On this week’s edition of the Joy Beat, we’re headed to the theater — specifically, to the Front Porch Arts Collective. It’s more than a theater; it’s a communal gathering space for artists of color.
At its founding, Boston was without a professional Black theater company, which doesn’t help the city’s reputation as being hostile to people of color. But that didn’t stop this group of actors and performance artists from coming together to create a safe and inclusive space to rewrite those pervasive narratives.
Maurice Emmanuel Parent, co-founder of the Front Porch Arts Collective, joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath about how the theater company remains committed to advancing racial equity in Boston. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation.
Arun Rath: Start off by telling us a bit about the founding of the Front Porch Arts Collective and how it came to be.
Maurice Emmanuel Parent: We started about seven years ago. We got the idea for the theater company—I’m going to go ahead and say it—at a bar. A lot of things in theater happen around that, not advocating for alcoholism, but that was just where we all commune and connect.
I’d seen a production of the play “Saturday Night, Sunday Morning.” We’re at the opening night party at the bar with our Manhattans in hand, and I look around the space and I see this beautiful, diverse, excited and vibrant community that’s rare to find in that part of town, celebrating and talking about feeling inspired by this show that celebrated Black culture.
It was an entirely Black cast, mostly Black females, and I looked at my partner and said, “Why do we have to wait for someone else to produce shows like this to be able to gather this community around these narratives? We should probably do it ourselves.” She said, “Well, maybe that’s an idea for a new theater company.”
We promptly went into the brainstorming phase of ideas. I was doing a show at Central Square Theater at the time, so we’d sneak in before rehearsals, take out our notepads, write down ideas and come up with a mission.
Then, once the folks at Central Square Theater got wind, they said, “Why are you sneaking in? You should’ve just told us. Here are keys to our theater.”
They ended up being our first fiscal sponsor, so we were able to start getting donations through that. We stayed with them—we still work with them, even though we now have our own nonprofit status.
Rath: That’s really wonderful. I mean, seeing an open, yawning need, and just dealing with it yourselves.
Parent: Absolutely. In that notepad-centered brainstorming session, a few priorities came to mind. Number one: We want to be very clear about the stories we’re telling as a majority-Black group of artists and administrators.
We know we can tell the stories of the Black community and people of the African diaspora while knowing there’s no monolithic experience. There are all of these beautiful nuances, intersections, triumphs and challenges that fall under the umbrella of what it is to talk about Black culture. It makes sense that, season after season, we can show on the stage an infinite variety of intersections. We’re very proud to wrestle that narrative.
We also wanted it to be inclusive. We wanted to drive home that we’re clear about that message. Everyone is welcome because theater, at its best, teaches empathy and understanding. We have this phrase where we say, “Everyone is welcome to the Porch. Everyone’s welcome to our cookout, but we’re making a potato salad.”
If you’re okay with seeing stories that center these communities on stage—even if you’re not part of that community—you’re welcome. Some people don’t really want to see those narratives, and that’s fine. Please don’t come.
The third pillar is that we want to see more representation of the Black community in the theatrical space. We weren’t seeing that as much as we’d like, so we wanted to build programs that really drive more people to the space to see stories about people who look like them.
Michael R. Jackson—the writer of “A Strange Loop,” which we’re going to produce at the end of April—said in an interview that his play is both a mirror and a window. I think that’s a beautiful image of what all theater does, particularly culturally-specific theater. It’s a mirror for people in the audience who share that cultural perspective, and it’s a window for those who don’t share that culture into the lives, experiences and perspectives of people different from you. That fosters understanding and empathy, which fosters a more inclusive, equitable society.
Rath: Brilliant. Tell us about some of the stories—maybe starting off with the play that you just mentioned.
Parent: We start rehearsals in about a month. I am excited and healthily nervous. It’s “A Strange Loop” by Michael R. Jackson. He’s very specific in saying it’s not an autobiographical play, but it’s an emotionally autobiographical play.
It centers a writer—a Black gay man, as Michael R. Jackson is. The character in this play is writing a story about being a Black gay man in America, who is writing a story about being a Black gay man in America, who was writing a story ... That’s one of the primary loops of the play.
It’s really smart—essentially, it’s him engaging with the things he likes about himself, the things he doesn’t like about himself, his past and memories. It won the Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. It’s a really powerful play that connects with so many of us on a very personal level, and I think everyone else will relate to that because it’s so rooted in humanity and understanding.
Before that, we’re doing what I like to call a beta test of what it would be like to have a young company. We’re partnering with Suffolk University and Northeastern University, as well as students from the Boston Conservatory and Boston Arts Academy that we’re mentoring. There’s a student director, who’s also on our staff.
He’s been directing this production called “Exception to the Rule,” which is a dramatized exploration of the 'school-to-prison pipeline'. The language is very direct and clear, but there are these huge moments of art and really figurative ways of telling the message young people—particularly young kids of color—received from their communities, schools and sometimes from their parents. We’re going to transfer that to the Modern Theatre at Suffolk.
We’re going to give a lot of these young folks their first professional experience. We’re going to pay them—pay equity was one of those early things written down in our notebooks—so we build financial relationships and partnerships to ensure that. We knew that if we were going to center BIPOC artists and stories, we wanted to make sure we were able to pay these young folks for their time. That’ll run for two weeks at the Modern, on March 7th through the 17th.
At the end of the season ... do you see what you’ve started? I could talk about this all day. We are co-producing with Central Square Theater for the musical “Next to Normal.” That’ll be at Central Square, and information is on our website.
