Placing Black LGBTQIA+ Stories Center Stage with Alan Sharpe

Alan Sharpe, ACT

What does it take to build a theatrical legacy that centers the lives and truths of Black LGBTQIA+ folx? In this episode, Thembi sits down with prolific playwright, director, and founder of the African American Collective Theatre (ACT), Alan Sharpe, whose work spans decades of dedication to sharing the full range of Black queer experiences. 

• Alan's lifelong artistic journey
• Why Washington, D.C. is the setting for most of his work
• How he accidentally created one of the first Black web series
• Artists that influenced him and shaped his work
• How ACT has created community, mentorship, and visibility for generations of Black queer artists

Learn more about Alan Sharpe at https://alansharpe.org/.

Learn more about ACT at https://a-act.org/.

Want to be a guest on KeyBARD? Send Thembi a message on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1740803399472257afce75768

KeyBARD is produced, written, and hosted by Thembi Duncan, a theater artist, educator, and tech enthusiast exploring the intersections of art, education, and technology through conversations with creative thinkers.

Theme music by Sycho Sid.

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Transcript

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Alan Sharpe (00:00):

It seemed like a form of erasure that ACT has worked really hard to counteract by providing roles and stories and putting focus on our relationships with each other. Moving out of the sidelines as comic relief are the objects of derision and placing our stories, our struggles, our hopes, our dreams in the Spotlight Center stage where they belong with everyone else's.

Thembi (00:34):

Hello, hello, and welcome to KeyBARD. I'm Thembi, bringing you compelling conversations and content about technology, education, and the arts. What does it look like to build a theatrical canon that centers the lives and truths of black LGBTQIA+ people? It doesn't look like just adding a few voices to a heteronormative conversation. It looks like placing stories of love, struggle, joy, triumph, and pain front and center. It looks like creating space where the full range of black LGBTQIA+ people and experiences are the foundation, not an afterthought. It looks like Alan Sharpe's African-American Collective theater. Alan has spent decades writing, directing, producing, and archiving stories that reflect the truth and brilliance of a proud and beautiful community that refuses to be pushed into the shadows. Up next, Alan Sharpe. Alan Sharpe recently became the inaugural recipient of the Alan Sharpe Award, an honor initiated by the Center for Black Equity and DC Black Pride to recognize cultural contributions to the plus community.

(01:54):

He began creating LGBTQ themed projects in 1970 as a freshman film student at Boston University, an on-campus theater company, which he co-founded. While there eventually evolved into African-American Collective Theater, a CT after his move to Washington DC in 1976. In the early nineties, African-American collective theater revisited its original mission from black theater in general to focus solely on L-G-B-T-Q themes and subject matter. During the subsequent three decades as an HIV positive artist, he has written and directed over 120 plays, short films and a web series, all showcasing the mosaic of L-G-B-T-Q Life and Culture in the black community. In addition to a CT, Alan Sharpe is proud to be a charter member of the Brave Soul Collective, for which he has also written an ongoing series of plays as well as a member of the African-American Playwrights Exchange, the Urban Playwrights United and the New Play Exchange and the Dramatist's Guild. His short play bedtime was featured in Houston's 2019 Fade to Black Play Festival. Alan is the recipient of a 2018 2019 artist's fellowship in theater from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and was one of six artists selected to participate in the 2019 Playwrights Arena program at Arena Stage. Welcome, Alan Sharpe.

Alan Sharpe (03:22):

Thank you. I'm excited and flattered to be here. I do feel compelled to ask them because since today is February 1st, is your invitation to sign that I am officially Black History now?

Thembi (03:35):

Oh, wait a minute. You know what, Alan, you are the past, the present, and the future. Okay, so you are all of those things.

Alan Sharpe (03:45):

Well, that's encouraging. Thank you. You're very proud. Speaking of history, I believe, but I'm not sure these days, my memory is sure of very little, but I think crumbs from the table of Joy at Roundhouse Theater was my first time seeing you perform in 2001,

Thembi (04:06):

2001. That is crazy, and I think you're absolutely right. One thing that I really appreciate about you is that as prolific as you are an artist in your output, you still show up for everybody else. I've seen you at so many things that I've done and I never could figure out how you did it. Your level of energy and them and vigorous support for all of us is just really incredible.

Alan Sharpe (04:34):

Well, I do love it all, and I've had wonderful support from the arts community here in DC and everyone I've worked with. So in a lot of ways that's how I've learned over the years because I was not a theater student with formal training. A lot of what I've learned or hope I've learned has been from watching the work of other people, seeing plays, reading plays, that sort of thing, and I'm looking forward to more of that.

Thembi (04:59):

That's beautiful. Well, what about the beginning of your artistic journey? Do you remember what the first art form was that you experienced as a child?

Alan Sharpe (05:07):

I was pretty much a struggling artist out of the womb I was born. I like to draw and do art and color and all of that, and I also like to read. I got my library card at four, and this was back in the fifties. I was born in 52, so my childhood basically was the 1950s, and that was the heyday of Disney, the Mickey Mouse Club, Disney, all of that, and just automatically people took their children to see that stuff. And as a result, because it was also the heyday of Disney feature films, the old pen and ink drawn animation, I wanted at a very early age, like seven or eight to be an animator. I even knew what animator was and what meant. Unfortunately, there weren't any black animators at the time or so I thought, and nobody else that I knew ever talked about animation or knew what it was.

(06:09):

Ironically, I did learn much later as an adult, probably middle aged, that there was a black animator at Disney. Floyd Norman was the first African-American animator there at the time that I was sitting on the front porch in St. Louis dreaming of being an animator. He worked on a lot of the Disney and Pixar films, and it was kind of ironic to find out later that maybe if I'd known that then or he'd been on the cover of Jet Magazine, I would've pursued that a little more directly. Since I couldn't do the animation, I sort of drifted into puppetry and marionette. That's how I started writing because I would write little puppet plays and that sort of thing. My parents, like a lot of supportive black parents were on the lookout at all times for every possible source of cultural enrichment that they could beg, borrow, or steal. And so I was able to take a lot of advantage of programs like that in St. Louis.

Thembi (07:11):

It's interesting because you talk about wanting to be an animator, and when you were talking about that, I was thinking the same thing that I had only learned recently that there was a black animator at Disney, and how that representation means so much and when you feel like you've been robbed of an opportunity to know that for so many years. But at the same time, we wouldn't have all of this beautiful work that you've put out in theater, in film, and in your web series. So it's kind of like, okay, well maybe that was your destiny. You weren't meant to be that, but also

Alan Sharpe (07:42):

Workout as they're meant to a lot of

Thembi (07:43):

Times. Exactly, exactly. But it's never too late. Maybe you'll still do some animation before it's all said and done.

Alan Sharpe (07:50):

You never know. But as I say, my parents provided me with all these and my brother and sister with anything available for young black kids in St. Louis in the fifties.

Thembi (08:00):

I love that.

Alan Sharpe (08:01):

My sister and I sort of dragged my little sister around on the bus to all the programs at Metropolitan Center, the Arts and what was then called Airbag Artists in Residence Black Artist Group before they migrated to Chicago and came the arts ensemble. My first jobs were acting. I did a ton of improvisational theater when I was a teenager.

Thembi (08:22):

You've been doing this for a minute?

Alan Sharpe (08:24):

Yeah, this is a long, I'm still trying to figure it out. A lot of people, I did a lot of high school, high school drama thing in my own high school, and it was a nearby all girls group school, and they always needed men to be in their place. I did a lot of plays there. I wrote movie reviews for the St. Louis Marcus Black newspaper when I was a student in high school, and also short stories that were published in Teen Magazine, which is another. That was an exciting moment, but also somewhat traumatic experience.

Thembi (08:57):

Exciting but traumatic.

Alan Sharpe (08:59):

Well, I was so to get published and get paid for my writing, I was so excited, couldn't wait to show everyone the magazine, and although I described the characters as being African-American in great detail, when we got the magazine, the illustration was of white kids. No, it just sort of crushed me. I didn't want to show it to anyone. I felt so embarrassed and erased that it sort of ruined it from me. I think I threw the magazine away somewhere, but you live and learn,

Thembi (09:28):

So you're doing all of this incredible work and you end up at Boston University after high school. And so how did your experiences there shape your artistic voice and lead you towards the African-American Collective Theater when you moved to dc Because you started it at Boston University, right,

Alan Sharpe (09:46):

Right, right. My freshman year there was a program called Pre-Orientation where they brought all the African American kids in a week ahead of time. They learn to lay out of the school and meet each other and everything. At that time, I didn't know a soul in Boston. I'd never been away from home, and one of the first activities I had was a play they did Ron Milners, the Warning, a theme for Linda, and I got cast in that with Alfre Woodard, a freshmen at BU that year. That was when we first got to know each other. And I also freshman year met my future partner, Annette Holloway. I was a film and television major in what was in BU School of Communication, but to my dismay, underclassmen took liberal arts courses. There was no access to equipment or internships, and it wasn't sort of think you could do yourself.

(10:37):

This was way back, it was pre VCR and camcorder and Personal computer and all of that. It was all film glue, splicers, et cetera. So I was restless. I wanted to do artistic stuff. I had friends at Harvard and Radcliffe and I danced in the Harvard Radcliffe African Dance Troop, and I sang with BU Gospel Group, the Young Black Souls. I wrote for the two. I was already the student newspaper, but I had that. I always had that desire to get back to film. And finally, I did finagle time to the studio time and made my first video production with Alfred and a couple of other friends, emboldened. I borrowed an eight millimeter camera from someone and did my first short film. But I was frustrated and my friend Annette, who was also a writer, suggested that we actually produce our plays on campus for our fellow students. It was a possibility. It never even occurred to me. And the Black Drama Collective was formed there. I ended up doing far more theater than schoolwork over the next four years.

Thembi (11:41):

So it was called The Black Drama Collective when

Alan Sharpe (11:44):

You were at that time. Yeah,

Thembi (11:45):

Bu yeah. And so then you left, moved to DC and evolved it into the African-American Collective theater.

Alan Sharpe (11:54):

Yeah. After bu, I went back to home to St. Louis and Annette went to grad school in Ohio, and I was there for about a year and I realized that was not working for me. I had to get out of St. Louis. So when she returned to dc, which was her home after grad school, she encouraged me to join her here, and I packed up my little bag and left for dc Ironically, the year I left St. Louis for DC because I didn't see any opportunities, there was the year that Roheim founded the Celebrated St. Louis Black rep. So in a lot of ways my timing was probably off. When I arrived in dc, Ornette was appearing in a playback alley, and that was sort of my introduction to the DC theater community later that year. She was much more organized than I was. She formed a nonprofit called Minority Arts Ensemble and sort of an umbrella theater organization. And we did our first play at the Old Western Theater, Ron Millner, who's got his own. But since my interest was more focused than hers, I was mostly interested in black theater. I worked under that MAE umbrella basically considering continuing black drama collective with the standard canon from the Black Theater of the day.

(13:12):

So we did plays like Alice Childress and Ted Stein and the early black plays. I also worked with a group director for a group called Showcase Theater. We did steal away One Monkey, don't Stop Mocho Ceremonies and Dark and that sort of thing. But eventually she decided she wanted to step away from theater and attend law school at Georgetown. So my offshoot Black Drama Collective involved into a different entity, and that's where African-American Collective Theater came to life. I guess I was stuck on that word collective.

Thembi (13:43):

You mentioned that you were doing work in the black theater cannon as you were evolving and shifting into what African-American collective theater will become. And I just want to point out for the listeners that the Black Arts movement took place from 1965 to 1975, and the Stonewall Uprising happened in 69. And I just wonder because you made your way to narrowing your focus even more to lgbtq plus themes in your theater company, I wonder in terms of the black arts movement, what was put into the candidate during that period as well as the Stonewall Uprising, which was folks fighting for LGBTQ plus rights and presence and just the ability to be seen without persecution. Did those events, did the intersection of those things impact you in any way in terms of the work that you created?

Alan Sharpe (14:38):

I think they very much did, but I guess a post subliminal level because 1963, I was in the fifth grade when Kennedy was assassinated, seventh grade when Malcolm was assassinated. I was a sophomore in high school when King was assassinated and junior wind stonewall occurred and I was in St. Louis. So a lot of it seemed so remote to me, but at the same time, my parents were very political. They were involved in protests and made sure we voted that people voted on all of that. So I think all of that was filtering into my sensibility, whether I realized it or not, I did write a couple of plays with gay characters in high school, and when I was away of college and came back to St. Louis, I worked with, I played a gay character in the River Nira at the Katherine Dunham Art Center in East St. Louis. It was always sort of percolating under the surface. Growing up, I knew I was gay, and that was in addition being illegal. That was not the sort of thing you discussed back then,

(15:49):

Not with your parents, your family, your friends, the police, the preacher, the teachers, anybody that was just a major taboo. And you sense that even as a child and you know what to discuss and what not to discuss and what to reveal and what not to reveal. However, I don't think that anyone was particularly fooled by my own personal demeanor. I'm sure everybody probably knew I was gay. Unfortunately, I had loving and supportive parents who were very protective and they were going to love me regardless. And I recognize to this day what a huge blessing that was to get that from my immediate family, my extended family, and so many people I encountered. And so I learned kind of early that the people who don't mind are the ones who matter and the people who matter are the ones who don't mind. So

(16:39):

That is probably the reason why even early on those things were filtering into my work. By the time we got to the youth, those first two plays we did on campus, I had written a play about a student, a revolutionary guy, an activist who was coming back after being a political prisoner to his old neighborhood, and the young kid he mentored had become, was a gay street hustler. Now, in his absence, my friend had written a play about on-campus romance between bisexual Trio, a woman and two men. One guy was involved with both a woman and a man, and whoever was supposed to play that part dropped out. So I ended up making my stage debut in a play that was lgbtq plus themes.

Thembi (17:27):

Oh wow. Okay.

Alan Sharpe (17:28):

The only other thing I'll mentioned about that, I'll try to do it really quickly because like I said, I run my mouth was I was in college during the seventies, and that was such an intense period of all the movements you mentioned, the black political movement, the Vietnam War movements of Women's Live J Wrights movements were also coalescing and sort of exploding on the scene at the same time that I was there in a college town with BU, Boston College, Northeastern Emerson, MIT, Harvard Radcliff, so that it was very exciting, sort of intense cauldron of political activity and these burgeoning movements, and that was very exciting to me, coming from a very idyllic childhood in St. Louis and all of that, I think sort of filtered into my work as well.

Thembi (18:22):

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine that. I just can see you coming of age at that important time and thinking about how your work can continue the voicing out against oppression and the voicing for everyone to have a seat at the table, and it's so obvious in your work, it's so clear. So I can definitely see that connection. So you talk about growing up in St. Louis, you talk about being at BU and you ended up in dc, so August Wilson had Pittsburgh and Dominique Morsel has Detroit. You write multi-generational characters in a variety of settings, but usually your characters are based in Washington DC So what is it about DC that makes it the perfect backdrop for the stories that you tell?

Alan Sharpe (19:08):

I think in part it was the difference between where I grew up in St. Louis and Washington dc, DC had a large diverse activist, successful educated black population and institutions. It was progressive in a lot of ways, had a significant LGBTQ plus population, including many African Americans, which I hadn't seen in St. Louis possibly because I was such a child and just not exposed to it and possibly because it was much more underground, but it was much more open in DC and it also had, well, I don't have to tell you extremely stimulating arts scene here in DC in St. Louis. I was a kid under the teaching. My life was sort of centered around family school and church, which were the big things in my family, and I had the biggest in the family, so all I socializing and all that was with family. But DC had a strong art scene, a busy theater scene, the Howard and Duke Ellington influences and so much going on, and it was easy to look around and see what was going on as well as not just to see it, but to be immersed in it. It was easy for me to have those stories start to develop in my mind.

Thembi (20:28):

Yeah, I mean, I think it is really interesting because you find in your storytelling all of these different ways of posing questions of humanity, questions of family questions of loyalty and identity, and you always have these fun, interesting twists and these moments that I love so much. And I know that you talked about how all of the movements that were happening in the seventies impacted your sensibilities, your consciousness, and your work. Do you feel like though that your body of work is grounded in a specific social movement itself, or do you feel like your work just transcends any kind of framework that can be put around it?

Alan Sharpe (21:12):

I guess I think of it as sort of a tapestry or quilt or kaleidoscope of all of those influences. When I was coming up, there was very little in the way of black queer theater, probably none and almost invariably in TV or movies, black character was gay or lesbian, their partner was white. It was just like a given. In addition to fueling the prevalence at the time, black National Smith that equated the LGBT LGBTQ plus community with whiteness, it reinforced the fact that you never saw black members of that community interacting with each other on stage in films. We were sort of outsiders, and it enabled that feeling that black gay people are somehow brainwashed white oriented, I don't know, race traders with no interest or involvement with each other or the black community. And that certainly didn't correspond to the reality I saw around me either growing up in school or here in DC and frankly, it seemed like a form of erasure that a CT has worked really hard to counteract by providing roles and stories and putting focus on our relationships with each other, moving out of the sidelines as comic relief are the objects of derision and placing our stories, our struggles, our hopes and our dreams in the Spotlight Center stage where they belong with everyone.

(22:54):

So I think it's probably amalgam of all the things you mentioned arriving in DC I was pretty much an outsider in a way because I didn't grow up here, so I wasn't grounded in DC culture, didn't know a lot of people initially. I remember Afro Hormones came to town and did a performance, it was 1991 because it was the year they'd actually been banned from the National Black Theater Festival.

Thembi (23:26):

Wow.

Alan Sharpe (23:27):

Yeah. And around that same time, arena Stage in DC mounted a production of Cheryl West Drama before it hits home, which I saw both of those groups and it was very compelling, but there was not a lot of that. Even then. I think inevitably we started trying to fill that void. This was around the time when even Harris was writing Invisible Life, and that's sort of how it developed and where the influence came from and what was it, 1991, those shoot two shows were in town. 1991 was also the year of the first DC Black Pride Festival over at Howard at Bannock appealed across from Howard. I remember going to that. It was also African Liberation Day, which a big festival in Malcolm X Park. Me and a friend said people, it was changing different, and people wondered, is anybody going to show up at this black gay thing?

(24:27):

And it's right on Georgia Avenue right across the street from Howard, and buses and cars will be passing by people who'll see you or people going to have the nerve to show up. So we tore ourselves away from all the gorgeous guys who had African Liberation Day, Malcolm X Park, and we said, well, let's just hike over there and see what's what. And when we got there, it was very, very empowering and revelation. It wasn't a huge crowd, but it was a very respectable crowd. We stayed and we listened to the speeches. They had a program, they had music and entertainment, but the most compelling thing about it, and the most inspiring thing about it for me was just looking around and seeing all those black lesbians and gay men and transgender people all in one place, and it made it impossible to ignore the fact that we were here and we were a presence.

(25:23):

And that made such an impact on me that over that next year, I started writing, but it's sort the first A CTJ cast J characters play, and I wrote the first act and then I put it away, but one of my best friends, Ronald King was working at Whitman Walker and the next spring they were looking for doing AIDS education for I think it was called Diversified Communities in this university. They were looking for alternative ways to get the word out about HIV aids and prevention and all of that in the black community. And I let read this plan. He said, I think with some more information, we should add that in and try to do this for Black Pride Weekend. This year I was real hyped. I had gone to Black Pride the year before and I was like, wow, this is a way to connect the two arts and black pride.

(26:15):

So I wrote the second match. I'd been stuck after the first act and we ended up doing it. We did a trial run at ex-offender place in far Southeast, and we did a weekend at Wooly Mammoth at this old location, and we did, the last weekend was DC Black Pride Weekend, and we did it at the Blacks Box Theater at UDC, and I was never sure who would come if people would come. A lot of people we reached out to said, I can't go to something like that. My church members might see me or somebody might go back to tell my church. That kind of thing. It was still very much a stigma, but the place was packed. There was a lot all the way out the door, and there were so many other things where people to be doing that work in. It was so surprising, and I was really touched that all those people came out to see this play, but it's nobody about these subjects.

(27:11):

And even more of a seminal moment was after each performance, the actors would come out and take the bath and the people in the audience would not, but people started standing up and telling their personal journeys and their personal stories and how they connected to this, and that was something I had never seen. Those are the sorts of things people were very private about, but people were a bunch of people feeling connected enough in this space with this audience to share their own personal lives and appearances. And I think it was at that moment that what's currently thought of as African-American Collective Theater really began to exist because after that, all I wrote was original plays and they were all with lgbtq plus themes, and it's been about 32 years now.

Thembi (28:02):

That's incredible because what you're talking about, how the piece is performed and then the people who experienced it are then moved to pour so much out of themselves to share so much of their own stories. It's definitely how I identify your work, and I love that you had that experience and you found your mission through that. You said, oh, this is it. This is what this is supposed to

Alan Sharpe (28:26):

Be. Yep. We got kicked out of theater all three nights. People wanted to stay and talk. People didn't want

Thembi (28:33):

To leave. Yep. And that's so interesting because how many times have we experienced that, right? Where after the piece, you just want to talk, there's so much to talk about and you don't want to leave the space. There's some places, some pieces I might go see where I see it and then go right out the door, all right, what's next? One I'm go get some drinks. Exactly. Exactly. No, I got to go. I got to walk the dog or whatever. But to have people stay and just talk about, and sometimes it's not even necessarily about the piece itself, but it's about what the piece sparks, or maybe it's the people who are there,

(29:10):

Right? It's like a family reunion. You're seeing people you care about so much. And that's to me, going back to the origins of what theater is supposed to be about. And that's one of my favorite parts of your work. Now, I know that I'm not going to have the numbers right, because every week you have a new piece coming out, but I know that you've written at least 12 full length plays, at least 31 acts, at least 60 short plays or 10 minute plays, and all these pieces, these theater pieces specifically have been exploring lgbtq plus love and identity and community and relationships. And I wonder ever since that 32 years ago when you first started to find that vision for your work, what at this point drives you to continue creating new pieces? And what's your creative process to support the prolific level of output that you have?

Alan Sharpe (30:10):

In a word, terror. I'm a huge procrastinator, and over the years we've become locked into the fact that Black Pride Weekend, we have to have a show and

(30:26):

All new works and I need to start writing them. And because in terms of process, I am not a well-known art. There's no particular esteem attached to being in something that I'm doing among people. I'm blessed to know, friends who are actors, very talented actors who are willing to share some of their time to get my stuff up. I mean, that's probably the only reason that any of it exists. I mean, when you write, you want the feedback, you want the reaction. And I have not really been the type of playwright that has engendered that. When I started, I was writing, it was like a niche of a niche of a niche. The gay community wasn't particularly interested in black gay plays, sort of center whiteness, and a lot of black theater companies were very focused on black nationalists and positive family values. And no, we are not having you come and show this pedophile stuff and corrupt our children to drive families and everything.

(31:32):

So it was rough. I was fortunate to have friends and this life, I got lots and lots of nos and hell mos and this, that and the other. And until I finally realized, well, there are gatekeepers and if you want to do your stuff, you can do your stuff yourself. I didn't have the money or the budget or anything, but we was scrap together what we had and do what we could. And over time, that has evolved to be more of a reader's theater style type of performance simply because we don't have rehearsal space or access to performance space in advance, that sort of thing. The benefit of that is that a lot of people who only have a little bit of time and would never be available for rehearsal process and memorizing lines and blocking will sign on and say, yeah, okay, I'll do a couple of rehearsals and do a reading so you can hear the piece that leads to me will exist. A lot of these pieces, that's the only existence they've had. I was adding up for a proposal begging for money, and I think we're up to like 168 plays now.

(32:50):

They wouldn't have existed if at some point I hadn't said, well, if no one is interested, if no one feels this is portable, just do what you can with it, with what you have. And the huge blessing for me has been that so many of my friends have been willing to sort of support that when there was no money involved, a tiny little bit of money involved and certainly no prestige. Most of these things have never been reviewed. They don't even exist. When I was researching to confirm that, I saw you in Province in the Table of Joy, that was 1991 and it was a very long, thoughtful analytic review in the Washington Post. I looked at the date, I said 1991, that's the same year that we did Heartbeats. It was that first black guy play. But

Thembi (33:39):

Wait, no, you're thinking 2001, 2001,

Alan Sharpe (33:42):

2001.

(33:44):

And that was the year we did probably our last main stage production family business at the Warehouse Theater, probably the biggest show we've done in the longest run. And there was nothing for it. So you make your own opportunities, you can sit back and wait for somebody, give you a chance, or you can get out there and make your own opportunities. And so that's sort of how things, the processes has come to bear. It evolves over time with changes. And like you said earlier, sometimes your destiny comes from what seems like a setback, a high hardship. By the time

(34:23):

Covid came around and everybody had to pivot away somehow and try to keep going. We were already used to doing readings and that sort of thing. So we were able to hop onto Zoom, figure out the tech and do two or three seasons of work via Zoom online. And while everyone would've preferred to be on stage, it was great in terms of raising our profile nationally, people who had never come to dc. We've done a couple of shows in New York, a couple in Atlanta, but people who had never seen us or heard of me were able to be exposed because all they had to do was click on the link and watch it. So even things that are setbacks turn out to sometimes benefit you.

Thembi (35:08):

I love that. And I wonder, do you think that you may endeavor to publish your whole body of work at some point?

Alan Sharpe (35:15):

Yeah, actually that's what I'm working on now. Oh, great. So clock is ticking and a lot of this stuff is on scratch, but paper in my apartment, some of it is on computers, but I really need to consolidate at all. They haven't had a lot of interest in. I reach out to a couple of places about archiving or whatever in case joint burns down or something, but one of the things I'm working on is the first anthology followed by a couple more just to get them published. It's not a huge market for people reading plays, so it's not a moneymaking venture, but I just want them to exist in a form that people can look them up. So hopefully we'll have our first volume out around the time of Black Pride and we'll just sort of keep it going from there.

Thembi (36:00):

That is fantastic.

Alan Sharpe (36:01):

It's a brave new world out there. A lot has happened, very different. So you just have to sort of roll with the times and people want to go online if people want to do virtual stuff, if people want to do digital stuff, you sort of have to evolve, especially when you get to be my age, because frankly, it's still the youth oriented culture

(36:18):

And ageism is real. And practically theater organizations want to invest in young up and coming talent that's going to be here. And I understand that that's how I came to the ranks. It means that there's less and less interest per se in what I do. But another thing I've learned is that the people who come are the people to focus on. I mean, if people don't have any interest in what you're doing, keep it moving. We still have enough people coming to check us out that is still encouraging. It's still empowering. We still enjoy it, I guess.

Thembi (36:56):

Well, and what you're doing is so incredibly important to people's realization of their own identity connection with their people. Just I can't describe how important your work has been for me and how it's created community and that I feel so grateful for. And I am really glad that you're publishing the work because it's just one of those things where you say, you talk about the world that we're in, documenting things and making sure that somebody can't come along and say it never happened, I think is so important right now to have that hard evidence of like, no, this existed and it exists, and we are going to continue to revisit it so that it doesn't get lost. And we talked about your theater work, but you've also directed, you've directed in film, you've directed in theater as well as writing in theater, but you've directed in film. I'm curious how your approach to storytelling differs if it does between theater and film, and do you find one of those mediums more compelling than the other?

Alan Sharpe (38:05):

I don't know that I'd say more compelling, but definitely different. In many ways, film was my first great big love, and that is something that is not unfolded the way I would've liked. But again, I found ways to do it regardless on my own. Theater is more immediate. I don't have to tell you, it's more visceral experience. The audience is right there, response is right there, the interaction, and it's happening live in front of you, and it's different every night. And it's just a living, breathing thing. And I think that's what I enjoy about that the most. And the process you sort of get to create on your feet and then the actors bring what they bring to it. And that collaboration can make magic a lot of times. And it's also a collaboration with the audience and how they respond because we will respond in the theater. On the other hand, film, like I was mentioning about the online stuff is ultimately more accessible as less transitory in the sense that once it exists, it exists

(39:11):

As long as it's preserved. Anybody who wants to see it at any point can still see it, which is what we learned about during the Covid and the streaming. My initial interest was in film, but at the same time I loved words. I loved writing, and I grew up in the fifties of sort of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, that would all be that thing. And theater has changed. It continues to evolve. Nobody's going to three act or two act plays, really down to 10 minute plays and one act festivals and that sort of thing. And audience, attention fans in this digital age a much shorter, and people you can log onto YouTube or TikTok or whatever, you can spend the whole afternoon just clicking on things, five minute things, two minute things, things, and be very entertained and moved sometimes and enlightened. So all of that is a brave new world and to the extent that we can, I'm looking forward to embracing math in terms of the difference between the theater and the film. I had to sort of, because I'm such a wordy person as anyone listening to this will be able to tell, I had to force myself to jettison the words and work more in images and action for film.

(40:29):

And that was kind of hard for me. I've been doing this so much and it was a deliberate choice to start making some short films just to see if I could deal with film as its own medium. We did a couple of short films here in various places that have been online in the DC Black Queer Theater Festival, that sort of thing. In 2005, we did what I thought was going to be a full length feature here in town. It something that got turned down by Arts DC because it was too risque or whatever. So I just said, well, let's film it. And we did. And then there's still a lot of circumstances, struggles that the cast was having and things. It ended up never getting completed. We got all the way to the final scene. It was never completed.

Thembi (41:18):

Oh, wow.

Alan Sharpe (41:19):

So it was a way of encouraging the actors. I said, well, I'm going to put up occasionally a scene from this online on YouTube back then, just so you know, this is a real thing. It is going to happen sooner or later. I know. And what happened was because was putting up the scenes in order, it inadvertently became one of the, if not the first black web series online was a piece that we had thought was going to be a film and ended up being a web series. And we've done a couple more since. It is just odd the way one direction and life says, Nope, you're going in this direction. You think you're doing good. Nope, you're doing that. You

Thembi (41:58):

Embraced

Alan Sharpe (41:59):

It, the roll with the punches and go with the twists and turns and see where they take you sometimes, which can be hard to me because I'm a control freak. I want to plan things out because I'm trying to save money and I'm trying to figure out schedules and people and everything, but sometimes you just have to go the flow.

Thembi (42:16):

Over the years that you've been doing this work, you've pulled so many people into your community, and like I mentioned before, this is multi-generational work that you write and that you pull people in. In terms of support. You are a beloved mentor to so many people in the arts and the activism community. Who were the people who inspired you? Who were your mentors?

Alan Sharpe (42:37):

I mean, I think like everybody of my age group, Lorraine. I mean for a long time that was the black play and raising in the song. And yes, I do know it by heart from seeing it a million times over the years, but

(42:52):

More immediately, I think I mentioned that I kind of felt like an outsider when I came to dc, which has sort of been a theme through my life and work. And I actually really wanted a mentor, and it was not something that happened to me and I sorely missed it. There was nobody who said, oh, this kid is doing black gay theory, black gay stuff. Let's see where he's going with that and support it and put him in a workshop this, add the other, try it out. That was not happening for me and I missed that. So I guess I tried to create that for myself. But certainly there were folks who encouraged me and were very kind people like director Jennifer Nelson, playwright, Calleen Jennings, Senate Jennings. And although age-wise, we were contemporaries in terms of talent and career-wise, they were completely different stratosphere for me and what I do. But both were always extremely kind to me and encouraging. My friend Annette Holloway would group in with me at Boston University. It was a major catalyst, as was Ronald King who got us started with that first play and got money for it from Whitman Walker,

(44:04):

Which is why I think we still refer to him as the father of a CT. Another person who played a huge part in getting me starting in DC was Lenny Ray book with her small beer theater company because I got a lot of nos. And I remember Ernie Jovi, who was at New Playwrights Theater, I had gone to a speaking thing and I had given him a copy of one of my plays. I think it was The Play eventually became the web series. And I just put a little piece of paper, I said, two check boxes, keep going. I give it up. And I gave that to him and I was amazed that he read the play and he wrote me back a very kind note saying, keep going. And I thought that was the end of that. But then years later, a few years later, I got a letter from Minnie Rayak, a small beer theater company saying they were doing a series called Dangerous Theater, and she wanted me to commission me to do something in that.

(45:02):

And I kept thinking, this is white woman millennia Ray, where would she know me from what it just seemed like came out of the clear blue sky. And I kid you not, it wasn't until about 10 years ago, I was staring at that letter. I was going to put it up on the website when I looked at the board of directors, and one of the names was Ernest Jolovitz. And so I picked probably, he said something to Lenny and she picked up on it, but they actually did a reading of that particular play at the old eight rock theater space in Anacostia, which no longer exists. That was back in the day. And this was another play that was well received and we got a lot of encouraging work from. But anyway, it's just that was the type of mentorship I got. It wasn't the classical sort of let's do an internship or anything like that.

(45:53):

But over the years, I've bounced into a lot of programs at Will Mammoth, at Brown House, at Arena Stage. But what I do is not particularly what they do in a sense. I'm not a wooly man playwright. I know what Wooly man does. I'm not that. I see the stuff they do and I like it, but that's not what I can do. I'm not particularly a studio playwright or So the thing is, you just do what you do. I still send stuff out. I still get plenty of rejections. I'm on the new playwright exchange now, so that's a good thing. That stuff is on my, if anybody ever is interested in they can find. But those are the type of mentors I have in addition to the mentorship I got from you guys, you all were working talented professional actors who lent your talent and your training and your acumen and your insight and your creativity to elevate everything I ever wrote. And so in so many indescribable and innumerable ways, I learned so much from the artists who were kind enough to say, well, what the hell? I'll throw it in and do this reading for this guy and hopefully nobody will see me and get embarrassed or anything. Kidding. So that's kidding my mentorship.

Thembi (47:13):

How beautiful. Yeah, no, listen, I know for a fact, and I hope you know that whenever you wanted me or needed me to do anything, I was always there. The only time you didn't have was if I already had a conflict that I could not get out of. Otherwise I was going to be there. And it didn't matter what your budget was and it didn't matter what the content was, it just didn't matter because I believed in the work that deeply. And there's a lot of work that I've done that I haven't felt that strongly about just showing up. It's a gig. And so what you've done for

Alan Sharpe (47:48):

Us, you've been amazing though. I have to say, you even taught me how to write a letter to act as equity and get permission and all explained to me what the situation was. I didn't even know how to do that until you explained it to me.

Thembi (48:01):

Oh my gosh. See, you're taking me back. That's so true. But you're right though. Those are little things of like, oh, okay, this is how you can get me in there. Just contact them, let 'em know I'm doing this piece. Just the ways of making sure the stories get seen and heard by, like you said, the people who need to see them, the people who need to hear them. And the work is niche and very, to me, very surgical to the heart and the spirit. And I think I've always felt like there are certain things that I just feel could be ruined if too many people have their hands in it. And you've always been so consistent with your grounding in community, and it's such an important and safe. The space is so safe and it's irreplaceable in the ways that other theater companies could go away. And I mean, I'm just being real. Would we really be at a loss? That's just how I feel. So I'm grateful for you and I thank you for those kind words because your work is just super, super important. Not what I'm

Alan Sharpe (49:18):

Wondering. Shout out DC commission because over the years I've won a number of Larry Neal awards for playwriting, which if nobody likes your stuff and nobody's doing it, to get an award for playwriting is encouraging in a way that sometimes you really need when you're just sitting in a room by yourself. And also, I've periodically got artist fellowships at times when I didn't have two nickels to rub together to try to get a space to do a reading or something. So I definitely want to shout them out as being in their own way of mentorship.

Thembi (49:55):

That's wonderful. What are you reading these days?

Alan Sharpe (49:58):

A lot of plays. I always have enjoyed reading plays. That's another way I learned it. Although I do prefer to see them first if possible, but sometimes that's just not possible. And I reread a lot of stuff too. I mean, I've reread August Wilson so many times, Lynn, Dominique Morris, so people like that who I just read this stuff and I think, damn, I'm not ever writing anything in Q, but it's also inspiring to work at that level. Last spring, I retired from my job for 40 years and congratulations. I have accumulated what's looking around six or seven floor to ceiling bookcases in my apartment, loaded with fiction and biographies, history, political activism, black cultural theater, film design, poetry, Afrofuturism, and tons of tech, how-to. They've been staring at me all this time, and hopefully I have the luxury of catching up with all of them. So hasn't happened yet in the last eight months, but I'm hoping now I can start to unpack and just read some of this and reread a lot of it that meant so much to me at a younger

Thembi (51:11):

Age. That's beautiful. Do you have upcoming projects? I know that you talked about working on publishing an anthology of your work.

Alan Sharpe (51:20):

Yeah, working on anthologies was a big job because we have to track all that stuff down and get final versions of it. And that's more in the notion, still trying to make a stab at getting stuff archived somewhere. I was talking to DC public, Martin Lutheran Library that had that Washingtonia Island collection, and there's been some other interests and a couple of things have fallen through, but it's something to work towards updating the web pages and everything and the technology, all of that. But I would like to, if I hit the lottery or something, at least do one more full production before I disappear off this planet.

(52:06):

But these are challenging times, the outages of Covid and the disappearance of the smaller theater spaces like Warehouse Theater and HG Playhouse, places that community oriented groups with community oriented funding can access are drying up and the few that are left in huge demand, which is a good thing because it means a lot of theater is getting done, but I would like to do that. It seems like it's going to become possible and see a lot more theater, but right now, of course, it's coming up on, it doesn't feel like it outside now, but Spring will come and DC Black Pride Weekend will come, and so in the next week or so, they'll reach out to folks to see who's going to be interested in participating. This year, I don't have the luxury really of writing anything I want and then casting it just for a lot of reasons involving money and prestige and this, that and the other.

(53:08):

But so what I do is I reach out to see who thinks they might be available to see Black Pride Weekend, and then I get a bunch of folks together and I sort of have a sense of who's available and I write stuff, but I think they would showcase well. So it's kind of the opposite of the way. I know most people get to do it, but it's the way I get to do it. So it's the way I get to do it. And in a way, it's forced the discipline on me because it's forced me to write to specific situations or specific subjects or numbers of people, assemblies of people or collectives of people. I write a lot more lesbian theater now than I used to. And I feel sort of funny about that because I know some of the amazing lesbian playwrights, I sometimes wonder, does the age old question, should you be writing this when all of them can be writing? What do you know about it when you are not a lesbian? It's the same thing with, we've done much more transgender theater now, and I'm not trans, and I know amazing people like Dana Didi and Roanne and people like that who are doing phenomenal work. But then I think our audience needs to see these stories and be exposed to them. And so far, I haven't gotten any major chick back from people that stop it, so

(54:31):

I'm trying to

Thembi (54:32):

Expand. No, keep going.

Alan Sharpe (54:33):

Going more about as well branch out for so long, we did just black male plays, and I don't want to be stuck in that if I can avoid it.

Thembi (54:44):

Oh, that's beautiful. That's what's coming. I'm so excited and grateful. Grateful that you chose your destiny, grateful that you followed along. As things shifted and changed and you ended up creating this lasting, powerful canon of work that I know for a fact will continue to be appreciated for generations to come. It's huge. Very important. Thank you for that.

Alan Sharpe (55:14):

I thank you for inviting me. It's always a pleasure chatting and spending time with you. I'm not used to the type of interest that lead to a forum like this, so it's encouraging and it's empowering that there is any interest at all in my artistic efforts. And so I fear I've talked your head off. I just hope I've managed to share at least something worthwhile of interest to people. Like I said, I'm play right, and I would run my mouth.

Thembi (55:44):

No, no, this was wonderful. And we didn't even scratch the surface. We didn't even really get to talk about the content of all of your work and just sort of dig into some of the pieces. And I think it's important also to note for me, for my vision is to do exactly this, is to capture and document the careers and work of people who are very important and important, looks different to different people. I know that for some people, they think scale means important, and I personally have seen enough things at scale that just didn't have any real impact, and I barely remembered them versus things that maybe they weren't at such a grand scale, but they changed my life. So the work that you do that creates such a shift in people's hearts and spirits, no, nothing can get to that size. That's just out of the stratosphere. So I love you and I am grateful for you, and you've made a huge difference in my life, and I know I could call up ten, twenty, thirty, forty, a hundred people right now who would say absolutely Allen Sharpe. His work and his presence has made a huge difference alongside the fact of what I said before is that you show up for everybody. So know we love you and you are important, and I'm looking forward to the next time I get to talk to you.

Alan Sharpe (57:07):

Well, this is definitely a community and I'm looking forward to it too. I went back and watched, listened to all of these, and so it's such an invaluable capturing of what people do and how it does help prevent what we've done from being a race. So I can't thank you enough for providing this for all of us.

Thembi (57:26):

Thank you. Pleasure's mine. All right. That was Alan Sharpe. This time we're definitely going to have to have him come back. This is KeyBARD. ‘Til next time…