Another Letter from A Black Artistic Director
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February 2025
HartBeat Family,
It’s been a minute. A long, brittle, dissonant minute. As I write this, as I move through this minute in my life, in our lives, in the life of this country, this planet, I keep reminding myself to breathe.
Breathe.
Young James Baldwin, or James Alton, the brilliant young actor embodying Mr. Baldwin, will coax you into breathing at the top of Citizen James, or The Young Man Without a Country. This moment of Kyle Bass’ masterful script is one of several moments that have you in your feelings during our production, which opens this Thursday and runs until February 16. I am exhorting you to attend Citizen James to give you a minute to breathe deeply and to remember that we’ve already been in the moment we’re in now. We got through it then. We’ll get through it again.
Breathe.
Young James Baldwin had to leave America because he felt he’d either kill somebody or be killed. This was 1948. Jim was Crowing, even in Harlem. The daily brutalization of Black and Brown bodies -- the seemingly endless police brutality, the casual and unremitting gentrification and disenfranchisement of money, property, and basic human rights – convinced Young James that he needed to leave the country in order to hear and see himself as an artist. Never mind that as a Queer, Black man he’d be in danger on any street in richly diverse Manhattan. He wanted to be seen as more than “merely a Negro, or, even merely as a Negro writer.”
Breathe.
We cannot act like what we are entering into here in the United States is something new. We cannot act like we do not have the ancestral tools to dismantle the masters’ house.
We cannot act like we won’t have to do this again when our children have their children.
Breathe.
James Baldwin teaches us that it is not only possible but necessary to claim your space in the world. Then and only then can you fight for it. He left the country to find his space. That is the moment you will see at The Carriage House Theater the next two weeks. But if you came to see Talvin Wilks’ Jimmy & Lorraine in the fall, you’ll know that after he claimed his space, Mr. Baldwin came back to the U.S. to fight for it. For himself and his people. All people.
Breathe.
This is an exhortation. Not just to come see Citizen James. This is an exhortation to support Hartford’s Public Theatre, HartBeat Ensemble. An exhortation to support all the theaters here in Greater Hartford with your money and your feet. Go! You have the actual power to keep us going so that we can continue to tell stories that help us--you, for we are you--to move forward and find the third, fourth and fifth ways to enfranchise us all.
Breathe.
Memphis, the character I’m blessed to play in Hartford Stage’s production of August Wilson’s Two Trains Running down the street, tells us that “Freedom is heavy. You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder to it and hope your back holds up.” We were made for this moment, folks. For this minute in our lives. Let’s put our shoulder to it. Mr. Baldwin and so many other ancestors have already shown us the way.
Peace,
Godfrey