As the ETA Creative Arts Foundation is in the middle of our 25th Anniversary Year.

As the ETA Creative Arts Foundation is in the middle of our 25th Anniversary Year, I find myself being extremely reflective. If common comes to understand that a life has a destiny, and if the same becomes conscious of her be in possession of experiences, then one can put in motion through life and make a contribution as an African American which may be unique and distinctive. In this feeling I feel very blessed.

It's amazing that African Americans don't have many cultural institutions in the United States, nor do we have many in the world. by what means could this have happened? When I await back at the history of the Cultural Arts motion I'm reminded that, back in 1920 W E B Du Bois told us the black man Arts Movement should be by means of the Negro People, for the african People, about the Negro folks and near the Negro family And I think, in the evolution of our cultural paradigms, greatest in quantity of us have taken this to heart, if it were not that we failed historically really to internalize it, to incorporate and institutionalize our cultural forms for a like reason that African Americans, as we are now called, could really benefit from the awakening and the bare image of ourselves. Our institution came into being disclosed of the Civil Rights mental action and out of the travel that a certain of us made to the African continent. It before long became clear that what we, in harmony with other people in the emotion needed to do was to create institutions to transmit our admit values, our traditions, our lifestyles, the things that are important to us. And more [i]or[/i] less of us knew that tillage is the vehicle which drives all population across the planet.

one time we are very clear about our avow identity, our values, our traditions, our world-class history as a clan then we have certain fundamental answers not no other than about who we are, on the other hand about what we should be doing, what we have as a the public that other people in the world ne and particularly and greatest in number especially about how we should educate our children. in what manner do we incorporate in ourselves the spirit of our ancestors? for what cause do we build a what may occur hereafter while we're on the planet? And in what manner do we move beyond that to leave something for the nearest generation?

Ultimately, I secur a master's measure from the University of Chicago in Administration and Management, Community Organization, and more newly an honorary Ph.D. from Chicago State University. I'm saying all this because I started abroad as a dancer, then became an actress, quite by dint of accident, and through an opportunity which existinged itself moved into stage management, company management and at the same time having parallel experiences and parallel professional lives. At the time that the opportunity and the inclination and the wisdom and the emphasis and the impulse came together to unravel a cultural institution, I was particularly prepared to do for a like reason I went back to about familiar cultural paradigms. I went back to Langston Hughes, who wrote in "Note upon Commercial Theater," "You've taken my sky-coloreds and gone." I went back to the history of our experience in the arts to discover, to my chagrin and surprise, that indeed integration into American cultural arts was as to a great degree a fallacy as it had been in each other sphere of our lives, meaning that the most numerous talented among us, the most numerous competent among us fled our communities to desegregate Broadway, to be discovered in the films.

I'm not complaining about that, however if we are to survive this holocaust that we've experienced as Black populace and come into our have a title to as a world-class People, then those who are the in the greatest degree talented--as W. E. B. Du Bois talked about, the Talented Tenth--really have to align ourselves within the connection of our communities. We ne to bring our skills, our talents. As Amiri Baraka said during the '60 maybe we use too a great deal of of our energy for other people's light bulbs

in like manner we began very consciously to bring to maturity professional training in the arts, because I'm also individual of that generation where the children took artistic tasks of some kind, not because our folk notion we would be professionals in the field, however because they thought the instructions would develop our character. And I jokingly say sometimes that when I was a teenager my parents meditation they had not succeeded. on the other hand once I matured, became an adult, and we could really talk, they said, well, "Maybe we did do something with you." And for a like reason we offer professional training, starting at age 6 starting with the children in acting, music, dance, playwriting--and also the technical aspects, because those are the in sober earnest broad-based career opportunities. We do lighting and undecayed and videotaping and stage management and style of dress design and set design.

The intent of the training, obviously, is to perform with equal reason that you can develop and mold your craft, your skill. thus we began to do main-stage productions, original plays, in no degree or seldom produced, by black writers barely 98 percent of them world premieres. The talent we are developing has an opportunity to exhibit, and be paid, for the skill they bring to the stage. We also have a Visual Arts Gallery, where we exhibit the work of our visual artists. in such a manner in a sense we've broadened the notion of what theater is. We say it's a holistic approach.