The AUDELCO Theater Awards (1980)

The headline on the New York Post of November 17 [1980] forewarned readers that it would "SNOW!" that night. And the snow came. So did the rain and the cold night air that nipped at noses and fingertips. But November 17 was a special night for the black theater community. It was the night of the Eighth Annual AUDELCO Black Theatre Awards ceremony during which awards in sixteen categories would be presented. And it would take something stronger and more devastating than a cold snap to keep people away.

These were theater people, a dauntless lot. Elegantly dressed in fur coats, evening gowns, and tuxedos, they filled the 750-seat ultra-modern Aaron Davis Hall/Leonard Davis Center for the Performing Arts at City College in Harlem to honor their own. The love and respect they felt was evident in the abundance of smiles, kisses, embraces, and handshakes bestowed on their colleagues before they entered the theater. It was also evident by the thunderous applause and cheers that greeted the announcement of each nominee's name.

The audience may also have been applauding and cheering the fact that November 17, 1980 marked the return to Harlem of  AUDELCO (Audience Development Committee)*, after an absence of two years because the organization was unable to find adequate space. After all, Harlem has long been the entertainment capital of black America. Many of our most significant black artists grew up and/or launched their careers in this world-famous community. So the awards were more than just a celebration of contemporary black achievement in theater. They were a tribute to Harlem's glorious past, a past which has given us people such as Earle Hyman,** one of four recipients of the AUDELCO Outstanding Pioneer Award for 1980.

Fellow actor Frederick O'Neal worked with Hyman in the American Negro Theatre in the 1940s when Hyman became a member at age 17. Here is what O'Neal said about this remarkable actor who studied the plays of Ibsen and the Norwegian language and has played Othello more times than any other actor, living or dead:

"Earle spent four or five years playing with the Norwegian State Theatre. ...[O]ne of those years Earle won the award for the best artist of the season. ...[O]nly two performers have won it since its inception. And the only other person...was Charlie Chaplin.

"There is a bust of Earle," continued O'Neal, "in the State Theatre in Oslo today."

Earle Hyman was not present at the awards ceremony because he was in Norway directing a play. His award was accepted by Owen Dodson, the director, playwright, and poet.

While Debbie Allen and Gregory Hines, the co-hosts, kept the audience in stitches with sight gags and witty comments, the basketball player Earl Monroe, the actress Josephine Premice, and the dancer Judith Jamison were among those presenting the awards to overjoyed recipients.

Amidst all this glitter and gaiety were a few serious moments. Most notably Ossie Davis's short and eloquent speech upon accepting the AUDELCO Board of Directors Award for his wife, Ruby Dee, and himself. This award honored their lifelong contribution to the black theater.

"If we are ever to become Africans again," remarked Davis, "we must do it first through our art."

It was past midnight when the Eighth Annual AUDELCO Awards ceremony ended. The audience streamed out of the theater and into the lobby where drinks and hors d'oeuvres awaited them. Many people moved through the crowd, eating, drinking, and chatting at the same time. They were having a good time and it seemed as if they didn't want the evening to end.

* Author's Note: AUDELCO was founded in 1973 by Vivian Robinson (1926-1996). It's aim, says its website, was "to stimulate interest in and support of performing arts in black communities."

** According to the entertainment website IMDb.com, Earle Hyman (1926-2017) portrayed Russell Huxtable, the father of Bill Cosby's character, Dr. Cliff Huxtable, in 41 episodes of The Cosby Show (1984-1992).

The manuscript for this article was recently found in a folder and was written on November 26, 1980. I presumably wrote it for either the New York Amsterdam News or the Black Theatre Alliance Newsletter. This article has been slightly edited.

My Brief Interview With Playwright Assotto Saint

The following is from the transcript of an interview I did in 1989 with the late gay Haitian-American poet/essayist/playwright Assotto Saint (1957-1994).The interview was mainly about his theater piece, New Love Song, which was part two of a trilogy. (Part one was Rising to the Love We Need and part three was Nuclear Lovers.) He and others performed New Love Song in 1989 in a small theater in New York's Greenwich Village. Assotto Saint, whose birth name was Yves Lubin, died in 1994 of complications from AIDS.

Charles Michael Smith: Why did you decide to do multimedia?

Assotto Saint: I hate conventional plots and I usually don't have the patience to deal with that kind of situation. Multimedia*--nonlinear situations, dramatizations--works best for me because it becomes more immediate. Time is not sequential. The present is mixed with the future is mixed with the past. I jump in and out of sequence. That works best for me.

CMS: Are you worried about the audience's ability to follow what's going on?

AS: Actually, no. When theater started, it was also nonsequential. The roots of theater are based on rituals, which mixes the present with the past and the future and also a lot of theater that's being done these days is nonlinear. The whole theater of images that has gained so much popularity during the past ten years is nonlinear, is nonsequential. As black people, we have locked ourselves in so much realistic drama at times.

CMS: What are the sources of your work?

AS: The Yoruba and voodoo religions are very present in the pieces I do. I basically work in rituals. I'm trying to create rituals, black gay rituals in my work. I grew up in Haiti and I was surrounded by voodoo and I also grew up in a strong Catholic family. Therefore I was grounded in the rituals of the Catholic Church and the rituals of the voodoo ceremonies.

I wanted to go back to the roots. To move forward you look back and then you go on. Some people feel looking back is death. But for me, it is necessary at where you came from and you move on.

CMS: How would you describe the segments of this theater piece?

AS: Some are stories, some are monologues, some are essays. Everything I do is complex. (He laughs heartily.)

CMS: Tell me about your self-published books of poems. Why do you self-publish?

AS: As black gay people, we must always search for new ways to establish our own institutions and that way we empower ourselves and become autonomous. It's necessary. We can do it. The women's movement has been an example. They inspired me.

*Multimedia also includes music, film and video clips, sound effects, photo slides, artworks, narration (live and/or recorded).