Throughout the 1970s and beyond, D.C. Black Repertory Company produced more than 20 classical, contemporary and original plays. Founded by Robert Hooks in 1971, the company also provided untold hours of theater instruction to who would become some of the greatest artists of their time.
This storied institution, inspired by the riots that sparked after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, launched the careers of Lynn Whitfield, Kene Holliday of “Matlock” fame, Lyn Dyson, LaVerne Reed, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Amii Stewart, and several others.
Hooks, a native Washingtonian and veteran actor, explained in 2018, he worked hard to ensure he and his artistic director cast talented, Black professionals from the very beginning of the theater.
“I insisted on including 15 of the most professional actors to do the plays,” Hooks told The Informer.
From that point, the artists went into rehearsals for four weeks.
Meanwhile, the theater company worked to expose youth to the arts. Tech rehearsals were conducted with some of the notable people in the industry training young people.
Such a recipe resulted in plays such as Bernice Reagon’s “Upon This Rock,” “Evan Walker’s Coda,” and “Owen’s Song.” For years, actors, directors, choreographers, dancers and singers operated out of what was then called The Last Colony, a Petworth-based movie theater, and later a fire station on Georgia Avenue and New Hampshire Avenue in Northwest.
After D.C. Black Repertory Company dissolved in 1976, Dyson counted among those who formed The Rep Inc. That organization thrived well into the 1990s, despite Reagan-era cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts. Over the years, the D.C. Black Repertory Alumni Association and Multi-Media Training Institute, the latter of which Dyson founded, have continued to honor the work of Black artists who have contributed to the company.
In a recent interview on WIN-TV’s “Let’s Talk,” Dyson explained how Hooks and the D.C. Black Repertory paved the way for his work and many others.
“Hooks was a trailblazer,” Dyson told The Informer. “Without D.C. Black Rep, there would be no Multi-Media Training Institute. He gave so much to us. And he was a role model and now we have to give back.”
Dyson, a Howard alumnus, has provided thousands of youth with after-school programming, enrichment and entrepreneurship training.
After the shuttering of Black-owned theater companies across major U.S. cities, there remains a question of just how to do that, especially since, as Hooks told The Informer, many of the Black Hollywood elite are unwilling to invest their resources into independent endeavors like that of the D.C. Black Repertory Company.