foundation also opens up some doors locally, right? “Oh, you get a grant from the Schubert Foundation?” I was like, “Yes.” And so, “Oh, then we should be supporting you.”

I was like, “Yes, I think you should, and we're grateful that you will.” We have learned to not spend money that we don't have, and we have learned to not be dependent upon a gift returning year after year. We take what we get; we earn as much as we can. When you look at the ratio of major corporate institutions or major cultural institutions who may operate on a 30 percent earned revenue, 70 percent contributed, we never had that kind of ratio. We've never had to worry about that kind of ratio. So, again, as I said, when that funding or support goes away, then that means they've got to cut programming, they've got to cut staff.

We never were, and still are not, so dependent upon support in a way that we've made investments that we could not sustain without that continued funding. What we've done is when we are fortunate enough to get support, when we are fortunate enough to get an increase, when we're fortunate enough to find a new foundation who's interested in our work or a new individual donor who might be interested in sponsoring or underwriting the program, we take that for that time and we do the work that we do with that additional support, but we don't build or project a future on the continuation of that gift.

Yura: I would love to hear, actually, more on the programs that you're mentioning and the evolution of over the years, what you've been able to start to bring in the productions, the performances, the representation on stage, backstage. But also at the beginning, I had shared about how there's these programs for more equitable distribution of opportunities and resources for Black professionals and students in theatre. What could that look like? What has that been looking like as you've been evolving?

Ron: We've been fortunate enough to produce a body of work that has attracted talented, experienced designers and directors who want to come to St. Louis to work at the Black Rep because of the work that we do. There are a lot of the first-generation folk who were at the Black Rep who moved on to the Broadway and film and television or either into teaching or who left the field or who are working at some of the other larger professional theatres in town. So, then it became a matter of, “Okay, how do we continue to develop talent? We know we've got a place to showcase the talent, but how do we begin to continue to develop it?”

So, then we began to look for the next generation of Black Rep artists, and we also have always, as I said, looked at youth. So, one of the ways that we've done is we have a program now that's probably almost twenty years old; we have a teen tech program. So we train teenagers in technical theatre. And as a matter of fact, teenagers work on or run a lot of our main stage shows. We train teenagers to run the light board, to run the sound board, to run props, to run costume, and some of them have gone on to college and majored in theatre. Some have majored in tech theatre. Some have majored in stage management and then come back. So, that's been one of the ways that we've continued to develop and to invest in the field.

We have a professional intern program, which are young folks who have completed undergraduate degrees who come here for a full-time paid internship. Now, again, like with our professional artists, they're not paid enough to go live the high life while they're continuing to develop their craft. But there are a lot of places where they would have to go pay to be an intern. They'd have to pay to be a fellow at some other theatres. And so, we have provided opportunities, and our intern program is approaching probably twenty-five, thirty years old. That professional internship is the transition from academia to a career in the theatre.

And we've found that a lot of those people have gone on to work professionally, to have successful careers in the theatre. Those professional interns who come into the theatre are the same people who do most of our work in our education department. So, they now are teaching young people. They now are taking the shows that we do into the schools. They now are working with the teen tech program, and so they have an opportunity to grow, to develop in craft. Many of them who come to us, some of them who come to us from PWIs [Predominantly White Institutions] have the same issues that the group of students at WashU had. They have a degree in theatre, four years of majoring in theatre, and they don't have a resume.

They don't have six shows on the resume. They don't have any major roles on their resume. And so, it becomes very important that they have a place like the Black Rep that they can come to, that they can have acting opportunities. And if they come to us as an acting intern, they have to learn everything. So, they train in the box office, they train in running shows, they ASM [assistant stage manager] shows, they work in the shop. It really becomes a conservatory situation for them.

Where my feeling and our feeling is that if you are not going to have a career as an actor, you will get the training here that if you want to stay in theatre, there are other areas that you can work in because you've been exposed to them. You've had an opportunity to and develop in them. Right now, we have a young lady who, I think Christina has been with us four years now, going on five, she came as an acting intern. She's now the associate development person. So, she's still acting, but she's also writing grants. She's writing proposals, she's doing individual donor develop. And so, when she's not acting, an acting opportunity, she still has a paycheck in theatre.

We've also worked with a number of young playwrights, probably produced twenty-four, twenty-five world premieres. A lot of those shows have been plays with young playwrights. Sometimes, it's been their first play, but then sometimes, it's been hosts of senior playwrights who were vital during the Negro Ensemble Company days who found a second home as it were here at the Black Rep. People like Leslie Lee and Samuel Williams and Ron Milner and Bill Harris among a few who produced world premieres of their work in a later stage in their career. And so, we continue to not only work very hard to keep the canon of African American literature alive, but we worked very hard to continue to contribute to that canon of African American literature for the American states.

Yura: So, powerful. It sounds like such a vibrant hub for creatives, for creation, for legacy. It's ringing with this energy of the social capital of not just focusing on the dollar sign or the financials, but everything that we talk about with mission-based work, impact, and reputation and the stories and the actual results of what we're doing, especially nonprofit space.

Ron: Yeah. And part of that, speaking to the body of work, has been great. As we were developing audience, as we continued to develop audience for a period of time in terms of dramatic work, that was work that people primarily knew that came out of the Negro Ensemble Company. So, we're talking about works like The River Niger and Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, Zooman and the Sign,A Soldier’s Play, and all of that rich body of work that came out of those years, forty, fifty years of the Negro Ensemble Company developing work and us being able to do some of that work. The reality is outside of New York, if the play was not on Broadway, then people don't know it, right?

And so, we were able to develop a trust with our audience that they were comfortable going wherever we take them. So, we could do new work, we could do plays, we could do titles that they didn't know after we exhausted all of the Black Broadway musicals that they knew. Then we could start doing different kinds of work. We could try to develop new musical. We could produce new musical work and had built a trust and an audience that would go where we take them. And that's one of the ways we've been able to produce as many world premieres as we have.

One of the shows that tickles me the most, that audience is talking about, we did a production of Waiting for Godot. And they're a group of season ticket holders from years and years back who every time they see me, they still want to talk about, “Man, what was that play about? What were you doing?” We've done a half a dozen Shakespeares. We've done some Tennessee Williams; we've done I'm Not Rappaport.

Here's an interesting thing: Most companies, when you see a production of I'm Not Rappaport, it has one Black actor in it, right? Mitch, two old guys, one's a Jewish guy and one's a Black guy, but the play is set is Central Park. So, how could you have a play set in Central Park and you only see one Black person? There's a character in the play who just happens to be called the Cowboy, who is a drug dealer. Couldn’t that guy be Black? There's an art student who sits up on the bridge up sketching all day, who owes money to the drug dealer, couldn't she be Black?

And so, it's a matter of the lens through which we look at plays. We did Romeo and Juliet, the Montagues and the Capulets. They were the nonviolent civil rights people, and they were the Black Panther militants. That was the difference, right? Nobody ever knows what started the fight between the Capulets and the Montagues. We just know that there were some major ideological differences that these two families could not allow these two star-crossed lovers to be, right?

And Romeo and his boys, when they go courting Juliet, they sang “My Girl,” that Juliet's ball was the Stroll, the Madison. They had a backyard picnic. We have audience who say it was never as clear as this interpretation that we've done. And so, I think that lens and perspective in terms of the work that we've done has been so very important. And I think that's one of the things that Black theatre and theatres of color are able to do. We're able to tell stories in a way that speaks to a community that in many instances is not directly addressed. And it just goes back to what W.E.B. Du Bois says, “theatre for, by, and about us.”

Yura: Yes. So, you've gone through such a prolific history and build up evolution. What are you dreaming into being now? What's the future that you're building towards?

Ron: We're on the verge of starting season forty-nine. We're beginning to plan the fiftieth anniversary, and I'm dreaming and planning that we will break ground on our own facility during our fiftieth anniversary.

Yura: Yeah, may it be so it is. And one final offering. What advice would you offer someone just beginning to build their own table?

Ron: Be very clear and specific about what your goals are, and don't compromise, and forward motion is progress.

Yura: How can we stay updated with you, the Black Rep?

Ron: We try to keep our website up to date. We're very active on all our social media. Again, that's the joy and the excitement of having these young fellows, these young interns, these young teens. They keep us up on social media when I'm like, “I don't know what,” but they keep us out. But we're on all social media platforms, but our website generally has all the information that we're doing, and you can keep up with me and with The Black Rep through our social media.

Yura: Thank you. Ron Himes, the Black Rep. Such a pleasure to be with you today.

Ron: Thank you so much. Thank you.

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