Flourishing on stage, but missing in the audience

From "The Color Purple" at the Ordway to a revival of "A Raisin in the Sun" at the Guthrie Theater, stories with African-Americans at the center are taking the stage all over the Twin Cities.

But if the stars of "Raisin," "Purple" and Carlyle Brown's "Pure Confidence" could see into the darkened playhouses, they might raise a question: Where is the black audience?

"That's what I've been asking,"' said Reatha Clark King, a retired General Mills executive and one-time president of Metro State University who has been attending shows at theaters such as Penumbra and the Guthrie for decades.

"I suppose the answer is complicated, but we would like to see more people show up."

The answer is complicated. Interviews with theater patrons, artists and leaders point to a battery of reasons why blacks have been staying away from shows that should draw them, including marketing opportunities missed, a perceived lack of welcome and the economy.

All of these things have conspired to keep African-Americans away from the unprecedented surge of black writing, acting and directing talent that has been showcased at venues large and small in recent months. The shows include Marion McClinton's "Endgame," with a mostly black cast for 10,000 Things Theatre, and Nilaja Sun's "No Child" at Pillsbury House Theatre, which featured actor Sonja Parks in a bravura turn as 16 characters.

But at least one venue recently surmounted the challenges, going from a smattering of black faces on opening night to a sea of African-American faces on closing day.

While blacks make up 3.5 percent of Minnesota's population, according to the 2000 census, the numbers are higher in the Twin Cities -- 11.7 percent for St. Paul and 18 percent for Minneapolis.

Finding the audience

Still, St. Paul-based Penumbra -- arguably the nation's most esteemed black-focused company and one that gave Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson his first professional production -- has long struggled to draw African-American theatergoers. Officials at the company say that 50 percent of its audience is black, a figure that is not always borne out on subscriber-heavy opening nights.

"I get uncomfortable counting black faces, because we are not a monolith," said Penumbra founder Lou Bellamy, who staged "Raisin" at the Guthrie, the first time since its 1959 Broadway debut that the show has been staged at the theater. "I wonder if affluent blacks [who are most likely to go to nonprofit theater] don't have more in common with affluent whites than they do with the majority of blacks. We are a tricky people. You have to do work that honors that."

In at least one type of theater, blacks here and elsewhere are voting with their feet. The touring morality musicals and plays, popularized by actor/impresario Tyler Perry, consistently sell out runs at the State or Orpheum theaters, and do so without relying on traditional advertising.

Perry, who reigns over a form of entertainment sometimes disparaged by the throwback moniker "the chitlin circuit," built his stage and subsequent film career on Madea, his drag version of a 6-foot-tall, pistol-packing black grandmother.

"I love his singers and actors and his message," said Stephanie Mensah, 38, a nurse who has seen all of Perry's shows and movies. She finds Perry's up-from-poverty saga inspiring. And she is drawn to his shows because they are contemporary and up-to-date.

"He has a personal story of survival," she said. "And in 'Why Did I Get Married?' and 'Madea Goes to Jail,' he lets us know that in the darkest midnight, you're never alone. God is always there to help you."

Mensah attended the opening-night performance of "The Color Purple" -- just her second visit to the Ordway (she saw a Lou Rawls concert there some years ago). She had never heard of Penumbra.

A model of success

Some canny outreach may have helped the Ordway attract Mensah and other black theatergoers to "The Color Purple." On opening night, less than 10 percent of the Ordway audience was black. By the closing Sunday matinee, a clear majority was black.

How did the Ordway do it? The venue, which programs a diverse roster of music and dance acts, used its established connections, or "ambassadors," for outreach. It also deployed some Tyler Perry-style marketing, advertising in black newspapers and on black radio programs (Radio host Al McFarlane did a broadcast from the Ordway's lobby.)

Finally, it tapped the talent of the show's stars, sending singers to perform in prominent black churches, which clicked with the music of "Purple."

"We did get the word out that we had something very special here," said Ordway President and CEO Patricia Mitchell. She cautioned that she did not view the black "component" of her audience as discrete. "The Ordway's mission is to serve all parts of our community, and we are glad to live it."

In the end, black theatergoers are like other patrons in that they want to feel welcome, to see themselves reflected in stories and be moved, said patron Jerone Kennedy, a neurosurgeon who took his wife and three children to "The Color Purple."

He said that he would love to see "more balanced and more nuanced representations of who we are onstage."

McClinton, a Tony Award-nominated and Obie-winning director, has pondered the question of the black audience for years. It is his production of "Pure Confidence" at Mixed Blood Theatre in January that will transfer in May to New York.

"All of this work is being done because it makes money for people," he said. "In the past, you would get a show here or a show there because of a rigid quota system, and the shows would have all been around February" -- Black History Month. "But we have to remember that it's not just about seeing black faces onstage. We're talking about aesthetics and brilliance. There's a lot of talent in the black well and it would be nice to see more of it now, and not just because we have a brilliant black guy in the White House."

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390