ANNOUNCER: Funding for this program was made possible by The Heinz Endowments.

Thank you.

- I can remember my first poem in about middle school, writing a poem for, I think it was a girl I had a crush on.

COREY: I did tap, as well as jazz and hip hop.

Ballet was something that I had never tried and I got to go and see what these dancers did and I was just so impressed.

- I'm interested in producing local playwrights, whether they're black or white, Hispanic, whatever, to let them get the same feeling that I've gotten as a playwright by being produced in different cities and abroad.

ADEDEJI: The more I started listening to symphonic works, the more I started realizing that this is kind of the music that I would want to perform if I were to perform anything.

DR. CLARK: For young people, the arts are so important because it's a way of self-expression.

The ability to be able to reach inside and say something with your body, with your voice, with your hands.

NARRATOR: But finding your way in the arts is not always an easy path for African-American men.

MARK: Pittsburgh is a white theater town.

There's Kuntu Repertory Theatre and there's New Horizon Theater, but other than that, the plays that mostly are done were white theater.

- There aren't nearly as many African-American musicians in orchestras.

COREY: Ballet was almost an elitist thing for so long and it was reserved for people that were wealthy, which were usually white people that had money, so they could afford to put their kids into ballet or even just take them to the theater.

NARRATOR: Dance, poetry, theater, classical music, painting, these men are bringing art forms to the community.

They are established and up and coming.

They are being helped and helping others and they are making a difference in the fine arts.

- As an artist, I can present some questions and kind of help trumpet what a community or a group of people, particularly black men, are feeling, experiencing, and saying.

ADEDEJI: Playing classical music wasn't considered cool, but I didn't really care about that.

The best part of being a classical musician is just the satisfaction of knowing that you're making a contribution to such a large product.

I mean, an orchestra has 100 or more people in the group and just being able to collaborate with people but also put your stamp on something is-- I think that's really why I like doing what I do.

NARRATOR: But that collaboration has not included many people of color.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is actively reaching out to the African-American community to find more young people like Adedeji Ogunfolu.

He is the latest fellow in a special program.

ADEDEJI: I am with the Pittsburgh Symphony currently as a fellow with the Ott-Pam program, which is the orchestral training program for African-American musicians.

The aim of the program is to really give more opportunity for diversity and let people know that anyone can play this music.

And I started playing the French horn about 8th grade.

Music is something that's always been something that I thought, from very early on, that it was something that I wanted to pursue, whether it was recreationally or professionally, and I decided, I think, around-- it was 10th grade when I started taking private lessons and getting more serious about how to play the instrument correctly, that I decided that this is what I wanted to do with my life.

NARRATOR: Adedeji came to Pittsburgh from suburban Washington D.C. ADEDEJI: I actually started on the trumpet and I played that for about three years and in 8th grade, one of the music directors with D.C.'s orchestra asked if I could start playing the horn because it's not an instrument that most young musicians gravitate towards.

Once I began playing it, it was something that was unique and I just thought it helped me to stand out.

It's generally considered one of the more difficult instruments in the orchestra, but I always like to say every instrument has its own challenges.

I tried jazz for a little while.

I didn't feel like I was very good at it and for me, just classical music, it's something that I just identify the most with.

NARRATOR: And identifying with classical music is what Adedeji hopes more African-American men will do.

Adedeji and the PSO's fellowship program are working in that direction.

ADEDEJI: I think it is something that's very good for classical music and does prioritize having more diversity in orchestra because if you look around most symphonies, and for me that was something that I noticed more and more, the more professional pursuits that I was offered, I just noticed that I was usually one or two minorities in the group and that hasn't really changed very much.

Part of what I do is outreach.

So with schools in the area, we establish a relationship with those schools and I basically go in and talk about what I do, why I like doing it, and they get to be exposed to a lesser known instrument just with the French horn.

I like to tell the kids that the horn is something that anyone can do, but more importantly, music is something that anyone, if you're passionate enough about it and you have enough of an interest, I mean, there is a way.

You just have to look in the right places and hopefully there will be someone there to be supportive and give a helping hand.

[POETRY READING] NARRATOR: Terrance Hayes is a poet and professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

TERRANCE: I played basketball.

I was a painter and a poet in private and I went to college to study fine arts but I also wrote poems and I wound up becoming a poet.

[POETRY READING] I don't think I ever knew that people could actually become poets.

Both of my parents dropped out of high school.

My mother had me when she was 16 and so I did have a love for literature, which I think everybody knew, but I just sort of thought of books really the way that people think of food.

It was something that I enjoyed but I never thought that it could be a living.

So it was partially a matter of keeping it a secret that I was a poet in particular, but it was also partially that it was really a private joy.

NARRATOR: Terrance earned his Master's degree at Pitt.

His thesis, "Muscular Music", became his first book and won several poetry prizes.

Many honors followed, including the 2010 National Book Award for his collection of poems titled "Lighthead".

TERRANCE: I think of most of the honors, whether it's the National Book Award or the Guggenheim or National Poetry Series and many of the prizes that come, I think of them as a good fortune but it isn't to say that I don't work for them, but I certainly don't expect them.

To many, [indistinct] was a shadow to walk in-- I like Robert Frost.

I like Saul Williams, and Mos Def, and Talib Kweli.

I like Shakespeare and Keats but I like you know, Maya Angelou and Beck.

You know, so-- And I'm using some of these analogies to overlap between music and poems.

[POETRY READING] NARRATOR: The recognition allowed Terrance to travel and work all over the world.

He was invited back to Pittsburgh to teach undergraduate poetry at Carnegie Mellon, but his alma mater lured him back.

- At some point, I began to think you know, perhaps I should try graduate students and I always maintained close ties with the University of Pittsburgh, with the people here.

So when that opportunity presented itself, I just thought, "Let me try it out."

[POETRY READING] I think that young people are, by nature, creative.

When you think about the number of young African-American men, boys really, who are interested in hip hop, you might just think that they're verbal.

So once we say that, you understand that they're interested in language, but their models, which would be Lil Wayne or Drake or Jay Z, those are the models that they have.

Those are the models that they have for success so that is how they pursue it and so the question is not so much how to get them interested as much to have them understand that this passion can become a profession.

I would never say to a kid who was interested in hip hop, "You should be a poet," but I would say, you know, "Maybe you're interested in language, and hip hop can just be one of the things that you can do with this capacity for language."

[POETRY READING] So the lucky part for me was to have that recognition.

I think that if I'd never gotten it, and I'd gone back to my hometown after college, and got a job in a prison, both my parents are prison guards, I think I would still be writing.

I just wouldn't know that writing could lead me to these other places.

I don't think of myself so much as a role model as a poet, but a role model for, you know, passion and possibility.

[POETRY READING] COREY: There's something that you can say with your body that you can't say with words.

That's just really special for me to be able to get on the stage and show people a side of me that they've never seen.

NARRATOR: Twenty-year-old Corey Bourbonniere is just starting his second season with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.

COREY: I've been in Pittsburgh a total of five years.

I came as a student for the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School and then was hired into the company.

I actually started out as a tap dancer when I was six, six or seven.

My mom tried to put me into football and I just don't have an athletic bone in my body.

[LAUGHTER] NARRATOR: And so Corey's mom enrolled him in dance classes.

COREY: I started ballet about seven years ago.

I was 14, and I was just doing an after-school program actually and one of the teachers, it was a hip hop after-school program, go figure, and my teacher had asked me if I'd be interested in just doing a walk-on role in a ballet.

So I said, "Yeah, that'd be fun."

NARRATOR: The first ballet he saw was Giselle and it changed his life.

COREY: I just fell in love with ballet.

I've never seen dance tell a story like that.

There was something so different about ballet.

It was so disciplined.

You went in, you had to wear a certain uniform, you couldn't talk during class.

It was such a challenge for me, and tap and other styles of dance came relatively easy.

[DISCUSSING STEPS IN CLASS] COREY: I feel like I've seen more women, more African-American women in dance than I have men.

And I'm not terribly sure why that is.

Some of it has to do with just old ideas of what ballet is.

People like to see a core of dancers, not people in the audience necessarily but directors like to have their core all kind of look the same, which is unfortunate but it's starting to change.

Even in this company, we have people from Brazil, we have people from Kazakhstan, from Japan.

We have me, an African-American dancer.

[LIGHT CHATTER] NARRATOR: Dancing is demanding on the body, with most ballet dancers performing only into their late 30s, but it's also demanding on the soul.

COREY: There's going to be hundreds of people going to auditions that you're going to, and you're lucky if you make it through the entire audition.

So I'd definitely say that it's something that's a big challenge and you just have to keep fighting for it if it's something that you really want.

I definitely am a role model for young kids that they come to the theater and they can look on the stage and say, "Oh wow, there's somebody up there that looks like me."

It kind of puts it in their head that "This is something that I can do, that I can achieve."

I don't really feel that there's any sort of special expectation for me.

The great thing about dancing for the Pittsburgh Ballet is that I feel like I'm just like everybody else and it's never-- the race card has never come into my mind here.

Why do I dance?

That's a really tough question.

It's just something, it becomes such a part of you that the question more becomes, "What else would I be doing?"

[LAUGHING] It's like I can't not dance.

MARK: I was videotaping an August Wilson play back in the mid '80s called Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

One of the characters on stage cussed his guard out and when he started cussing the guard out, I felt something in me move and I'm like, "What the hell?

What the heck's going on?"

The first time I felt moved by a performance, where I was transported and it wasn't just a play, it was real.

I am originally a photographer by trade.

I worked with the Memphis Recorder for 12 years, from the early '80s into the mid '90s and I'm also a theatrical producer, a stage director, an actor, and a handyman.

[LAUGHING] But what I love to do is write.

NARRATOR: Mark Clayton Southers is the founder of Pittsburgh Playwrights, and one of the city's best known African-American playwrights and directors working today.

But getting his work produced has been an uphill battle.

- I started Pittsburgh Playwrights for somewhat of a selfish reason.

[LAUGHING] I'll tell you the truth.

NARRATOR: And that's because his early work was recognized elsewhere, but not in his hometown.

MARK: The very first play I wrote and sent out was picked up immediately by the first theater company I sent it to in Chicago, and they produced it, and I was like, "Okay."

The second play I sent out got picked up in Ohio.

I would send my scripts around in Pittsburgh to different theater companies, and I'd never get picked up or nothing, and it got to be a little depressing.

NARRATOR: So when Mark learned the Penn Avenue Theatre was closing, he jumped at the chance to open his own company, Pittsburgh Playwrights.

[DISCUSSING TECHNICAL ISSUES] One of playwright's hallmark programs is the Black and White Festival, now a standard in Pittsburgh.

MARK: In one evening, you'll see four plays, two black plays, two white plays.

We have the black plays directed by white directors and we have the white plays directed by black directors.

So now we're digging deeper into the whole psyche of how things work in the city.

[ONSTAGE DIALOGUES] I learned more about the history of the African in America and African history, through my association with the Kuntu Repertory Theatre by working on Rob Penny's plays.

I learned more about the appreciation for the black woman through Rob Penny's writings.

I learned more about the struggle of the African American through August Wilson's plays and his works.

NARRATOR: Mark's wife, Neicy is an actress.

The two met at the Kuntu Repertory Theatre.

- --Because the action still plays out, you know what I mean?

- The girl makes me think that she wants to kill herself because-- NARRATOR: Mark uses his plays to help people better understand each other, especially through his culture-clash series.

MARK: I've written three already, and the idea behind the culture-clash series is to introduce different cultures, within our culture, to each other.

The first play was called "Hoodwinked" and it's between the Jewish culture and African-American culture.

The second one was called "James McBride", and it's about a young African-American man from Chicago who travels to Ireland.

I just got a grant from the principal in Cal City Arts for a new piece, which is my African, African-American culture clash play called "Dombocte".

NARRATOR: Theater is not often a common choice for young African-American men, and Mark is trying to change that.

MARK: I've taken young men to the theater and asked them to help out and there's something for everybody to do in the world of theater, carpentry, lighting, sound, whatever skills they have.

A lot of young folks are into music and stuff.

That can play into theater.

But I settled on art because of what it made me feel inside.

It made me feel like I could create.

It made me feel like I was part of the larger universe that if I was writing, then it's something that's mine, that I own.

DARRELL: I'm a painter.

A lot of artists say I'm a multimedia, I can do everything, Swiss army knife, something or other, and I think that's okay because we all dibble and dabble, but ultimately, you know, when I'm experimenting with other disciplines, that feeds my primary focus, which is painting.

I'm a visual artist and program coordinator for MGR Young Empowerment.

I am also the national social media coordinator.

We're a sort of an outreach and youth empowerment nonprofit and we look to engage youth through environmental justice, arts and action, and health and wellness, and I do the arts and action piece.

We work with Pittsburgh public schools.

We also work with the Wilkinsburg School District [indistinct] School District, and the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center.

Born and raised here in Pittsburgh, grew up in the Hill District, went to Pittsburgh public schools, was very fortunate to have a supportive family and grew up in a strong community as well.

I was always really encouraged to kind of be who I am, be an independent person, kind of follow my own path and Pittsburgh really is a city that fosters creative talent across disciplines.

Art for nickels.

I had a teacher in Schenley, Ms. Haywood.

She took us to the Carnegie International, which was a life-changing experience for me, creatively.

You know, I've had aunts and uncles who like to draw, I always heard those stories and I just decided to follow it.

A lot of my friends were always really supportive.

We have a really good team behind me.

We've all kind of taken a hip hop approach to the arts and to contemporary arts and I think that's been beneficial for us because the one thing artists have problems with is making art that's relevant, and making art that the people actually want.

That's why there are so many starving artists, because you're obviously not making work that the people want.

You're not connected to your community.

I help with kind of identifying who within the culture is looking to be a teacher artist and really being responsible about making sure that we have relevant examples of black teaching artists for the black students that we're working with.

I've always kind of worked with young people and was always the guy kind of doing crafts.

The students that I work with were always supportive, which was really important for me.

Artists are the folks who have an opportunity to speak for people who may not have a voice, or may not know how to utilize that voice.

I do believe that it's important to see someone that looks like you doing it, so you have to see someone that looks like you in order for you to know that you can accomplish it.

Leg up!

I'll always tell people, whether it be other artists or young people, "If I can do it, you can definitely do it."

I went to my local art store and bought supplies.

I went to free resources in my city, like Artist Image Resource, and learned how to screen print.

I immersed myself in the great museums that we have in this city.

I did research on folks like Bosch, Kia, and August Wilson.

So that's what I did.

Maybe you can do something like that as well if you want to try this out.

Painting is the funnest stuff.

It's very fun because making pretty pictures is fun.

NARRATOR: For decades, Dr. Harry Clark has been making beautiful music by nurturing young people or through his current involvement in a new organization that promotes his love of jazz.

DR. CLARK: I'm the founding principle of CAPA high school, the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative And Performing Arts, part of the Pittsburgh Public School system.

And that has been a joy for me, watching that program develop and watching the students who come through that program.

That's been my life's goal, to be able to be involved with the arts, and I love it.

I love it very much.

NARRATOR: CAPA was a good fit for Dr. Clark, who retired from the school in 1993.

He found his love of music as a very young child.

DR. CLARK: I took saxophone, but it was bigger than I was at the time, and so the music teacher changed me to trumpet.

So I brought this trumpet home and I was practicing it and one Christmas, I came down and looked under the tree and there was my first golden trumpet, and I was just so happy.

And the motivation I had was the fact that I could make sounds and people were telling me and encouraging me.

NARRATOR: As an educator, Dr. Clark has encouraged thousands of young people who attended CAPA.

The school opened in 1979 under difficult circumstances.

- It was actually based on the school district having to deal with desegregation and they went about the country looking at various programs and they found that Magnet programs, especially in the arts where they were trying to integrate schools, they found that the arts was just a natural for integration.

We worked real hard to make it a program that would invite people of all races, backgrounds, and various communities.

We had 35 students, and at the end of the school year, we had 75 students, and now the program is 500-600 perhaps students.

NARRATOR: Today, Dr. Clark is still teaching but this time, about his own love, jazz.

He's the co-president of a newly formed group devoted to the art form.

Its headquarters is in Aspinwall.

DR. CLARK: The idea of this organization, the Lighthouse Arts, Inc., is to support, as I said, these young people and support and give every opportunity to be able to acknowledge and recognize the musicians that are here in Pittsburgh that are still doing their thing and we want to be able to bring the old and the new together.

We have an educational program which we're working on and we're making contacts with schools so that we can take this information, this rich heritage, the African American creativity that has gone on here in Pittsburgh, and take it into the classroom.

NARRATOR: It was in the classroom, through teachers, supportive parents and mentors, that these men found their inspiration to pursue a career in the arts.

The possibilities are many, life changing, and leave a mark.

- I think that success is really about contributing to the culture.

So are you contributing in a positive way to the culture or industry that you've decided to enter in?

And if that answer is yes, you're being successful.

[POETRY READING] TERRANCE: My poetry reflects really humanity, what is it to not just be like me and my body in this space, but also what it means to be anyone just trying to see, trying to look, trying to imagine, trying to be alert.

All those things funnel into being, like human being, what does it mean to be human?

DR. CLARK: It gives an opportunity to appreciate someone else's talent, to respect someone else's talent, to be able to, in sync with someone else's talent, express your own.

MARK: When you have something that you're passionate about and you put your time into it, the reward is the satisfaction of seeing people change.

I want to see people change and feel change.