The conjuring of liberation through theater

A talk with Master Artist Ayodele Nzinga about BAMAVERSARY

by JR Valrey, The People’s Minister of Information

The Black Arts Movement District is celebrating its 10th anniversary in Oakland this summer. Founder of the Thea Bowman Memorial Theater, Oakland Poet Laureate and master artist Ayodele Nzinga, who was directly mentored by practitioners from the first wave of the Black Arts Movement, has graciously granted us some time to give our readers a history lesson on Black theater in the U.S. and the Black Arts Movement, and she lets us know about theater events happening this summer.

JR Valrey: What do y’all have scheduled throughout the summer?

Ayodele Nzinga: In the summer, we will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Black Arts Movement District, where we’re in residence. We moved the Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater from the Lower Bottoms to BAM House at 1540 Broadway. We are celebrating the birthday of the district, declared in January 2016, and the 10-year anniversary of BAMBD CDC, established in July 2016. We are coupling these celebrations with the 60th anniversary of Black Arts West in an event called BAMAVERSARY, which takes place July 31-Aug. 3, 2026.

BAMAVERSARY will take place downtown. The event features a special edition of the open mic Winter in America, featuring Tongo Eisen-Martin; a concert with Red Lotus, Avotcja and Modupe, and Honey Gold Jasmine; a day of film screenings featuring films by 393 Film featuring the Lower Bottom Playaz; and a literary and educational salon with Marvin X Jackmon and other Black Arts Movement scholars, authors and creatives expounding on “Black Arts West” and its importance in the Black Arts Movement.

JR Valrey: What is the importance of the Black Arts Movement of the ’60s? What kinds of themes did the BAM artists’ work center around?

Ayodele Nzinga: There is a discussion of which came first: Was it the literary arm of the Black Arts Movement, or was it the social justice, the Black Power arm that preceded it? Well, as a literary person, I’m gonna go for the literary movement. I argue it set the scene and was the drum for the Black Power movement. It was how we received information. It was how groups communicated. It was how theory was shared, and the themes were Blackness in all its complexity, from the political to the personal. 

It was an aesthetic that disdained art for art’s sake and made art for the people. Art was intentionally crafted for cultural enrichment, giving us a sense of identity beyond what was offered by the pale of nightly news clips. The written and spoken word were mental groceries that opened new possibilities for being in the wilds of North America. The literary era known as the Black Arts Movement produced works designed to uplift, empower and inform. 

The Black Power Movement was a bang heard around the world, and its literary arm was America’s most prolific literary era. At its zenith, it spawned more than 60 journals. Many of them were distributed internationally. The Black Scholar is among these journals that circulated around the world, carrying themes throughout the diaspora. It was a time when Black people around the world were in close conversation about liberation, equity and equality.

The art created reflected our beauty, power, and the depth of our creative force. The literary movement aligned with the Black Power Movement and created a prolific push for freedom in the United States, centered on Black people.

There is a notion that the Black Arts Movement ended in the ’70s. You can look up when the Black Arts Movement ended, or you can listen to living people working in that continuum and training people who will come behind us who will also work in that continuum, and you will understand that movements do not die unless people stop pouring into them.

JR Valrey: Can you talk a little bit about your history with the Black Dot? What was the Black Dot?

Ayodele Nzinga: Places like the Black Dot, the brainchild of Marcell Diallo, drew on the aesthetic of the Black Arts Movement, creating a spot where Black could be the focus of the activities that took place inside.

The Black Dot was a space for gathering and celebrating Blackness. An amazing number of people from across the country came through that space and participated in those rituals. The Black Dot and the concepts engaged by Diallo were rehearsals for what cultural districts could look like. 

One of the most amazing concepts that came out of those social experiments was the resurgence of the social club, the revival of people getting together and socializing with one another. Community gatherings serve as political acts. When communities gather to debate ideas and processes for advancement, new, radical ideas for social activism emerge. It is important for Black communities to be physically present with one another.

JR Valrey: Why is theater an important part of Black society? What does it do for people?

Ayodele Nzinga: North American African theater pulls from traditions of ancient Egyptian rituals, West African folklore, and European theatrical practices. It combines storytelling, mythology, rituals, music, song and dance with ancestor worship from ancient times to the present. 

Black theater is not an imitation of European stage tradition. Since the days of chattel slavery, performance has embodied resistance; it’s been used as a means of storytelling, discussion of escape, empowerment, the exploration of concepts of freedom, and the fight for equality.

Live theater experience creates a space where Black audiences can contemplate new possibilities. Theater is a vehicle for healing and activism.

Theater allows for the creation of work that is counterculture in nature, or work that pushes intentionally against the dominant narrative that can invisibilize, diminish and erase color, defining what Blackness means on its own terms. The Black Arts Movement prompted Black artists to counter the marginalization of Black culture within white-hegemonic society by celebrating the profound and diverse contributions of the African diaspora. The Black theater aesthetic allows representations that explore the complexity of North American African American identity through a revolutionary lens.

Theater provides a catharsis; it opens a space not just in the mind but in the heart for people to consider the situations that unfold on stage. We engage in message theater; we are talking to you. We don’t try to hide it; if it’s not a conversation that we feel worthy to bring to the people who come to see our work, then we don’t do that work.

For North American Africans, live theater has never been merely entertainment. It has been a technology of survival — emotional, intellectual and social — used to remember who they are, teach what schools wouldn’t, gather where institutions excluded them, and demand what society withheld. The live stage, with a live Black audience in the same room, has always been something no other medium could replicate.

JR Valrey: What are the Lower Bottom Playaz up to?

Ayodele Nzinga: Lower Bottom Playaz flows in the slipstream of the Black Arts Movement continuum, based in its founders’ belief that theater is an important part of Black society.

The way we approach theater production is a communal ritual. It brings you into a sacred space that is as giving as the inside of a church, and the thing that you see on stage, that’s the sermon, so the ritual of theater is an integral part of the life of a progressive society.

We remain involved in advocating for adequate cultural funding for the city, and we are animating BAM House, Oakland’s newest Black Cultural Center in the Black Arts Movement District. We are in residence at 1540 Broadway. Lower Bottom Playaz turns 27 this year with our Season 27: WORK. We started off in the Bottoms at the theater built for us, the Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater. The Sister Thea is now installed inside BAM House. We only go forward.

JR Valrey: Can you talk about your paid summer youth intern program? When does it start? How can people apply?

Ayodele Nzinga: Our paid youth intern program is where we train our replacements. It starts in mid-July and engages youth throughout the year with paid opportunities. For more information, visit lowerbottomplayaz.com.

JR Valrey: How can people keep up with y’all?

Ayodele Nzinga: Our 27th season is called WORK. We will be presenting “Going to St. Ives” by Lee Blessing, starring Ayodele Nzinga and Teresa Foss, directed by Cat Brooks. It opens on July 9 and runs for four shows a week through July 26. Tickets are available now on lowerbottomplayaz.com.

We will also be presenting “GH456,” an original piece written and directed by Ayodele Nzinga. “GH456” is a continuation of the original series, “Government Housing I & II,” by Nzinga. It opens in November, and tickets are on sale now on the website.

Stay tuned to the website, lowerbottomplayaz.com. You can contact us to request to be added to our mailing list, and you will receive our newsletters and stay informed about our programming and current events.

SF Bay View Editor-in-Chief JR Valrey is a veteran journalist who can be heard weekly on Wednesdays on 89.5FM KPOO or KPOO.com from noon to 3 p.m. His work can also be heard on www.blockreportradioworld.com. You can reach him at JR@sfbayview.com.

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