Two College Production Worth a Look
By Jackie Campbell, Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
(Edited for Second Wind)

Two college productions are ending their runs this weekend. One is free, and boh merit more than passing mention in print.

Ceremonies in Dark Old Men is staged in the Old Main Theatre on the University campus in Boulder, but is the work of the off-campus group Second Wind Productions, which is not charging admission.

In Boulder, Lonne Elder's Ceremonies in Dark Old Men has been co-directed with searching clarity by Ian Walker and Marc Jenkins. The play was written in 1965 and seems to have grown richer with time. Its innter-city family with its tensions and loyalties, its temptations that beckon from the streets and its risks in trying to break the barriers of racism-all resonate in American society 20 years later.

The setting is Mr. Parker's barber shop with living quarters above. A daughter Adele is the wage-earner for the family. The 54-year-old Parker has had his day as a soft-shoe vaudeville performer. The mother of the family is dead, and the two grown sons are jobless. The dynamics for family tension are in place.

How do three bright, capable men maintain a sense of pride when their mother had died in domestic servitude? Or when they chafe under the indulgence of a daughter and sister? In Ceremonies, they all try.

The Second Wind production illumines the narrowing of the family's choices and its folly in choosing to side with a black gangster-activist. Alphonse Keasley is superb as Parker. Helena Haynes is lovely and sullen as Adele. The boys, Theo and Bobby, are feelingly portrayed by Abehjha Kibuuka and Jesse Carter. Oz plays the suave and steely activist Blue and Dawne Collins is ripe and sly in her cameo role of a prostitute.

SECOND WIND PRODUCTIONS
Boulder Company provides a forum for black actors
By Kathryn Bernheimer, Camera Film and Theater Critic

Robert Townsend found a solution to the black actor's dilemma-and exposed the problem at the same time-with this film "Hollywood Shuffle."

In Boulder, Second Wind productions has taken a similar approach in live theater, fulfilling a dual function of creating performance opportunities for local black actors and providing a forum for communication on the issue of race.

Originally founded by Michael James Brodie as Chinook Theater Group in 1983, and reorganized by Marc Jenkins and Ian Walker as Second Wind Productions, the theater company is dedicated to presenting plays that deal with the black experience.

"Plays that deal with the subject matter we're interested in aren't practical for most companies to put up," co-executive director Jenkins explains. "It's difficult for universities or community theaters to produce black plays when they have so few black actors.
"There's a fuzziness in society right now around the issue of race, and we want to deal with that. There are so many good black theater pieces that people don't even know. To me, theater that is more relevant to my personal experience is more exciting."
"As performers, since we weren't doing the things we want to do, we decided to put on plays and put ourselves in them," Walker adds.

Tonight, Second Wind Productions opens with South African playwright Athol Fugard's "Sizwe Bansi Is Dead" at the Old Main Theater on the University of Colorado campus. Following the three night run, a benefit for Boulder Attention Homes, the production will tour 12 local schools. The tour is sponsored by the CU Outreach Council. The company originally wanted to produce the play next weekend to coincide with Juneteenth, a celebration of black independence, but scheduling conflicts forced them to perform a week early as sort of a warm up act for the holiday.

"We've had good response to Fugard in the past," Jenkins says. "He's a white playwright, but we're more interested in the subject (in this case, apartheid and the passbook system that restricts the movement of blacks in South Africa) than in setting up a black fraternity. John Sayles (a white director), for example, has a very interesting perspective in 'Brother from Another Planet.'" We work with a variety of playwrights.

Walker plays the photographer/narrator, Stiles, in the play, and Brodie, who continues to work with the company he founded, plays Sizwe Bansi. There is no one director, as the company prefers to work collaboratively.

"At rehearsal, there's usually a director for the night, dictated by who's onstage. Sometimes we work around the idea of one director, but with a lot of feedback," Walker says.

"Part of what creates a good artistic product is the way people work together," Jenkins interjects. "It seems to work better for us when we treat each other as friends and colleagues, with respect. The genesis of a show usually starts with one individual, who wants to do it, and who finds the cast and produces it."

Walker chose "Sizwe Bansi", he says, "because I couldn't get around the beauty of the writing and the educational value of the play itself."

The company's next production, to be mounted next spring, will be "Ceremonies in Dark Old Men," by Lonnie Elder, a play Jenkins directed as a class assignment at CU last year.

"That's one of the plays people don't know or have trouble with," Jenkins says. "I had to convince my teacher to let me do it."

"It's an uphill battle proving that black theater is legitimate. It's a real challenge for us to do it well enough that the quality of the material is obvious. Sometimes we get frustrated that people don't appreciate (black theater) enough, but we have a supportive audience in Boulder."

"There may not be a lot of people put on these plays," Walker adds, "but at least when they are put on people come. There are only two black theater companies in the state, and one of them is in Boulder, which, per population of blacks in the community, is actually very good."

"The situation is dismal in general in the country," Jenkins says. "A lot of people think black theater doesn't even exist. But at least it's not impossible for us to exist here."

Check out our most recent reviews...