Hudson River Radio dot com.
It beats listening to nothing.
My goodness, being Frank, where the only way to be is Frank. Hello everyone, and welcome to being Frank. We're the only way to be is Frank. I'm your host, FRANKL. Borne, and I'd like to thank you for joining us on what we like to call the Intelligent Conversation Podcast, where no conversation is out of bounds and all points of view are welcome. We record live to tape. I give you the date so you have some relevance and context.
Is the fifth of February Black History Month. One of the first things the new administration under President Donald J. Trump did was to not only shut down the Department of Equity and Inclusion the DEI, but to obliterate the very mention of the words, as if they conveyed some type of filthy message. It also attempts to destroy years of important good efforts to level the playing field for
all Americans. The executive order even goes so far as to eliminate cultural celebrations like Black History Month from the federal calendar. In frustration, many say, but he's the president. What can we do well? We can fight back by refusing to endorse the bigotry the orders represent, and that it's exactly what we're doing here at being Frank. By continuing to celebrate Black History Month, my guest represents the very best of equity and conclusion with his life's work
of empowering undeserved communities through theater, arts, and more. He's a playwright, director, teacher, mentor, the executive director of the award winning Shant's Repertory Theater and my longtime friend mister Samuel Harps. Samuel, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us today.
So glad to be you've been looking forward to it, Frank. You know I was thinking earlier. I've known you for over thirty years. Man.
You know, yeah, it's it's pretty amazing when you stop to think about it. How time does fly? So I know you. But let's assume people in our listening audience don't tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you came to where you are today.
Okay, kind of brief, but I've been in Rockland County, I guess you know, about thirty five years. I'm a transplant. My sisters and I were raised in a military family, so We traveled around quite a bit, you know, and finally settled in the Norfolk Tywood area north of Virginia. And I came to New York in nineteen eighty eight on an internship at New Dramatists, right next door to the Actors Studio, So quite fortunate there and that was
my start. Fell in love with to Rocklander, who kind of brought me up to nyactin, fell in love with nyacting. When we broke up, I decided to stay. It's a great community and I'm happy to be here. At our youth theater about twenty two years ago up in Havistraw, which was a mentorship we kind of got the kids who didn't get cast in the really big high school
and junior high school productions. They were starting to have, you know, guys and dolls and so on and so forth, and we found ourselves in the community of community theaters that were only doing guys and dolls and damn Yankees, but they weren't doing new works by African American Latinos or anyone else for that matter. So we were kind of like the what do you call it, the small fish in the big pond or whatever that metaphor is yeah.
You know, Samuel, this is so important too. As I mentioned in the thing with the struggle against DEI, I mean, you're talking about inclusion, equity, being equal, not better, but certainly not less, okay, and being included. And I want to talk a little bit about in more detail as our conversation continues, but I want to find it and get a little bit more into Samuel, what drew you to the theater? You mentioned you were next to it, but what was it about theater that grabbed you?
You know, a great question, and I love when people ask that in different variations. But I came about kind of late in the game. I mean again, I was we were in Germany doing most of the height of the civil rights movement, just kicking off, so you know, we kind of looked at I wanted to be Jimmy hendrick Man or Jim Morrison, so I had to you know. And on the other side of that the Temptations and Smoking Robinson, so I was like right back in the middle.
And music, as always is what kind of bridged all races. I mean, you know, I know many groups you know that are frost Slining Family Stone and so on, and so forth. But with being in Germany, and I come from a military family all the way back to the Civil War. Black men in my family have fought in wars. My father went to Korea Vietnam twice. He said he wasn't finished the first time, so he decided to go back. I have cousins, two uncles, one that died in Vietnam.
Both my sisters are military, one fought in Kuwait, the other in Afghanistan. Myself, I'm a veteran, very patriotic family, which sounds to some people like an oxymorn. A black person is patriotic, But black people built this place, man, We're just as patriotic as anyone else, probably more so. You know. Honestly, I joined the military because I just got bored with college. And you know, I was in
the middle of the dream beferred. You know, I was right at my teen years when Woodstock was going on. They were dancing and marching in the streets. But again, I came about here at thirteen fourteen from a different perspective of America, you know, and in Germany, being black, the only racism I felt was being an American. They were Chinese classmates, Italians, you know, Jewish across the board, so I just thought I was American. That was it,
except for German girls and German boys. The young ones when we got into the small towns wanted to rub to see if this black actually rubbed off. But it wasn't.
That happened to me in China. I know that actually does happen, and it's not. It's not a say racist thing. They don't think you're so unusual. They don't see people, man.
I mean it was nineteen sixty three, so a lot of these kids had never seen a black person. So they were just like, it's curiosity, not racism. Maybe curiosity eighty percent to me, but who knows. Basically I took it as being curiosity. I did as well. If it really rubbed off, you know, it doesn't, except for when I really scrub hard, when I'd take in a shower, it does come just a little bit. But then coming to America again, with all of that, we were bust.
We lived right in the middle of a white community because military bases in the Tiword area are close to pretty affluent white communities. So my sisters and I were actually busted from a white community to a black school and we were there for the first time at an all black school, and we were I was dumbfounded. I mean I again, I looked like Jimmy Hendrix at the time at fourteen, you know, my hair stood in my
afro like this. I had an afro like that. But then it kind of like did that you know, headbands and you know beat it vests. So I was an odd ball, you know, in a place where I should have been seen as one of my peers. But I had to get into my first fight because a brother told me he wanted to show me how to be a brother, you know, because there's a walk to it, there's a talk to it, there's a rhythm to being black.
And if you don't know what that rhythm is, you know, not only do what I be accepted, you can get your ass with. I'm being very friends. So yeah, so it was it was an interesting time. You know. I was a surf you know, as well as a guy who was really good at basketball, you know, so it was just a cut between them both again, Jim Morrison, James Brown, you know Sliner, Family Stone, Lin Zeppelin, you know I. You know, my friends were diverse, you know, Chinese, African, American White the works.
So thank you so much for sharing that with us, Sambuel. In all the years that I've known you too, I didn't know that part of you, So I really appreciate you sharing with it. And I don't want to make this entirely about the E because I want to talk about you. Got some new work, and I promise we're going to devote some time to that. Two new things coming up in February, and we are going to devote
some time to that. But I think this is an important conversation to have again, especially in light of what's going on today. So a person with your perspective, you know, And it's interesting and I'm quote unquote Italian American and Sicilian American, and my family's only been here two generations, and yet people will look at me as you know, and your family has been here for multiple generations and served as my father served in World War Two, your
family has served forever. How does it make you feel when you hear somebody say, well, you know, Trump certainly.
And I have something out on my blog talk Frank, as well as the Nyak News and Views published about this whole situation, and it's just so unfortunate that, you know, the recent mid air collision with the president, instead of bringing people together through healing and compassion, suggests that this was caused by dei, in other words, incompetent people who are only there because they were given a break to
get there. It's insulting to me. It must be abhorrent to somebody like you whose family has given so much to this country.
What is it think about just that point, just for a moment, we had the coldest month of the year and the shortest month of the year. African American History Months was started in nineteen twenty six as African American Week, okay a week, and we fought from nineteen twenty sixteen thirty two to get that week. Now, all these years later, just the thought of eliminating it, just the thought is insane. Yeah, it's totally insane. I mean, I February for the last
ten years, Frank has first of all. African American History Month in general has gone through its own incarnations. Okay. I taught in the schools here for a while, and it used to most of the teenagers used to dread it because what we saw was Okay, they suffered, they overcame, they suffered again, Martin Luther King, and it was over, okay, But they didn't talk about the struggles to fight the strikes,
the history of African Americans, the history. Okay, you know the penagen you know the first heart surgeon, you know the person, the people who built the White House and Washington d C. Okay, they started Black universities Hbasus, which I'm a graduate of. Those are the stories that the kids did not get, which led me to writing the stories that I actually write on African American lessons on history, historical events and figures, because these are stories that people
did not know about. Their first black All Black Theater company was created in Manhattan in eighteen twenty one. Never heard of it. My daughter gave me an ancestry kit eight years ago for my sixtieth birthday. I had never considered looking up even past my father, which is what led me to finding out about having family members that fought and said they weren't allowed to carry a gun
when my father fought in Korea. When he fought in Korea, they weren't first sending African Americans because they weren't allowed to carry guns. This is in Korea, in the fifties and then they allowed it to happen because they started to run out of white bodies to put in the front line. Okay, so then people ask me how it feels to actually consider getting it a Black History Month. Again, I say redundantly, the coldest and the shortest month of the year, just to even think about it. TI, I
go both ways. And with that, you know, what does that mean? We want? America has been trying to level the playing field for since the reconstruction. They just can't figure out why and how. Okay, forty acres in the mule never got it. Social Security, you know, there was a I'm going to talk to you to death answer, right, but no.
It is Sam, I and my audience. I'm quiet, which means I'm listening intently. I believe they are too.
Please continue, Sam, Please see this the Okay, from an African American perspective, there was a quota in Mississippi. They had no black firefighters in a town that was seventy eight percent black Southern Mississippi. Wow, So they decided, okay, we want to get more blacks. And this is in the eighties. This is not this is not ancient history. We want to try to get more blacks as firemen. So they had a lot of black African Americans. I'm going to use black throughout to come in and take
the tests so they can level the playing field. And what they did, they leveled the playing field. Years later there were many more African Americans. But then two of the brothers that took this test found out that they lowered the standards on the test to feel this quote. Okay, so DU's one thing, but wouldn't you want to take the same tests as these other guys the other fireman?
Absolutely in fairness, absolutely an excellent point to make.
So what did they say by lowering? And they're saying already that you're not good enough, smart enough, strong enough, which they've been saying since, you know, forever, since Bear Bryant decided to get some black men on his team. You know, that was what we were good for, lifting, running, jumping, Jackie Robinson, the works. But you're just not smart enough. We couldn't even be quarterbacks on the football field. It's just not just not smart enough. How many black coaches
were there in basketball? None for many years until recently, you know, in the sixties, Bill Russell's like I'm gonna do. I'm gonna coach because I'm the better player. Okay, but these are the things that that DEI had that comes around to make it such an insult to say that you got and it's still saying d I itself is saying you're not good enough, you know, to actually be here. Of course, most people see it as leveling the playing field,
but how do you do that again? One hundred and how many years eighteen sixty five, two hundred years or so, trying to level the playing field, and this guy wants to say, yeah, no, let's stop that.
Okay, Well, because you know, DEI does have a function, I think, and it's a deep issue and one I'm sure we could debate for more than the hour that we have for this program. But certainly, and we mentioned the term without making it sound try of leveling the playing field because the field is not level. For example, education within poorer communities does not equal the education in the more wealthy communities. And let's attach the colors associated
with that, the black communities versus the white community. So DEI, in an effort to say, well, look, we have to skew it. It's like in the old days, we remember when teachers used to mark on a curve. That's something that's kind of disappeared a little bit. But yet it had a function to bring everyone together, okay, along and along the same path. So DEI at least had a function to at least acknowledge say, well, yeah, the white kid does have an advantage because he did go to
a better school, and that can be proven. You're a Rocklander. And Joe Allen made a film of it. Two schools in Hillburn about black kids and white kids, and the black kids include Native American kids and white kids went to two completely different schools and so far as even one school had indoor plumbing in a gymnasium where the others, you know, that was the white school. The black school had an outhouse, et cetera. So which one is easier to learn in where you learn better?
And it's still it's still like that.
So how do we And again maybe this is a rhetorical question, Samuel, but that's why he invited you, because you and I can have these kind of discussions. Where where do where do we bring it to a point where we say that it is enough, it's it must be solely merit and can you hear that you and everybody wants to be known that they accomplish things by their own merit. But when do we reach that?
How? I mean, how do we reach The first thing? First is you could you could change the laws frame. Yeah, the changing logs is easy, it's writing on paper. But you cannot change the way people think. That takes lifetimes. We're still trying to figure out the Jesus thing, you know, I mean, so, I mean, you know, how do you
the playing field? It may sound pessimistic, but again, and since slavery, I mean, since reconstruction, since they said you are free, they've been trying to level the playing field in America. Okay, in Europe, a lot of you know, James Baldwin and Josephine Baker and Richard Wright, Langston's Hughes, they went to Paris for that very reason, because the playing they they're seen as a human being. Here we're
still seeing as a subculture, a sub human being. Not just culturally, but you have a lot of people that literally think are president being one that you just are inferior. You just don't quite have it. Okay, you dump that on a people for four hundred years, they start to believe that I would go into schools as a special education teacher and have kids that were put in special ed before they took a test to be put in special ed because they come in behind the eight ball. Okay,
they come in and you're not smart enough. So you're sitting in the classroom already knowing that you're not smart enough than the white guy next to you with red hair and blue eyes. You already know that intuitively, so you're gonna try it just a little less, and you're going to be very angry with the teacher, just like everyone's angry with the government for that same reason. The government is our school teacher, is our math teacher, our
social studies teacher, okay. And he's talking. And when they start talking about taking away the history out of the history books, it was never there. Okay. So you can't talk about race. Okay, you can not talk about race in America as long as you got black and white. And this is a black man talking, you know. But I'm one amongst many to have this feeling of just
still not being seen. The first thing in the world for any person is to not feel seen, especially in America with the blood that has been shed on this country. Martin Luther King, you know, he fought for what we got in the sixties, but then it got turned around. It was worse after George Floyd than it was in nineteen sixty nine. Man, worse after George Floyd. Well, we watched the man for what nine minutes with his head on the cement, with the guys you know, foot in
this roAP, screaming for his mom. It took things like that to shake America and go, wow, that's wrong. But then what do you do about it?
It happened again, whether recently in New York State with the prison guards. We saw, I think everyone saw, and everyone was revolted by that horrible beating. But yet it happened again.
And it will. I still to this day in Rockland County, to this day get stopped at least twice a year for DWB in Rockland County. The street I live on, I get stopped eight blocks from the street I live on to find out. First they say, of course, you're not wearing your seatbelt, which is no way I'm knowing, But they just s he's just don't seem right around here. And that's back to my philosophy. Of you can change the laws, which can't change the way people think. And
that's not a pessimistic view, that's just my realism of it. Okay, one of the ways. And I think it's a perfect segue.
And I wanted to talk to you about mentorship because I know that's an important element. But first let's go back who in your life has provided mentorship and why is it important and who can we can we look to for that, particularly again in the minority community, as you hear it over and over again, we need more powerful role models, We need mentors. So talk a little bit about who some of yours were, are, why and what importance that role plays in every community.
Right. My mentor when that is coming up, was a black man from Richmond, Virginia named Arthur Adams. Reason being because Arthur ash was a two man. Okay, of course you have your Jackie Robinson's and so on and so forth, but he was a person I looked up to. My mentor, of course was my father, every that's the obvious, but the person that I looked up to wanted to inspire to be, not because I want to play tennis, but
the way he carried himself. Do we dress. You know, he walked with a certain a certain bit of class that I wanted to capture. That's who I wanted to be. So when I went into in particular theater, but teaching in general, the black man, I wanted them to see a black man who was very sure of himself of who he is. And then if you get self assurance, this is who I am, and I'm proud of that. And there's no outside forces that can say, hey, he's
not good enough. If he knows who he is, he doesn't have to ask those questions of anyone, including himself. Arthur asked, gave me that. I only met him once and never talked to him. I just shook his hand because he came to our school, you know. But I in my head it was always I want to be like that, not Muhammad ar Lee. Are the role models for the last thirty five years, or actually I'm going to go further back forty years for African Americans have
been our athletes and our rappers, not the musicians. Of course, I want to be Stevie Wonder and as I pointed out earlier, I'm going to be Jimmy Hendrix. But I do remember in junior high school, a social study teacher telling me that I should work on my jump shot because he felt that was probably the only opportunity that I might have, you know, and I had been right in the journal, my journals since I was nine years old.
And if it weren't for an English teacher, that counteracted what he was saying, telling me, a white English teacher, you can be anything you want. You know, you like to write. Writing is power. That led me to theater. The pen is power, you know. So that's my mentor and the person I looked up to, and that's what I want to give out to our kids, that you can be something. You don't have to work on your jump shot, you know, you don't have to go out to football, you don't have to be a rapper. But
these are the person people they looked up to. Real quick. I my first wife and I were tutors in bedsty very quick, very quick.
So please take that we have time. Please got this.
And there was there was there were kids that used to hang out. And there was a little girl that we were walking her home twelve years old. She got to her building and my wife and I, we were not New Yorkers. My wife's from She was from Detroit and I'm from the South. Basically I moved here from Atlanta. And she stopped us about a block and a half from her house and says, okay, we have to wait. We can't, we can't go in yet. And said, well why not, Well because we don't. We just lived there.
We don't own the building. Buildings run by those guys are standing at the front. Okay, and my wife has a lot of mouth. She goes up, I'm going to walk through here. The guy stops her, both grabs her body arm and says, you gotta wait. You know, the little girl is right, you can't come into this building because we run this building, and that's the drug dealers. And that was a kid, her brother Raheem. Never forget this kid who was one of the smartest kids, not
just street smart, books smart. He was reading Shakespeare, he was reading Chilcer, you know, he was reading w de Bus. He was really smart. But he's still on the corner. And he didn't sell crack. He sold the vows that crack came in back to the guys and he picked him up off the street. He has a lot of money that's thick thick, a lot of money. And I'm telling this kid every day, get a real job, get an education. This is in the eighties, you know, go
to school. He said. Mister Harp's how much money you got in your part right now? You know, reaching my pocket, put out my easily thirteen dollars he said. You see this right here, eighty one hundred dollars I made this week for picking up valves and taking them back to them. And that little girl is right. You can get hurt around here. That's what that's what I inspire to be. Because they're riding around and Cadillacs with no job. They riding around and they got gold and they got chained
with no jobs. And you're telling this kid to go to school for four years to be something. Okay, that's not going to take you or maybe take you somewhere. So it takes a very special human, meaning a very special black person to be an American, a black American in this country takes something extremely special. Our figures are still our sports figures, you know, but there it's a turnaround.
Since the brother said I'm not gonna when he kneeled during the pandemic, Okay, uh, Colin Kaepernet and said, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna raise my hand to the flat because of the way we're being treated. Okay, that's the kind of role models we need to see. But people see that as dangerous. But he made a statement. But what happens gets banned for football, got a mean right on can run and throw. He could have easily been something we're not going to We're not going to
tolerate that in America. We still were not going to tolerate in America. That's why we got seventy eight men of color in our prisons, while we have fifty eight percent in colleges. We got ten percent of the You know, Harvard University, if you're sitting in the cafeteria and someone really does not think you belong there, they'll call authorities.
It's still happening. Happened to a young girl last year, Harvard student, junior, sitting in just a common area, but someone said she doesn't belong here and called authorities, and authorities came and ask her do you belong here? Yes, I belong here's my ID and that's overweight. But what did they do to that girl? It scarred her for a while. She didn't go to an HBAH group like I did. Howard is getting that recognition now. But where
are those schools? Jackson State where Dion Sanders was the coach when he went down there, they did not have indoor plumber in their practice facility, didn't have indoors. They couldn't take showers at Jackson State couldn't take showers because they didn't have and not in the town that the school is in. This is a historically black university that was built in eighteen eighty nine. They don't have They couldn't take a shower because they didn't have facilities. So
he was there for two years. He went there with a two and nine record. The year two years after he's there, when he leaves, they win the CIAA Championship. Because, like he says, people have their knocks on Dion, but he turned them into men, not into football players. He turned them into men. No one comes in. First of all, he got the town because he's doing Dion Sanders to put plumbing in there. It was a shame and all he had to do was say something and the putting
in the newspaper. But it's been like that for you know what, like two years because it went out and they just didn't think to fix it because it's a black college. It's their thing. Yeah, and Jackson, Mississippi is predominantly black. Yes, so maybe we should have had the plumbing fixed, you know, out there on the football field, yeah, you know, don't touch down to the losing, you know. But it took a Dion Sanders because he's loudmouthed in
a good way and he gets things done. Then he goes to Colorado State and they pay him millions and same thing. He's changing him into men.
So it's the culture. How do we get that culture and the culture of success into the black communities? What really concerns me? And again you mentioned some statistics, and if you look at the statistics in terms of certainly gun violence, it's epidemic in the black communities and it's a difficult subject. A lot of people don't want to touch it. How do we deal with it? What can
we do? What kind of message can we get into the communities, What kind of effective changes can we make to deal with this terrible Blight's awful every every day on the news, young eight year of nine year old kids, and I don't have to elaborate longer that we all know that what can we do.
We have a lot of community leaders, Frank, that are in the communities just doing what what they can. But the kid I just talked about, Raheem, how do you tell him? Really? You know, I mean, you know this is generational. You know, of course his dad I'm going to choose a guy. This guy, you know his dad was in prison. Is that his grandfather was in prison. So he had no role models except for the guys
that are really making the money in them. And it's really it's really cut through its survival out there, and it's just tough. It's even tough now, Frank, to tell a kid to get a real job. What is a
real job? You know, to eighteen year old, you know, to be a rapper or to be Lebron James is the aspiration that's it's faded a little bit since, you know, but it's still the aspirations of a lot of young black men because you see the flash, you see the gold, you know, and it's it's out there and you know, I'm chasing that, you know, I mean four years and then eight just to be a doctor and then living in a country that's telling you, you.
Know, it's still not good enough.
Yeah, you're not You're not good enough, you know. And d E I again it's it's a measure, and it's a good one, like Social Security was, like like blue stamps and all those things were. But you know, it's still saying the same thing d I is saying, you know, basically not good enough. You know. Uh, And I understand it that it needs to be in place. But again, look at the numbers again, you know what has what
has changed? It's Black History Month that really makes me start to actually hone in and really look at it. I get very popularly doing Black History Month because I
do historical pieces. People called me to give me money doing Black History Month because I have respectfully very liberal white friends that the only time they get a chance to really, really, really really make a difference is find the one black person they know and throw some money out of I know that sounds sad because you know, and I know a lot of them are going to listen. But those that are, you know, that should feel bad
about it, should because I feel great about it. We get that one month, okay, to say black people have made a difference in our country, in our history. I have a T shirt that a kid gave me that says, Black history is everybody's history, and that is very true. We've been here for since they're Quakers, you know what I mean.
That's why I call it sixteen nineteen when the first game to Virginia. Yeah, it's like four hundred plus years.
Yeah, so we're not we're not going anywhere.
Yeah.
You know. I sometimes as I got older, I sometimes sound bitter, which I'm not. Man. I mean, I love this country, Okay, I really do. And I did not vote for Obama because he was black. I voted for him because he was the right person. Okay. I voted for Hillary for the same reason. She's the right person. I voted for Kamala for the same reason because she's the right person. Even though she's a d high, she was the right person for the job. Interesting. Interesting, and it is a slight to say dee I.
Oh, they use they use it as such, certainly they yes.
Yeah, taking the history out of the history books, that's not even. The history is not even. And there we can't teach we can't teach race in the country that is built on race. You know. Here's here's a Kumbay our moment. We are really of the very same thing if you strip away this cover as we were put here, but really the same thing, the exact same thing. We have aspirations, we love, we fear, we hate, Okay, we have that. We're all exactly the same, except for we
are shelled in very different colors. Okay. And that's the only thing that separates us. That's the irony here, the only thing that separates us, you know. And the reason and it's so difficult is we don't see each other as the same. We see each other as different. And here's that Kumba moment. If we don't start to see ourselves and explore and really celebrate our differences, which we've been trying to do, you know, you know, black slow, white music, white those black music, what is you know,
the works, you know. But until we really say that's my brother there, we're one, that's the solution. And it's not easy. Again, we're still trying to figure out, you know, my God's bigger than yours, you know, and that's fundamental. You know, we're still doing the most primitive things known to humankind. War How primitive is that?
You know?
I mean, it's it's it's amazing. The what I talk about is amazing.
Yeah, well it makes you wonder, is that is that truly the human experience? You know? That that that it's always been with us, It'll always be with us. I mean, we we we like to think sublime thoughts and enlightenment and we work towards that goal. I don't know if I'll ever get there. Maybe some do. But as a race perhaps perhaps.
Right and it does sound grim, but I you know, we've made some leaps and bounds, needless to say, but we haven't changed the way we think about God and millennial you know.
I mean, and every time somebody tries too, they get they usually persecute and they still.
Do you know. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's amazing. It's an amazing thing to talk about. Man. I'm glad you're pulling this stuff out.
Yeah, this has been absolutely wonderful. And again we could keep going and we're not done yet, but I want to talk about your work. We take a quick break, and I know you got two new things in the works coming up in February, the Death of King shot Away the birth of the African Growth Theater that's on February thirteenth, and then you have the Spirit of Truth, a new play directed by Melhancock, and that's on February
twenty seventh. I want to talk a little bit about the germination of those plays of Well Won, the history and the creation of the play, all of that more right after these brief commercial messages. Okay, so you don't go away, Sam yet, please yet, And of course our audience don't go anywhere yet. This conversation has been fantastic. This is Being Frank. We're the only way to be is Frank. I'm your host, Frank Lebono. My very special
guest is playwright, mentor, and so much more. Mister Samuel Harps will be right back with more after these brief commercial messages.
Hudson Riverradio dot com. Hudson River Radio dot com.
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
Welcome back to Being Frank, the Intelligent Conversation Podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. I'm your host, Frank Lebono. Our engineer, as we all know, is mister Neil Richter. A very special guest is playwright, writer, director, Mister Samuel Harps. You know, we bring our audience a fresh topic just about every week and stream from Hudson River Radio located in beautiful
and historic Stony Point, New York. But remember, you can catch Being Frank anywhere you get your favorite podcasts like Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio and all the others. Remember where archives, so you can listen to any of our programs anytime you like. Find the link to Being Frank on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page or at our website Hudsonriverradio dot com. Just click and you're there. All right, Samuel, Back to our conversation. First half was absolutely great, But I want
to talk a little bit more about your work. It's relative to our conversation as you tend to focus, and it's interesting you tend to focus a little bit more on lesser known figures and events in your work. Why is that important to you? And then bring us to the two works that I had mentioned before the break, we'll talk about them in some detail. Why is it important to feature lesser known people, artists and their work.
Yes, yes, of course for that very reason, Frank, because they're lesser or not known, and they also prized me, like I was saying earlier, I got an ancestry about eight years ago, and traditionally for February I would do a play for Black History Month, and this year it's no different. So it was just stuff that people just don't know about, never hear, you know, didn't get in there in their history books. So the playover at Rockland
Community College, The Death of King shot away. As I said earlier, it's about the first black theater company and the first black theater company to do othello in the black man in the title role, which at that point was unheard of, even though of course a fellow is a black man.
And then again more irony that people read this, yeah, you know, they would rather put a white man in black face. That didn't actually get a black actor.
It's extraordinary for years, very interesting piece uh two story again and right around the corner from where the theater was created, the Park Theater was doing a fellow with a white and black face. So it was a constant feud, which is the subtext of the play to to life. The Death of King Shadowy was the name of the theater. Company was started by a playwright, William Brown, and William Brown wrote a play called the drama of King Shadowy.
But the his theater was firebomb three times in the three years that they were around, and in the last fire his play was burnt and it was never found. So it's a tragedy but with a little a little bit of happeness in it. A very intriguing story again, one that I did not know existed. And every time I looked through history now, and history now is at our fingertips, are things like Google and you know, Wikipedia, so many others. The Burning of New York, which we did,
was a true story. You know, it happened down on Wall Street where thirty eight people were hanged during a Black rebellion, and there's been others. The other play across the river at Bethany Arts Community is Answered Journal Truth, but it focuses on her life before she was the iconic Sojourner Truth that we know. It's dealing with the period in eighteen thirty four when she was got involved with a leader by the name of Matthias, the prophet Matthias,
and it happened in the village of sing Singh. And I was commissioned by the historian over at a Astining to do this play incredible piece, man, I never you would not believe it. I mean I had to actually tone it down some. I mean, this guy was a cult leader in eighteen thirties, Robert Matthias, who had run into the Mormon leader myth out West, came to New York to Five Points and he was just one of those street corner preachers in Five Points. And so join
a truth who was a very religious person. Her name was Isabella at the time in her twenties. She got involved with him and worked for him, and she got involved with this cult that he created, and they both got implicated in poisoning one of his parishioners and court trial. Very interesting piece. Wow yeah yeah what what?
What is Is there any commonality between the two works, Samuel? What do you see any.
There these two Probably not at all, Frank. I mean one was a commission and uh and bringing in the uh uh shot away. We actually staged back during the pandemic and the late February for Black History Month, but the following week, of course, the pandemic. Two weeks later the pandemic hit and we were shut down and our theater at the time, even though we were at Garneville Art Center we had to fold because our theater sustained itself, of course through grants and you know, people coming through
the doors. So this is like the first reincarnation of the piece. But there's no commonality other than their African American figures with stories that pretty much were less.
What what what? What do you think? Then let's take each one separately? Then what would you what do you I think people should take from the death of King shot Away? What message are you trying to convey there? Or is the cast of the overall? What is it trying to convey?
Again? The irony of a black man? Never Ira Aldridge later did Richard the Third, but the fact that Othello was a more and the strife in the play, the conflict, the major conflict is the fact that the theater, the bigger Shakespearean theater in the city, was doing the same play in blackface, and that was That's the core of the piece. I want people just to literally see the irony of just that first and foremost, and the fact that a theater company in eighteen twenty one, these are
all three men, of course who bought the property. But he was firebomb three times. Okay, they just kept moving to a different theater and creating so that I I build it. Subtitled is Resilience and Perseverance, a story of the resilience and perseverance. Because to his craft, he continued to try to create a theater.
That's the Death of King shot Away Birth of the African Grove Theater February thirteenth at seven thirty pm at the Rockland Community Cultural Arts Centers. It's open and free to the public. All right, let's go to your work that you wrote, Sam, which is up next and runs through the end of February through early March. The Spirit of Truth. Okay, what will you hope that people will take from this work? Right?
Of course? I mean, of course you know I wrote both pieces.
But oh yes, I'm sorry, thank you for making that clear.
YEPK. But over in the River because it was a commission. It was a story still that I had never heard of. And we of course know who's the Join of Truth is. He's one of the most famous suffragists and abolitionists of that time. But again this focus is on a part of her life in the early twenties and a cult leader much like the Jim Jones is of today. He
had that sort of charisma with the public. And I love the fact that it happened right here in Sing Sing, right here in Astiny, which is where the play takes place. I want people actually to look at the historical context. Like all these pieces. Black History month for me as a writer as become special because I get a chance to dig and find these untold stories, things that I
had not heard of. Is always intrigued me. History I didn't give a damn about in high school or college, but suddenly again with getting an ancestry and finding out my roots and then finding out the true nature. I mean, you know that basically we are here and again the political climate always I mean, like it's a little bit of fire under my butt. You want to tell stories. It's my voice, you know, as a writer, you know, I just love the fact that history, our history, black
history is so broad, covered so many categories. I was reading today in New York Times about a black opera composer, Edmund Dating, who's getting his opera staged in New Orleans for the first time, you know, And it was discovered by the Frenchman his work, which was created back in the eighteen eighties. And that's the next story and there's there's so many others that people again are starting to get familiar with.
So that's the Spirit of Truth A play by Samuel Harp February twenty seventh, twenty eighth, March first, sixth, seventh eighth, All shows at seven pm. And that's the Bethany Arts Community at forty Summer Summerstown Road in Austin, New York. Samuel, one last question. I know something very near and dear to your heart, the Shades rep Theater. What's going on there? Tell us a little bit about the theater and what's happening now.
Well, again, we were after twenty two years. You know, the pandemic literally knocked us out of the park. Right now, I still have my troop of actors. Because actors they just don't go away. They're like old soldiers, man. They it's never died, it just they literally just fade away. So I still have. You know, over time, you build just a community of actors that you work with on both sides of the river and from Manhattan. So I still have my core, which is my actors. And as
a writer, that's all you need. So we're still doing place. It's actually gotten me out of my shell a little bit, you know, with being doing something over at Bethany and over at RCC, I had gotten pretty complacent and lazy having my own theater when I could just write my stuff and literally go downstairs and stage it. So it's got me looking for other opportunities until I find another roof of brick and mortar that we can serve the community out of.
Well, Samuel Harps, we hope you find that opportunity and we'll be there to check it out. I hope to see what one of the performances, maybe both if I can, I'd certainly love to do it. And I really appreciate you being here and being Frank with us. It was truly intelligent conversation.
Samuel, thank you, Thank you so much. Frank, it was great being here man and good simple.
Yeah, I'm proud to call your friend. It's been too long between. I could go back to the old days of TKR. That's scary. Some people out there listening will recognize that. Yeah, you know ur, So you offer a special thanks to our listeners to take time to give us a voice in their lives. Remember, we offer a fresh topic just about every week. Catch us wherever and whenever you get your favorite podcast that includes Apple, Spotify,
your Heart Radio, all the rest. Check us out on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page, leave us a comment and like us too. You know I always leave you with two Lessel nuggets. I call them, I guess why not. One is a quote and then some great music. The quote comes from Nelson Mandela. It's simple and I think very sublime and eloquent. It always seems impossible until it's just done. And we've got some great music from mister ken Rawl, also known as mister Blanketfest, who every year's
donates hundreds and hundreds of blankets to the needy. He and his wife, the poetests Ivon So Tomayor and a host of other friends and family get together and do Blanketfest and do a great thing for a lot of needy people. Well here's his song, no Big Deal for our engineer Neil Richter. I'm your host, Frank Lebono. We hope to have you join us on the next being Frank. We're the only way to be is Frank. Thanks everybody, No big deal, No big deal.
When you always feel that giant, occasionally that giant, but you always keep my giant, No big deal, took my love to the jib in picture movie.
Sat.
She wanted someone that was strong, shout me father bar someone else was gone, would not be fun.
She tell me what was wrong?
No big deal, no big deal. When you always be that try occasionally that tying, but you always keep by trying, Nor good deal. Chaddy says, I've got to be a man. Mama says, you're not y'all the sun.
Who cares what they say?
S everything's okay.
Rather throwing off that have have some fun. No big deal, no big.
When you always be like crying occasionally like dying, but you always keep on trying, No big deal. I can't wait till summer child gets here. I can't wait till summer comes a rounds when I'm with my friends, the party numbers and tell us really want his laughs abround.
No big deal, no pig When you always be.
Like crying, I can seally like dying, but you always keep on trying.
No be deal.
Don't you always fear that tyme otentially that shying, but you always keep about shying. No big deal, no big tal, no big tale, no big tale.
This is Hudson River Radio dot com