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Vinnette Carroll: The First Black Woman Broadway Director
by Nora Cole
I met Vinnette Carroll in 1975. I was in the second semester of my second year at the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago. Vinnette was an invited special guest artist. I did not know then the fifteen-year marvelous and exhausting journey I would come to take with her.
Vinnette encouraged me to “come to the Corps” in New York City after I graduated. I knew nothing about New York but I took her at her word and moved to the city upon graduating in 1976. Within two weeks I was rehearsing the West Indian folk musical, The Ups and Downs of Theophilus Matiland (Theophilus) at Vin-nette’s Urban Arts Corps, where I would work exclusively for a year. It was a time I have always likened to earning my Masters degree.
The Corps was a small, sixty-seat, black box theatre in New York’s Chelsea area at 26 West 20th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, up a narrow staircase on the second floor. By day, Chelsea was an industrial district and by night, a deserted wasteland...except when Vinnette Carroll was putting on a show. Then the building rocked from the intensity and energy emanating from whichever cast she had assembled for whatever production she was offering.
If it is true ninety per cent of directing is cast-ing, Vinnette was a towering testament. She knew and loved talent. She was happiest in a rehearsal space with a cast of cracker jacks with whom she could explore, journey, and mold. Her audition process was simple. Sing some-thing a cappella, anything...including “Happy Birthday.”
Vinnette was a master at transforming raw tal-ent—raw as in “never seen a play before” or “never even been in a theatre before” raw. She loved the authenticity of “sho nuff” gospel singers for Your Arms Too Short to Box with God (Box) or someone straight from the Caribbean who had not yet assimilated too much to play in Theophilus (although the first person to play the lead, Neville Ritchen, was a very fine West Indian actor). She also enjoyed working with young actors straight out of the conservatory like myself.
Vinnette constantly challenged you to be daring and jump off a cliff. But she could be merciless when you crashed. Therefore, throughout rehearsals...(continued)
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Nora Cole is a performing artist, writer, di-rector, and adjunct professor. She has two solo shows: Voices of the Spirits in My Soul, based in part on her Kentucky family slave history, and Olivia’s Opus, an ode to ado-lescence. She is the recipient of a Spencer Cherashore Individual Artist Grant, an Actors Theatre of Louisville Women in Music Award, and is a Hedgebrook alum. She is also an AUDELCO, a Joseph Jefferson, and a Hartford Critic Circle nominee.
Summer/Fall 2012
This article is featured in Vol. 20, no. 3
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Vinnette Carroll's second Broadway musical, Your Arms Too Short To Box with God, opened in 1976 and ran for 429 performances.
