Farewell from Walter Dallas, the Artistic Director

After sixteen years at the artistic helm, March 31, 2008 was my last official day as Freedom Theatre’s Artistic Director.

 

Thanks to all of you who "got it,” who understood my artistic vision of a culture of inclusion, of dogged passion and respect for the creative process and the work, and of forays into those sometime joyful and terrifying explorations that were guaranteed to challenge our sense of who we are, of what we are capable, and to encourage the articulation of a new world order as our personal privilege and social responsibility.

Thanks to all of you who, with your hearts and souls, welcomed and embraced the gifts I channeled that, hopefully, made a difference and positively impacted the fabric of our lives and our world: Black Nativity, Lazarus, Unstoned, Purlie, Sparkle: The Musical, The Old Settler, Cooley High, The Bluest Eye, Black Picture Show, Morning Time Asides, and the South African Kofifi Workshop. And I pray that the Adult Acting Classes I taught, the Prison Tours, and the Dallas Boot Camp moved us all forward toward the light.

To these gifts I add one more: this new website, my parting gift to you and to Freedom Theatre.

This special gift grew out of a self-initiated rite-of-passage experience designed to lead me from Freedom, across the proverbial burning sands of transition, and into the next chapter of this joyous, sacred experience that resonates as my life.

Thanks to my students and protégés who have regaled us with African-cubistic visions, phantaztyk languages and the rhythms of the future to celebrate and catapult our stories from here to uncharted creative stratospheres. 

Thanks to my mentors, some of whom are now ancestors, for their brilliant visions, steely leadership, broad shoulders, and passionate encouragement: Maurice Haynes, Mary Whatley, James Baldwin, Lloyd Richards, Carmen DeLavalade, Paul Sills, Baldwin Burroughs, Graham Brown, Gordon Parks, Wole Soyinka, Charles Fuller, Frances Foster, Oscar Brown, Jr., Phoebe Snow, Lynn Thigpen, John Allen, Jr., Ming Cho Lee, August Wilson, Douglas Turner Ward, Arnold Weinstein, and Joe Papp.

Thanks to Freedom Theatre for allowing me to use its theatrical canvas to sketch in an outline, explore various palettes, and prepare myself for the next steps along my journey to higher ground

And very special thanks to Derek Hargreaves without whom none of this would have been possible!

This is a perfect time for me to move on. Freedom Theatre has made significant strides towards overcoming many of its severe financial challenges including debt related to the construction of the John E. Allen, Jr. Theatre. Freedom is poised to redefine and rebuild its infrastructure including a search for a permanent Managing Director and to launch the rebuilding of its Board of Directors. This exciting turnaround period, including my departure, provides an ideal opportunity for Freedom to take a strategic look inward, clarify its institutional vision moving forward, and to find leadership that can help shepherd it toward that collective vision. I look at this moment as the commencement of opportunity and discovery.

Biography of Walter Dallas

Walter Dallas was based in New York, freelancing nationally, when he accepted the invitation to come to Philadelphia in 1983 to create the School of Theatre for the University of the Arts. He soon became deeply affiliated with Freedom Theatre. John Allen Jr., Freedom’s founding Artistic Director, began cultivating Dallas to eventually take the visionary helm. Allen asked Dallas to professionalize the small, family-driven community theatre and to affirm its place on the national agenda.

Dallas successfully achieved Allen’s challenge and the nation’s theatre community took notice: The Hartford Courant affirmed: “Dallas has turned Philadelphia’s Freedom Theatre into one of the finest regional companies.”

Steve Cohen of Philadelphia’s Broad Street Review, agrees: “…Freedom Theatre is one of the nation’s leading African-American theater companies.”

Dallas, a major figure in African American theatre, has been able to attract notable personalities to Freedom Theatre such as James Baldwin, Joe Papp, Ntozake Shange, August Wilson, Denzel Washington, Roger Guenveur Smith, Woodie King, Jr., Leslie Lee, Charles Fuller, Sonia Sanchez, Rubin Santiago-Hudson, Andrea Frye, Amiri Baraka, Lynn Nottage, Melba Moore, Jonathan Demme, Rajendra Maharaj, Samm-Art Williams, Bill Gunn, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Marjorie Moon, Glynn Turman, Delroy Lindo, Rome Neal, Clinton Turner Davis, Ben Cameron, Sean Patrick Thomas, Grover Washington, Jr., Clarice Taylor, Malik Yoba and others.

Highly respected by August Wilson, Dallas was asked by Wilson and Lloyd Richards to direct the world premiere of Seven Guitars at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. That production was named one of the Ten Best Theatre Events of that year by Newsweek Magazine. When the Pittsburgh Public Theatre asked Wilson if they could revive Jitney, one of his early plays, Wilson gave permission but only if Dallas could direct it. Dallas was one of a few theatre luminaries chosen to present a paper on Black Theatre at Wilson’s historic ‘The Ground On Which I Stand’ Conference at Dartmouth University. He was also asked to speak at the August Wilson Memorial Tribute on Broadway. His Wilson connection lives: in March, 2008 The Piano Lesson, under Dallas' direction, opened at Philadelphia’s award-winning Arden Theatre. The production received rave reviews and the run was extended due to popular demand.

While at New Freedom, Dallas continued to work on and off Broadway and at major regional theatres including the Mark Taper Forum, Yale Rep, Long Wharf, McCarter, NY Public Theatre, The Acting Company, Westport Country Playhouse, and the New Federal Theatre. He made his operatic directorial debut with Porgy and Bess two seasons ago at the Opera Company of Philadelphia.

More recently, at San Francisco’s Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Dallas directed The Bluest Eye, adapted from the Toni Morrison novel by Lydia Diamond. This production was named one of the city’s Top Ten Productions of 2007.

Dallas’s artistic canvas has been international as well, and includes projects in England, Russia, East Africa, France, West Africa, the Caribbean, and South Africa.

Standing in the Shadows of Motown, the documentary for which he was lead writer, which features Chaka Khan, Ben Harper, Joan Osborne and Gerald Levert, won several major awards including Best Non-Fiction Film from the New York Film Critics Circle, and four Grammy Awards.

Dallas’s other awards include an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Arts, two Creative Genius Awards, two New York Audelco Awards for Excellence in Black Theatre, a California Emmy Award for his first play, Willie Lobo/Manchild, and The Mover and Shaker Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Promotion of South African Arts and Culture. He has recently been named one of Philadelphia's Most Influential African Americans by the Philadelphia Tribune.

A native Atlantan, Dallas is a graduate of Morehouse College and the Yale School of Drama. He studied music and theology at Harvard University, and African theatre and dance in traditional African Society at the University of Ghana.

Walter Dallas is interviewed by Tony Lankford on The Actors Lounge (TV-One)  re black theatre and value of the urban circuit.