New D.M. theater company to spotlight African-American stories
Why would anyone start an African-American theater company in the middle of Iowa?
Well, why not?
That’s the better question, according to leaders from the new Pyramid Theatre Co., which plans to stage its first two shows – one new and one classic – next summer in Des Moines. The city isn’t a major center of black culture like Atlanta, say, or Chicago, but it offers some elbow room those bigger cities lack.
“Des Moines is a place where you can build anything you want to build,” said Nana Coleman, the new company’s managing director.
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And as any Iowan can tell you: If you build it, they will come. Black, white and brown audiences showed up in droves to see Charles Fuller’s “A Soldier’s Play” this summer and August Wilson’s “Fences” in summer 2014. Both Pulitzer Prize-winning stories by prominent black playwrights were produced by the Des Moines Social Club, whose success with them encouraged the new company’s formation.
“We have the market. We’ve proven twice now that we can do it and that people are hungry for it,” said Alexis Davis, the company’s production manager.
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The driving force behind the new project is Ken-Matt Martin, who guided the earlier productions and will serve as the new company’s executive director. The Arkansas native and Drake University grad recruited a staff and board of directors before leaving town at the end of September for a one-year apprenticeship at Chicago’s landmark Goodman Theatre.
He said he hopes a mix of local and national talent will make Pyramid Theatre “a launching pad for artists across the country.”
So far the nonprofit company's roster includes artistic director Jireh Holder, a playwright and master’s candidate from the Yale School of Drama, and associate artistic director Freddie Fulton, another Arkansas native and Drake grad, who just started a graduate studies in theater at Columbia University in New York.
Holder dug into research for both “A Soldier’s Play” and “Fences” and wrote one of two new scripts the fledgling group workshopped here this summer. His script, called "50:13," drew from oral-history interviews to tell the story of a prison inmate's final three days, when the man tried to teach his younger protege all he could about manhood, fatherhood and surviving in prison.“We want this to be a local company with national ties,” Martin said. “The local theater community puts such an emphasis on ‘local,’ but bringing in outside teaching artists like Freddie and Jireh can add a lot.”
He’ll return in 2016 to direct another new play by another black up-and-comer, while Pyramid Theatre associate executive director Tiffany Johnson plans to direct the soon-to-be-announced classic. The company is still securing the rights to the script but hopes to produce both shows together for less than $45,000.
Johnson starred in “Fences” but didn’t land a role among the all-male cast of “A Soldier’s Play,” which takes place in a 1940s Army barracks. It wasn’t for lack of trying.
“I was almost ready to shave my head,” she joked.
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There will be more roles for her and other black actors if Pyramid Theatre gets off the ground. The company's name plays on the idea of building something permanent, brick by brick, and the concept of “sankofa,” a West African word for “reaching back.”
Coleman, the managing director, explained it this way: “What can I take from my past that can propel me to the future? You don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.”
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