Episode 05: Playwright Richard Wesley Shares The Black Arts Movement’s Newark Roots
Tune in to hear award-winning playwright, Richard Wesley, share how the 1970s Black Arts Movement in Newark inspired his contributions to theater, film and books over the past five decades.
Richard wrote the libretto for Anthony Davis' opera The Central Park Five, which was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The opera (originally titled Five) was conceived and produced by Kevin Maynor, whose Newark-based Trilogy, An Opera Company, performed it at the New Jersey Performance Arts Center (NJPAC). Richard talks about his approach to this very tragic story: “I had information and memory of that period in the early 1990’s when so much of this unfolded, and I decided, let’s go with these feelings. What does all of this mean to America?”
Richard discusses the influence of Newark's cultural-disrupter-in-chief, Amiri Baraka, and the iconic author and social justice advocate, James Baldwin, who in 1961 declared: “Artists are here to disturb the peace.” Baldwin was, and continues to be, a huge influence on Richard’s career.
An associate Professor in Playwriting and Screenwriting at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Richard earned his BFA from Howard University in Washington, DC. Since 1971, his work has explored the full spectrum of the Black experience in America, provoking audiences to think deeply and reflect on their own worldviews. Whether moved to tears or laughter, anyone fortunate to be in the audience will never forget Richard's Drama Desk winning play, The Black Terror, the controversial Mighty Gents (about former gang members in Newark) or his hilarious Uptown Saturday Night film , starring legendary Sidney Portier, Bill Cosby and Harry Belefonte.
When Richard's book It’s Always Loud in the Balcony: A Life in Black Theater, from Harlem to Hollywood and Back was published in 2019, here's how he was described: Richard Wesley was witness to a revolution. As both a celebrated participant and eager student of the Black Theater Movement in the late 1960s, he became part of a seismic force in American culture, breaking down barriers and helping to disrupt the cultural landscape.
Check out the images in this episode on: What’s Newark To Do With It?
Five, an opera from the Newark-based, Trilogy: An Opera Company, about the 1989 Central Park Five jogger case in New York City, composed by Anthony Davis with a libretto by Richard Wesley, premiered at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark on November 12, 2016. An expanded version, The Central Park Five, premiered on June 15, 2019 at the Long Beach Opera Company in California. In May 2020 composer Davis was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Music for the expanded opera.
A production of Richard Wesley’s Black Terror featuring Dominique Toney.
Uptown Saturday Night is a 1974 American action comedy crime film written by Richard Wesley and directed by and starring Sidney Poitier, with Bill Cosby and Harry Belafonte co-starring.
The cast of the Afro-American Studio Theatre's 1988 production of Richard Wesley’s The Mighty Gents are pictured left to right: Robert Merriweather, Jeffrey Chastang, James Reed Faulkner (also the Director), Armond Jackson, Pashion Duncan, and Alonzo Carlos Greer.
Left: Poster for the 1986 film, Native Son, with a screenplay by Richard Wesley. Right, a scene from the movie starring Oprah Winfrey and Victor Love.
It’s Always Loud in the Balcony: A Life in Black Theater From Harlem to Hollywood and Back is a memoir of Richard’s roots from Newark, New Jersey published in 2019.