- [Narrator 1] BECU isn't like other financial institutions.

And the difference is people.

Because we're not for profit, there's no boardroom of billionaires maximizing their margins.

Our biggest stakeholders are people like you.

It's our members who make money meaningful.

So we focus on helping them thrive.

It's the art student bringing beauty to its community that makes a college loan matter.

It's the mother building her family's foundation that makes a mortgage matter.

It's people that make BECU matter, people like you.

- [Narrator 2] Meta's mission is to build technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses.

Supporting local artists allows us to shape the way we think about building the next evolution of digital connection.

We are proud to support Black Arts Legacies.

- [Narrator 3] These are necessary conversations.

- [Narrator 4] Ideas come from everywhere.

- [Narrator 5] And the next generation takes them into a new idea.

- [Narrator 4] About us, by us, for us, and near us.

(gentle piano music) - [Reginald Andre] We're in an interesting time, a time where people are at least listening and open to hearing more diverse stories.

So, that's exciting.

I see a lot of people like me, performers or directors that are now starting to start to tell stories and to write things for the stage.

In middle school, an English teacher picked up a book, had some exercises in it, (laughs) we weren't really learning a lot, but playing and that sort of inspired me to audition for Magnet School in Portland, Oregon where I grew up.

And so then I started sort of getting some training in theater and I never sort of really looked back as an actor.

Some of the highest for me have been working on "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" at the rep meeting August Wilson and working on that show, doing another show there with them two trains running, getting to play Wolf and that was amazing.

I started working with the Seattle Shakespeare company.

That was probably my first, one of my first plays here.

And I saw Anthony Lee who was playing Othello for them.

This was their second show.

And I saw this strong powerful black man doing Shakespeare and I'm like, wow.

I was about to do a show for Seattle Shakes and I get this call from a friend Anthony Leesman killed and a police involved shooting on Halloween in California.

(sad violin music) I didn't realize until some years later we were in the theater that we did Othello in and we were doing a hands up project.

And so we were relating all of these stories by different playwrights about blacks getting shot.

And I realized that, I mean I just thought I was there as an actor and I realized, no this has touched me personally and I just was wrecked.

And that's coincidentally the theater that the Negro Repertory Company performed in in the U District in the 1930s.

This is set for History of Theatre: About, By, For, and Near.

It's designed, this is sort of an archway that is sort of a bit of a time machine.

And our host who guides us through the History of Theatre is able to take us back in time.

She actually visits the Negro Repertory company in the 1930s in the Seattle U District.

And so we have a modern day person who is going back in time, but she enlists people from the thirties.

So that's the first place she goes.

And then in the thirties, they start to take on characters from different time periods.

I was inspired by so many of these people and their stories.

People like Pat Chappelle that had employed 70+ black entertainers and took them all over the country.

Sissieretta Jones.

When we did the show, the biggest thing was people were like, I, I didn't how did I not know about these people?

Have I not heard this?

When the We See You, White American Theater document dropped a lot of theaters, you know, did some deep soul searching and trying to figure out what it meant to them and to the future of theater and trying to figure out how to respond in the wake of George Floyd to his kind of like the theater wanted to respond.

So we started having conversations about how to proceed and history sort of became the window 'cause I mean, it's one of the best ways to learn.

It wasn't something like, I really, that's something I want to tackle.

But it became a way in and the more that we looked at it found a way to focus it.

And looking at concentrating on Seattle seemed like a really smart way to do that.

- It was a real time of self-reflection for Act Theater.

And what we started to do was think about like who are our local artists that we could be supporting during this time?

After the murder of Mr. Floyd had occurred, we had a conversation.

We could literally hear protests in the streets while we were having this conversation.

And Reggie and I were talking for a while and he said there are so many stories, where do we start?

There is an entire history that's been left out of the history books.

And he came back with a treasure trove of the history of black theater in America, centering around Seattle.

The whole idea of it was to tell untold stories or stories that had been whitewashed from history.

- I almost wish you hadn't sent O'Neal away.

- Why?

- I'd like to hear from his mouth just what he means by negro laughter.

- See.

- As an actor being there's a shared experience with the audience.

The play doesn't become a play until the audience is there with the actors.

And that becomes, so that's rewarding and that way.

But if you put a play in the world, you also have the opportunity to hopefully maybe one day see it.

And now you've gotten a director who has taken what you put down and they've added, filtered it through who they are and what it means to them.

The actors are, are taking different spins on the character and doing things.

Maybe they're making different casting choices than you would've.

And so you're seeing this the play comes alive in a different way.

W.E.B.

Du Bois said theater should be about us, by us, for us and near us.

Broadway had a more black shows than they've ever had this last year but a lot of them closed early.

So it's tricky.

I think we just keep doing the work if we're honest and we give the resources to fully do them.

I'm excited to see more local black playwrights get their work done.

This is for, you know, the black stories and black communities, but then let's look at the indigenous Americans.

Let's look at, you know, the Asian stories.

Look, there's so many different places and so, you know, I feel like I'm one of the bricks in this thing that's being built.

(gentle classical music)