The Penumbra Theatre Company, an African-American theatre company in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was founded by Lou Bellamy in 1976. The theater has been recognized for its artistic quality and its role in launching the careers of playwrights including two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson.
In 2020 the company announced its transformation into The Penumbra Center for Racial Healing.
Origins
Due to displacement and segregation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many African Americans were aided by settlement homes for not only economic and social services, but programming for the arts as well. The Hallie Q. Brown Community Center of Saint Paul, Minnesota much like the South Side Settlement house in Chicago and Henry Street Settlement house in New York, wanted to invest more in its art programming because it gave community members the tools to craft a voice within a community through visual arts, music, literature, and theatre. These centers were not only a popular outlet for entertainment, but also a critical part of the Black Arts Movement where African Americans spoke out about racial inequalities and allowed them to shape a sense of identity. The Hallie Q. Brown Community Center's second executive director, Henry R. Thomas, drafted a construction plan to incorporate a fully functional theater within its Martin Luther King Jr. facility to support these demands.
In 1976, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) awarded the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center a $150,000 grant to further develop its cultural arts programming. The CETA funding enabled the appointment of Lou Bellamy, a theatre arts graduate student at University of Minnesota, as the center's cultural arts director where he later founded the Penumbra Theatre Company. In 1991 Penumbra transitioned to a separate organization, independent of the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center.
Early Seasons
Eden (1976) by Steve Carter was the first production to launch of the 1977–78 season of the Penumbra Theatre Company. It explores diversity of ethnicities within the African-American community. The Negro Ensemble Company had recently premiered this performance, giving the Penumbra a direct tie to the Black Arts movement. Another relation to the movement is Ed Bullins, a prominent editor, theorist, and playwright who wrote Penumbra's second production, the 1975 Broadway transfer of The Taking of Miss Jane. The third production, Heartland, Louisiana, showcases original work by Penumbra's resident playwright, Horace Bond, who was Bellamy's former graduate advisor and mentor. Bond focused mainly on developing African-American productions, particularly in the south. This proved successful in captivating and connecting African-American audiences who either grew up in the heavily segregated south and moved to northern cities or had relatives that had done so. For the fourth production, the Company staged the historic work of William Wells Brown’s The Escape; or, a Leap for Freedom. Penumbra chose to actively produce plays that dealt with the implications and practices of minstrelsy in an effort to further investigate the history of African-American theatre.
Penumbra initially identified itself as a multiracial company. While the company’s members, staff, and audience has always been ethnically diverse, their leadership and productions have a distinguishable dominance of African-American culture. As its first few seasons continued, it began to fully emerge as an African-American theatre company.
Black Theater
In Penumbra, Bellamy and the other founders explored what black theater could be. "What has emerged is a style informed and shaped by the community in which this theater resides," Bellamy said. "I want to reflect that community and speak to it." Over time that has come to mean specifically black theater for black audiences, but open to everyone; incorporating historical works of Langston Hughes, new works of August Wilson, adaptions of Zora Neale Hurston's stories and Black Nativity, Penumbra's annual Christmas show, all infused with the essence of black vernacular. Twin Cities theater critic Peter Vaughan attributed Penumbra's national success to these factors: strong artistic quality, solid long-range strategic plan, emphasis on hiring experienced administrators, and increased corporate and foundation support.