Ed Bullins lecture at the University of Iowa, June 15, 1978

Ed Bullins: ... As well as Guffin, if you had to, and keeping the thing alive. When the political people operating out of their ideology turned on the artists, and this was caused by Cleaver. Cleaver said to Marvin and I, well, you all will have to control the people, because all the people were coming into the house. To the programs, to the theater, to the, or whatever, and tell those niggers that they got to follow our orders. Marvin said, "Well, can we sit down and talk about this? We got a program, let's put it into practice." Cleaver said, "Well, the only way the program is going to be put into practice is that I'm going to be the head of it and Ramparts and Bob Scheer, who I'm associated with, would have to be allies in the program." We said no way, no way, because at that point, we worked out, of course, operating out of nationalism, but we would ally ourselves with whites if we had to. If we had to do a program over at the Fillmore Auditorium, Fillmore West, we did programs over there. Ed Bullins: Then Fillmore East when it moved to New York, I would go see Bill Graham and say, "Bill Graham, let me have the auditorium on a Sunday afternoon." He said, cool. Just take care of it, have your people there. I'll have my people there and everything will be cool. We did program after program and we raised a lot of money that way. If we had to do something in conjunction, like Ronnie Davis and San Francisco Mime Troupe, talk to Ronnie. He said, "Look, you're espousing what you're espousing, we're espousing what we're espousing. You give us that part of the program, we'll take this part of the program. When we do something that you can get involved in, we'll talk about it." We had a good operating situation like that. In the Fillmore District, there was a big theater operation that the hippies were trying to start, the street theater. I had some friends that were in that, because I knew them before. Ed Bullins: We went to school together, we were in writing poets circles and all that kind of stuff from our way back and forth to San Francisco. When I needed the theater, I need their help, or I need some resources or we had to get something done, we made our alliances and we got the work done. Part of the money that we got from the Black students union, the Black communications program was because we had certain whites in there who had been in Snick, who had in other places on the student council. We pushed those buttons and it came through for us, but then, having the move by Eldridge in on us with Bob Scheer and his people, we nixed that. The Panthers were to serve as the political arm of the house and to be the security for the house, but Cleaver sold them a bill of goods, and they, who had once been our allies, our comrades, our brothers, our friends, we found pointing guns at us the next day. Ed Bullins: The house, so the artists moved out of the house and there wasn't just Marvin and I, there was many of us. The whole Bay Area Black arts thing. We moved out of the house and went back to our separate institutions and the house fell, because the political people couldn't just run it with a gun and ordering people around. That schism, or as Baracka has since called it, that cleavage is still apparent in the movement and has dissipated a lot of the energy in the movement. Then shortly after, with the rise of [Karenga] and then the fratricide between the [US] group and the Panthers group, it became even more apparent. By that time, I had given up on the West Coast and had come to New York in '67, late in '67, to work with Robert Macbeth at the then forming New Lafayette Theater. At the New Lafayette Theater we established a magazine that we were able to do six issues of, called Black Theater Magazine. These are all collectors items. Ed Bullins: I can't even let them out of my hand, but if you want to find out many of the things that we did, what our ideas were, what we did while we was in New York, some of the writing of many people are in some of the issues. In our initial issue, we had writings by [Joe Gonzales], who was the editor of the Journal of Black Poetry. We had a discussion on Cruse's book, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. Cultural Nationalism and Black Theater by Larry Neal, and The Crisis of the Black Culture by Askia Muhammad Touré. Taking various sides of the argument as to the viability of the book at that time. Then we have an interview with LeRoi Jones, Everything's Cool by Marvin X, and other materials. Some of the other issues, we had a Black ritual, the first Black ritual statement by Robert Macbeth in issue number two. Macbeth was, shortly put some of his ideas into practice. Some of the ideas, some of the production performances hits the heights of what Black art was then some missed their mark, but it was experimental. Ed Bullins: It was coming out of the ideology and a growing aesthetic of the day. Other material and other issues, it was colorful, put together very well artistically, we tried to incorporate some of the best arts of the day, Black arts of the day, to give an example of what we were talking about. As we go on further into the period, into the decade, we get off into various issues of how the Black theater was growing. There's an article in this issue toward a relevant Black theater by Larry Neal on Black Art by Maulana Karenga, now Ron Karenga. Other statements by such writers is Ernie M. [inaudible 00:00:07:36]. A discussion of We Righteous Bombers, which was done as an event to point out some of the grave contradictions that was happening in the Black movement of the day. The artists who did it were accused of a lot of things, but we have to admit, looking back, if we were going to be objective, there was a lot of death wish among some of the revolutionary rhetoric. I think Huey finally published the book Revolutionary Suicide. Ed Bullins: There was a lot of gulping down European ideology and then spouting it back in some corrupted Black form that didn't fit the circumstances that we found ourselves in, and so this play was an attempt to show some of that and treat it in the theater so that a lot of people could get their minds together and talk about those things. Theaters had been destroyed. Theaters had been burned down. Artists had been beaten. Some artists had been killed. Revolutionaries were talking about running into the teeth of the monster and taking all the Black people with them. There was things to be examined. As the artist does a lot of times, they create something so that it'll create controversy and provoke debate, and we can look at things and get other positions and redefine things. Issue number five dealt with what might be coming in the 70s, Waiting For the 70s. It was done in, it was well, yeah, it was done in the early 70s, '71. Ed Bullins: It was conceived in '70 and put out on in '71. Has writers such as Peter Bailey, Sebastian Clark, Cleaver, Emory Douglas, who was a minister of culture of the Black Panthers after me. Roger Fermin, Nathan Hare, Woody King, Theara Makita, Marcia McBroom, [inaudible], Thelma Oliver, Roscoe Orman, Paula Perrier, Roberta Razor. A lot of these names you don't know, but some of you may. Clayton Raleigh, Michael Schultz, Delana Steward, Dick Williams, Colden X, who some of you may know from Minnesota. Went to school there, was really from Chicago. Had a Black theater group going in the late 60s in Minnesota of all places. Now I hear there's a lot of Black theater in Minneapolis. Dick Williams, talking about various things, talking about what was concerning the Black artists and Black theater of that day. Then the last issue, talking about the New York scene of then. In the original issue that I did for TDR in '68, I did a directory of the then existing Black theaters in the country that I knew, and did a selected bibliography. Ed Bullins: In California in '68, at the time when I was compiling this, there was the Ebony Showcase, Imperial Youth Theater Workshop, the Inner City Repertory Company, [Mafundi] Institute, Performing Arts Society, which is PASLOV, which is still continuing today. Theater of Watts, Touring Artists Group, Watts Tower Workshop, Westminster Neighborhood Association. Many of them have disappeared to be replaced by others. In the Bay Area there was the Aldrich Players West that I mentioned. The Haight Asbury Settlement House. Charles Smith was an act, was doing some things in theater with the Black Ops West, Northwich Neighbor House. In Connecticut there was the Black Arts Theater in New Haven run by William Jones. In Chicago there was Afro Arts Theater. Bill Qur'an. The Blackstone Rangers had a musical theater thing. You all heard of the Blackstone Rangers, that was a Chicago turf gang. They were doing theater at one point wedded to Black urban forms of theater. The Henry Booth Theater, Conrad Kent Rivers had a theater. Ted Ward, who was a very historical name, was operating a theater out of the South Side Center for the Performing Arts. Ed Bullins: I saw his play in late 60s. The Great White Fog that had been done originally in the 30s. Now, Gray Ward with operating a theater. In Louisiana, New Orleans we had the Free Southern Theater, of course. In Detroit, we had the Concept East. Detroit Repertory Theater, Dexter, and then in New York, we have the [inaudible] Manhattan Real Players. Mobilization for Youth would have came into New York by then. Negro Ensemble Company [inaudible] operating then. Their first play was Song of the Lusitania Bogey by Peter Weiss, and then Ray Lawyers, also a European, December the 17th [inaudible] and then they began doing [Congee's] Harvest. I saw Congee's Harvest the night that Martin Luther King was killed by [inaudible], and the play by Richard Wright they were considering, Daddy Goodness. The St. James Community Center, the African World Theater, the New Heritage Theater, New Lafayette Theater. Ed Bullins: Also, there were other groups, there was Black theater that was so far into the Black community in New York, some of them I couldn't even get to, and I was right in the Black community. Some of it was because of set requirements, the Aruba Group, they were doing theaters. They were taking Arisha legends taken from Africa, contemporizing them in a New York setting and then mixing the African Haitian Aruba traditions and creating theater. Very, very exciting theater. I only saw a glimpse of it. It sort of disappeared before I really got in on it. I think the people moved down to South Carolina somewhere. In New Jersey, there was Spirit House. In Cleveland, there was Caribou, there was Theater Black. In Philadelphia there was The Black House with Walter Hutchins, and then Ed Bernard's Afro American Thespians with Barry Shuck in '68. Then by '72, when I compiled another list of what theaters were going on, Black theater's going on, what I could find out, there was all of this. More than I can even mention, because when you start a theater, many times that fosters other activity, theater activities. Ed Bullins: In American now there is easily over 200 functioning Black theater groups. Functioning in that in their season, they do at least one production or more. In New York there is 60, if you include the Black dance groups. In other urban centers, and not urban centers, in college communities and small cities, middle-sized cities, there are Black functioning theaters and then Black writers who are writing for those theaters, keeping it alive. It's late. I could go on equally as long. I hope I have touched upon some things. I think that, I think the movement, some of the clues to when the movement began losing its vitality were either drifting off into some type of thing that we might call degeneracy, acidic degeneracy, for lack of a better word, is when too many of us artistic romantics became involved in things we call Black rituals. Now, Black ritual, as Macbeth first popularized it, was viable and vital for a moment, a passing moment. Ed Bullins: Then it began getting picked up by other groups, national Black theater bar [inaudible], and other groups. Then they began worshiping other people across the country. Not only in New York. Began worshiping as a thing in itself. When you begin worshiping the thing, rather than what the thing does, it begins degenerating. A Sufi master once said if you need the vessel to cross the space, do not become attached to the vessel, because you're only using it to get across from here to there. This period, 1964 to '69 was, and the theater that we did in it, and there was not only that theater, but I emphasize this political type of theater, because it had so much impact in such a short time. It was so vital. It was what even much of Black theater a day is identified as, in many people's minds, because it had its relevancy. Ed Bullins: It has its power, even though some of its major exponents, its creators have turned their backs on it. It's important. In years to come, it'll be reexamined and reexamined and put into its proper perspective. It was a vehicle that we artists, who were concerned, who wanted to, had to become relevant to our communities, to our time in history, that had to step out of the conditioning that we got in Western schools, and what the American dream was and meant for us and our place as Negroes in this American dream. It was our chance to get on this vehicle and go to another place, which we, hopefully, some of us have arrived at. Thank you all very much.