Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre celebrates 20 years of excellent Black art

Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre marks its 20th anniversary this weekend with a series of special events that organizers hope will feel more like a theater experience than a traditional fundraising gala.

Founded in 2002 by Tony Award-winning director Kenny Leon and Jane Bishop, True Colors Theatre Company’s mission is to celebrate the tradition of Black storytelling and the work of bold artists.

Under Artistic Director Jamil Jude’s leadership since 2019, shows like Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer and Marie and Rosetta have committed equally to artistic excellence and civic engagement.

“The namesake of the organization sets an artistic standard,” Jude said of Leon. “I have no desire to ever reach underneath that bar. So, we always try to find a show that meets that standard. With shows like Fannie and Marie and Rosetta, we celebrate Black women who have made impacts in the world and make sure their legacies aren’t lost to the sands of time.”

He said that mission will continue in the company’s future with new productions, like the upcoming world premiere of Rachel Lynett’s Good Bad People, which addresses issues of state-sanctioned violence against Black people, race, wealth and class from the perspective of surviving family members.

“That’s going to be a fun play to dig into; it’s going to be messy,” Jude said. “People are going to get mad. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to do some theater that gets us back to the reason why we choose to gather in shared spaces. We will engage one another in conversation and say the things we wouldn’t have been able to say if we were just in our houses, around people who think like us.”

True Colors produces shows for all audiences, yet sometimes the shows are aimed at sparking conversations within the Black community.

“Sometimes we’re going to have intra-community conversations, though we are inviting and keeping the doors open for everybody,” Jude said. “Showing those whose experiences may not usually be represented onstage, we are asking you to bear witness to an experience that you are privileged to join in and watch. We ask people to honor that experience because that’s what theater is best at. It increases our capacity for empathy.”

Chandra Stephens-Albright, managing director of True Colors, said celebrating True Colors and Atlanta’s legacy of Black theater companies, like Jomandi Productions, is very important because it has influenced what all of Atlanta theater has now become.

Coming from a background in chemistry and 20 years of working at Coca-Cola, Stephens-Albright, while volunteering for Jomandi and then joining True Colors, was dazzled when she saw what theater artists could do.

“My first True Colors experience that cracked my heart open was my first rehearsal, which was Holler if Ya Hear Me in 2017,” she said. “And watching Kenny talk to these actors, and, like 15 seconds after the opening talk, they’re doing the play. And they’re humming the music. And the music director was doing stuff. And I was startled because we’d just gotten there; they’d just met. How was this even possible?”

That hip-hop musical also was Jude’s first True Colors experience.

“I wasn’t there for the first rehearsal, but I was there for the first preview,” he said. “My first True Colors experience was stepping out on the stage and seeing an audience full of people who looked like me, and for the 10 years prior in my career, I had been told that was impossible, that people of color didn’t show up to the theater in those kinds of numbers and that they weren’t interested in new plays. That myth was broken right at that moment.”

Featuring returning performers and restaged moments from the company’s history of shows, three 90-minute cabaret events will be held this Friday evening at 7:30 p.m., then Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at Southwest Arts Center in South Fulton.

Among the featured scheduled performers are recent Suzi Bass Award nominees Amitria Fanae and Robin McGee, who appeared in last season’s plays Marie and Rosetta and Fannie. Also appearing are India Tyree, Adrienne Reynolds, E. Roger Mitchell, Elisabeth Omilami and Denise Burse, who will perform a monologue from Fences, which she starred in during True Colors’ first-ever production.

Other surprise guests may also appear in person or by video, said Jude, adding that the cabaret aims to welcome people back to the theater experience in a way that a black-tie event wouldn’t.

“This was an opportunity to still put on something big that feels like a True Colors show, but to do it in a way that is scalable inside the pandemic,” he said. “Also, it provides us a different way to engage our audience and supporters that isn’t your traditional gala or fundraiser, like we’ve done for a while. We sought a perfect blend of art, culture and community.”

The new donor program launching at the cabarets is called the 20th Anniversary Troupe, which new donors can join by giving at least $20 a month for the next year. Stephens-Albright said that one of the goals of the fundraising efforts is to encourage recurring financial donations from patrons, which will help the theater survive. Right now, 15% of the theater’s income comes from donors, while most White-owned theaters nationwide maintain 60% of their income from donations.

“We’d like to get the level of investment that other organizations get coming here,” Stephens-Albright said. “We do Black art, and we do it in an excellent way. Other organizations do Black art, and they do it in a good way. Ours is excellent. It’s deserving of that investment.”

“One of the things that became painfully evident to us during the pandemic is that contributed income is a huge part of any theater,” she added. “You can’t live on tickets. What we’re trying to do is encourage people to become recurring donors … Those recurring donations will build a culture of ongoing support.”

Also, True Colors provides audiences with a supportive experience unlike any that she’s seen elsewhere.

“I’m a native Atlantan, so when I was going to True Colors as a fan, I would come to shows and then leave,” she said. “Well, now it’s my job to be in the lobby, which I love. So everybody in my life has come through that door, people I haven’t seen since eighth grade, the neighbor down the street where I grew up. It’s just like family in there, literally and figuratively. When you walk into a True Colors lobby, it really feels like we are so damn glad to see you. The people you’ve known 40 or 50 years in Atlanta or the people who’ve just walked in, they get the same greeting. If it’s a crunchy show or a difficult show, you have that hug before you go in. If it’s a great show, we’re here laughing with you when you come out.”

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Benjamin Carr, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, is an arts journalist and critic who has contributed to ArtsATL since 2019. His plays have been produced at The Vineyard Theatre in Manhattan, as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, and the Center for Puppetry Arts. His novel Impacted was published by The Story Plant in 2021.