Performers in the Black Broadway Cabaret, presented by the Memphis Black Arts Alliance at the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival. (All photos by Dennis Langley)
The early 2000s set the stage for Atlanta’s Black theater boom. Tyler Perry’s gospel plays were selling out across the South; Jomandi Theater — once a crown jewel of Atlanta’s Black arts scene — had shuttered; and the National Black Arts Festival was fading from its citywide prominence. Meanwhile, an influx of newcomers from Chicago, California, New York and New Orleans, many displaced after Hurricane Katrina, arrived with appetites for community and cultural expression.
Out of that moment came lightning in a bottle: the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival and Creative Arts Conference.
Now in its 14th year, the Festival, themed “Rooted in Resilience,” will take place August 28 through August 30, with various staged readings, performances, talkbacks, an awards gala and other events at Spelman College’s Performing Arts Center and at the Hilton Atlanta Airport Hotel in Hapeville.
Founded in 2011 and formally launched in 2012, the Festival became one of the most important stages for Black theater in the country, reaching audiences of up to 6,000 in some years. Co-founding sisters Toni Simmons Henson and Wanda Simmons have produced more than 500 performances — with visits and participation from the likes of Dick Gregory, T.C. Carson and one of this year’s highlights, Ursula O. Robinson, along the way.
“The vision came to me one hot August night in 2011,” Henson said. “I thought it already existed. When I found out it didn’t, I knew we had to build it.”
The Festival’s debut coincided with a cultural breaking point. In February 2012, as the sisters were planning their first season, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was followed around his neighborhood and shot to death in Sanford, Florida. As goes the gut-wrenching reality of racial violence in the United States, the White man who killed him was later acquitted. Martin’s death spawned the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement and clarified the Festival’s mission.
“That was our why,” Henson said. “It just came flooding to me that if a boy can be shot just for wearing a hoodie, we have an image problem. That was such a difficult time. I don’t think there had been such a shaking of the foundation of the Black community since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
Simmons said she saw the Festival as a way to use the arts to bring back humanity, despite every year bringing another harrowing death. But board member Shelton Land, now the director of the Douglas Theatre in Macon, Georgia, encouraged the founders to leave room for plays with more joyful and whimsical themes.
“Honestly, I wish we were out of business,” Simmons said in reference to the tragedies. “I wish we didn’t have to keep seeing these things happen and telling stories of our children, our survival and injustice,” she said. “But we also tell lighthearted stories.”
“We still need theater as a place to tell all of our stories and to love on and celebrate ourselves,” Henson said. “And we want to make sure that every single person that comes to the door feels loved, affirmed and appreciated, no matter their color, no matter their gender, no matter what.”
That combination of artistry and affirmation has become their hallmark. At its heart, the Festival is about communion.
“People say it feels like a family reunion,” said Simmons. “And theater is a three-dimensional experience. You can’t trade that for anything.”
“I believe theater is the most relevant social movement of our time,” Henson said. “Art is a powerful medium, and there is nothing that reaches people to expand and challenge their thoughts, beliefs and understanding of the world like theater. You have protagonists, antagonists and the people around them. You find yourself [in the characters] on stage nine times out of 10.”
The Festival’s endurance is no small feat. The sisters have experienced how difficult Atlanta’s arts landscape can be — cliquish, fickle and tough to navigate without institutional backing.
“We had to build from the grassroots,” Henson said. “But the world has embraced us.”
In a sense, Atlanta has become what Henson calls “the mecca of Black theater,” noting that it is home to Tyler Perry Studios, Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company and New African Grove Theatre Company –“with room for more,” she added.
Today, the Festival is more than a series of performances. It includes master classes, short film screenings, a Black business expo and a monologue competition that awards scholarships to Historically Black Colleges and Universities students. It has also been featured in several academic journals and textbooks. The sisters see it as both a platform for emerging artists and a social movement grown from love.
More than 60% of its audiences travel from out of state, with attendees coming from Canada, Jamaica, London, Panama and Zimbabwe, among other countries. For many playwrights, it has been a springboard to grant funding, prestigious awards and bigger stages in New York and beyond.
With an active board in place, the Festival plans to expand beyond its once-annual offerings, hosting readings and other events throughout the year. As it grows, the sisters will always remember its roots that reach back to their days as girls growing up in New Jersey. They hosted backyard plays, charging 25 cents for admission, which they donated to the Ronald McDonald House.
“They’d call us Toni and Wanda and their corny plays,” Simmons said with a laugh. “We made our own props, set out chairs and the whole neighborhood came. I was the writer, and Toni handled the rest. We must have been 9 or 10 years old.”
Those childhood performances, alongside many school and family trips to Broadway, blossomed into callings. Henson studied at Howard University, combining business with theater training, while Wanda taught and continued writing plays. Together, they have carried the family’s creative legacy forward, re-migrating to Atlanta 20 years ago. Their family roots are in Georgia. Their father, Leonard, passed before he could witness the Festival’s rise.
“I just want to say, ‘Look, Daddy. Look at your girls,’” Henson said.
But their mother, Marion, has never missed a single Festival. At 83, she still attends.
“Theater is how we heal. It’s how we love,” Henson said. “And we’re going to keep doing it.”
Where & When:
The Atlanta Black Theatre Festival and Creative Arts Conference will take place August 28 through August 30 in two locations: Spelman College’s Performance Arts Center (350 Spelman Lane) and the Hilton Atlanta Airport Hotel (1031 Virginia Ave.).
Ticket prices vary depending on individual events.
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Angela Oliver is a proud native of old Atlanta who grew up in the West End. A Western Kentucky University journalism and Black studies grad, daily news survivor and member of Delta Sigma Theta, she works in the grassroots nonprofit world while daydreaming about seeing her scripts come alive on the big screen.
