In 1968, the regional theatre movement was finding its legs just as the Civil Rights Movement reached a major inflection point. About a month before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Zelda Fichandler, founding artistic director of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., sent a memo titled “Confidential Plan” to the board about her intentions to racially integrate the theatre’s acting company and audience. The memo is included in The Long Revolution: Sixty Years on the Frontlines of a New American Theater, a new book edited by Todd London, out now from TCG Books. London, a longtime arts leader, educator, and chronicler of the nonprofit theatre, spent a decade compiling this collection of essays and speeches, a project Fichandler herself began nearly 20 years ago, and was still at work on with him when she died in 2016.
Reflecting on the complementary roles of the actor and the audience, Fichandler, in a chapter titled “Beyond Black and White,” still has much to teach us about engaging and empowering diverse communities through theatre. As London summarizes in the book’s introduction, in Fichandler’s own words: “Is [theatre] doing human work? Is it bettering our society? Is it truly representative? Is it excellent?” Fichandler writes not only about integrated programming, but about the necessity of changing the way
