Front Porch’s Theater for Actors of Color
It’s often said that theater holds a mirror up to society. If that’s true, then black and brown people still aren’t seeing themselves or their stories in numbers that reflect their population despite the success of shows such as Hamilton. That was the conversation two Boston theater stalwarts, actor Maurice E. Parent and director Dawn M. Simmons, had at a bar one night in 2015 while sipping Manhattans. While most conversations over drinks often disappear into the late-night ether, the two picked up the phone the next morning and Front Porch Arts Collective was born. One of Boston’s newest theater companies, Front Porch, is moving stories from the sidelines into the spotlight. “We are black and brown artists making the decisions; we’re picking the stories we want to tell and telling the stories we want to lift people up,” says Simmons.
Johnny Lee Davenport and Brandon G. Green in black odyssey. Photo: Nile Scott Studios.
From the moment the pair co-founded the company, three other organizations offered to step up and co-produce their inaugural season. It launched last fall with Breath & Imagination staged at Lyric Stage Company, continues with black odyssey opening April 25 at Central Square Theater and concludes with The Three Musketeers (focusing on author Alexandre Dumas’s Haitian heritage) in June at Greater Boston Stage Company in Stoneham. “Our first season is an example of what our ideal season is,” says Parent. “We have a musical or play with music, a brand-new work and a reimagined classic.”
Simmons and Parent met in 2006 during a production of Ragtime at New Repertory Theatre. Parent was the star; Simmons was the house manager. Many shows and many karaoke parties later, “we’re Wonder Twins in terms of how we work together,” Parent says. For years, they noticed how black-themed shows were only presented in February for Black History Month. While, thankfully, they say that’s not always the case anymore, “it still feels compartmentalized,” says Simmons. Front Porch endeavors to create a theatrical home where audiences will always find narratives about black and brown communities, and, as the name suggests, a place where stories can be told and shared all of the time—not just in February.
Carving out a livelihood in theater is challenging for anyone, but perhaps more so for actors of color. Parent and Simmons tick off a list of their onetime colleagues who’ve left Boston over the last decade because of the paucity of roles. With three shows a season, Front Porch increases the job opportunities for those actors exponentially. “Our hearts are in the right place,” Parent says. “We’re not doing this to make more work for ourselves.” “It’s about more opportunity,” Simmons chimes in. And not just for actors. Recognizing that there aren’t many diverse faces working behind-the-scenes—from designers to directors to administrators—”we’re trying to do art and engagement concurrently,” Simmons says, listing mentorship and education initiatives underway including working with students from grades two to eight to stage “junior” versions of Front Porch shows. The company is also moving away from the notion of color-blind casting—a term and notion Parent finds nonsensical. “A lot of casting in Boston is color-blind, but color-blind doesn’t exist,” he says. “People will see Edward II, but they see me as Edward II.” Instead, Parent and Simmons subscribe to the notion of color-conscious casting. “It’s thinking critically about the people whom you are putting into roles,” Simmons says, citing a hypothetical example of casting a black Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. One must decide, “What does it mean for him to be black at that time? How does it affect the story?”
Founders of Front Porch Arts Collective, actor Maurice E. Parent and director Dawn M. Simmons. Photo: Nile Hawver.
That won’t be an issue in the upcoming production of black odyssey, which playwright Marcus Gardley, a onetime UMass Amherst professor, has rewritten for Boston audiences. Inspired by the Greek epic poem, the play centers on Ulysses Lincoln, a Gulf War veteran on a quest to return to his wife and son at home in Roxbury. His guiding forces are African American deities and ancestors. It opens as Front Porch journeys into its own odyssey. Within ten years, its founders hope to be housed in their own theater space, preferably in a community of color and operating with a full-time staff. For now though, they’ll continue their multi-theater partnerships. “There’s nobody else who has a model like this,” Simmons says. “I hope as we keep going, we continue to break the mold.”
Jared Bowen is the host of the weekly television series, Open Studio with Jared Bowen and WGBH’s Emmy Award–winning executive arts editor.