Art

Community Struggles for City of Berkeley to Honor to Commitment to Black Rep Theater

Berkeley’s Black Repertory Group (BBRG), the only Black-owned-and-operated theater in the East Bay, is pushing for the City of Berkeley to provide the financial backing for the theater that is required by local law. At issue is whether the City of Berkeley will contribute legally required funding to support Black theater, similar to what the city does for other performing arts and cultural institutions in the city or whether it will continue to promote gentrification and forced displacement through longtime practices that undermine this historic venue. Founded in 1964, the theater is located at 3201 Adeline St. in Berkeley, a cultural arts center that houses the Birel L. Vaughn Theater.

Published

10 months ago

August 6, 2024

Oakland Post

Summer youth theater camp 2022 at Berkeley Black Repertory Theater. Photo by Pamela Spikes.

Special to the Berkeley Post

At issue is whether the City of Berkeley will contribute legally required funding to support Black theater, similar to what the city does for other performing arts and cultural institutions in the city or whether it will continue to promote gentrification and forced displacement through longtime practices that undermine this historic venue.

Founded in 1964, the theater is located at 3201 Adeline St. in Berkeley, a cultural arts center that houses the Birel L. Vaughn Theater.

“We not asking for handouts. The city should just pay what it legally owes us and also stop using city officials to harass us,” said a member of the board of the Black Rep.

Former Councilmember Cheryl Davila forcefully argues that Berkeley officials are undermining the theater as part of the city’s continued gentrification and ongoing elimination of local institutions and neighborhoods of African Americans and other People of Color.

“The City of Berkeley has continued the colonization as reflected in disparities documented in the Health Status Report, the Center for Police Equity (CPE) Report and Mason Tillman Report,” Davila said.

“The Tillman report revealed bids are awarded to white men only,” she continued. “The CPE report demonstrated the bias in policing and the Health Status Report, health disparities due to racism. The (city) has not fairly distributed funding or support for organizations that are located within the red lines.

“Redline disinvestment has been the practice in the Black, indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC) institutions in the City of Berkeley. It’s crystal clear, the city, which has invested in Caucasian institutions, outside the red lines, providing emergency and other funding passed on the consent calendar with no opposition, nor illegal break-ins for building inspections, or harassment, unlike the Black Repertory Group,” she said.

“Now, these same redlined communities are recognized as “prime” real estate, so the fines, inspections, and eviction process began some time ago and continues to eliminate “Blacks” from our communities. The attempts to confiscate the historical institutions that were never given the full support to live and thrive in a city (that upholds) a façade of being “progressive.”

Dr. Omowale Fowles, a former Berkeley health commissioner, said: “Today, in the 21st century post-Jim Crow America, a so-called ‘progressive’ Berkeley City Council has continued to perpetuate the unfair, unjust and inequitable funding practice that drove the Black Repertory Theater out of the South!

“Berkeley has not lived up to its contractual agreements to provide an annual baseline of economic support for the BBRG, nor has the city responded, in a timely manner, if at all, to BBRG’s requests for consistent maintenance sanitation, and renovations interventions,” said Fowles.

However, the Berkeley City Council has managed to award several other theaters in Berkeley tens of thousands of dollars to enable their theaters to stay alive and thrive, specifically, the Berkeley Repertory Theater in downtown and the Shotgun Players’ Theater is South Berkeley, he said.

“Such malevolent behaviors (are what we have come to expect) from a government entity that prides itself on its quasi-liberal and progressive beliefs particularly toward the arts music heritage of Berkeley,” he said.

Lady AfiTiombe A. Kambon, a longtime Berkeleyan elder who is an oral historian and actor, traced the roots of the Black Rep to historic resistance to violent racism and the KKK.

“The Berkeley Black Repertory Group Theater (BBRG) escaped Vicksburg, Mississippi, from the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) for holding artistic storytelling events for Black people in the 1940s. The Black Rep fled from hatred and the threat of lynching to a city known to practice humanity and democracy,” she said.

“Now, the theater continues to be under attack from city officials and Neighborhood Watch organized to eliminate the Black community,” Kambon said.

The Berkeley Equity Summit Alliance urges all Citizens throughout the City of Berkeley and beyond to support the Black Repertory Group and ensure that the City of Berkeley treats all the theaters equally and equitably distributing services and funding.

For more information, reach out to tiombe47@gmail.com or Dallascowboy52@yahoo.com

@PaulCobbOakland @PostNewsGroup @NNPA_BlackPress @BlackPressUSA

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Activism

Griot Theater Company Presents August Wilson’s Work at Annual Oratorical Featuring Black Authors

The performance explores the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson whose 10-play Century Cycle chronicles the African American experience across the 20th century, with each play set in a different decade. “Half a Century” journeys through the final five plays of this monumental cycle, bringing Wilson’s richly woven stories to life in a way that celebrates history, resilience, and the human spirit.

Published

3 months ago

February 17, 2025

Oakland Post

Late playwright August Wilson. Wikipedia photo.

By Godfrey Lee

Griot Theater Company will present their Fifth Annual Oratorical with August Wilson’s “Half a Century,” at the Belrose on 1415 Fifth Ave., in San Rafael near the San Rafael Public Library.

The performance explores the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson whose 10-play Century Cycle chronicles the African American experience across the 20^th century, with each play set in a different decade. “Half a Century” journeys through the final five plays of this monumental cycle, bringing Wilson’s richly woven stories to life in a way that celebrates history, resilience, and the human spirit.

Previous performance highlighting essential Black American authors included Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry with Langston Hughes.

The play will be performed at 3:00. p.m. on Feb. 20, 21, 22, 27, and 28 at 7:00 p.m., and on Feb. 23 at 3:00 p.m.

For more information, go to griottheatercompany.squarespace.com/productions-v2

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Activism

MLK Day of Service Volunteers Make Blankets and Art for Locals in Need

“Everyone has an opportunity to participate,” said Glenda Roberts, kinship support care program manager at CCYSB. “Our nonprofit organization and participants recognize how important it is to give back to the community and this is serving. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, ‘Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve.’”

Published

4 months ago

January 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy of the nonprofit.

By Kathy Chouteau
The Richmond Standard

The Contra Costa Youth Service Bureau (CCYSB) and Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church (BMBC) are collaborating with a team of volunteers for a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, Monday, Jan. 20 that will wrap the community’s most vulnerable people in warm blankets and provide them with an uplifting gift of art.

Volunteers will kick off their activities at BMBC at 11 a.m., making blankets for the unhoused people served by the Greater Richmond Interfaith Program (GRIP) and art for those in convalescence in Richmond.

Others will get to work preparing a lunch of chili, salad, a veggie tray, and water for participants, offered courtesy of CCYSB, while supplies last.

“People of all ages are welcome to participate in the MLK Day of Service,” said Roberts. Volunteers can RSVP via phone to Glenda Roberts at 510-215-4670, ext. 125.

CCYSB Boardmember Jackie Marston and her friends donated the materials and supplies to make the blankets and art projects. The nonprofit is also providing the day’s complimentary lunch, as well as employees to volunteer, under the direction of CCYSB Executive Director Marena Brown.

BMBC, led by Rev. Dr. Carole McKindley-Alvarez, is providing the facility for the event and volunteers from the church, which is located at 684 Juliga Woods St. in Richmond.

Located in Richmond, CCYSB is a nonprofit youth advocacy organization that serves eligible children, youth, and low-income families with a variety of wraparound services so they can thrive. Programs include academic achievement, youth mentorship, truancy prevention and direct response.

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Art

Vandalism at Richmond Ferry Terminal Saddens Residents

Residents have been lamenting the destruction online. Ellen Seskin posted photos of the vandalism to the Facebook group, Everybody’s Richmond, on Jan. 12, saying she encountered it while out on a walk. “It was on the sidewalk, the street, the doors to the ferry, even in the art installation and the ‘stone’ benches,” she said. “I reported it but knowing how slow they are about getting things done — I just know that the longer you leave graffiti, the more likely they are to spray it again.”

Published

4 months ago

January 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Graffiti mars the walkway at the Richmond Ferry Terminal. Photo by Kathy Chouteau, The Richmond Standard.

The Richmond Standard

“This is why we can’t have nice things,” stated the post on NextDoor.

The post referenced images of graffiti at the Richmond Ferry Terminal. Not just on the terminal, but also on public artwork, on trail signs, on public benches and the boardwalk.

On Wednesday, the Standard stopped by to see it for ourselves. The good news was that it appears the graffiti on the terminal and on the artwork, called Changing Tide, have been cleaned for the most part. But graffiti remained abundant in the area around the relatively new ferry terminal, which opened to the public just six years ago.

Graffiti artists tagged benches and the boardwalk. Cars that had done doughnuts in the street marked the cul-de-sac just outside the historic Craneway Pavilion.

A ferry worker told us the graffiti had been there since before he started working for the ferry service about a week ago.

A member of the Army Corps of Engineers who did not want to be named in this report called the scene “sad,” as “they’d done such a nice job fixing it up.”

“It’s sad that all this money has been spent and hoodlums just don’t care and are destroying stuff,” he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear how soon the graffiti would be removed. The Standard reported the graffiti to the city’s graffiti abatement hotline. We were prompted to leave a message reporting the address and location of the graffiti.

“It was on the sidewalk, the street, the doors to the ferry, even in the art installation and the ‘stone’ benches,” she said. “I reported it but knowing how slow they are about getting things done — I just know that the longer you leave graffiti, the more likely they are to spray it again.”

In the comment section responding to Seskin’s post, local attorney Daniel Butt questioned why there aren’t cameras in the area.

On Nextdoor, one resident suggested searching to see if the tags match any accounts on Instagram, hoping to identify the perpetrator.

On its website, the City of Richmond says residents should graffiti immediately call Public Works graffiti removal and/or Code Enforcement at 510-965-4905.

Kathy Chouteau contributed to this report.