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Street Connfinement: We over here with the Infamous Don King the black rep in Providence, Rhode Island.
Don King: My name is Donald King I am the executive and artistic director of the Providence Black Repertory Company and Co-Producer of Providence Sound Session ~08~.

Street Connfinement: Please let us know exactly what the “Black Repertory” is? How did you came up with the idea and then set it into motion?
Don King: The “Black Rep” was formed in the fall of 1996. It was something that came out of back room discussions that I had been having with cats I grew up with when I was a student at Brown University, I took theater there. Then when I graduated I worked with Larry Hamland and another company where I traveled all over the east coast presenting a play. We went to Canada with it, and then did another piece, a musical. This made me decide I wanted to start a cultural institution in the city I grew up in based on things I’ve seen traveling to other cities realizing that there weren’t a lot of cultural outlets her in Rhode Island for black people, where as I saw them in other cities. And since then the initial idea has expanded beyond just African American and scoped to a more African historic scoped to just dealing with issues of class and trying to create a venue for poor people also. And never really losing sight of the fact that we‘re committed to African-American work, but we do work by Latin Artists. We have Latin Jazz series which is really successful. And we have a very diverse acting company that’s made up of people of all nationalities, European descent, African descent, Asian descent. So at the end of the day we’re an American repertory company. We’re an American cultural institution that tries to keep it real.

Street Connfinement: Everybody sees you now as far as how big it’s gotten from when you first started. Talk about some of the struggles.
Don King: Man it has not been easy. We were in a loft on the 4th floor. We would be throwing legal rent parties and the lease would come up threatening to throw my turn-tables out the window. We were doing what we could do to make this thing happen that you see right here. A friend of mine who owned Club Baby, a pretty famous club in town, Jeff Ward, gave me some good advice. He said keep doing this, and you do it to an extent the city’s going to realize it can’t survive without you. And then they’ll help you. And that’s essentially what’s happened. We went from just doing the rent parties and after-hours to really doing theater and things like that. The challenge has always been to be more than just a theater company, but to be a cultural institution; to find creative ways to bring the community into some of the work that we’re trying to do so that people understand that art has a way to transform communities, transform individuals, transform the way in which we think about ourselves, our communities, the world we live in.

Street Connfinement: Exactly. So as far as having background and being a Dj, and doing acting over the North East how did that help you improve the venues as far as where you wanted to go?
Don King: That’s a great question. Let’s start with acting. Acting is something that I never was fully invested in as much as I was invested into being a director. I’m a director by trade. But working in the theater is something that I looked at the things I learned from being an actor and going to see theater. What I began to learn about myself, about my history, about my family, about my absentee father. My mother, the challenges they were up against trying to raise a young black boy and a young black girl. That kind of knowledge came to me specifically through theater and music which is why I became a dj also. So being a dj, that’s why theater is an important corner stone to what we’re doing. My first dj gig I went to my boy that owned Club Baby and he has another venue called Jerky’s and I said “Hey let me dj, let me take your worst night. Sunday night.” So I did a party called Electric Relaxation named after A Tribe Called Quest joint. And it was every Sunday night and I played whatever I wanted to play. And it took a year but it went from like fifteen to twenty people to doing one hundred and fifty people. For a small bar it became the it party in town where all the hipsters, d-boys, fly girls came into my party. And some of my party was influenced by a few different parties I had been to all throughout the world. Soul Kitchen in New York, way back in the day in the early nineties. It was a big party at SOB and at this little chicken shack on Bleeker. I used to go that party when I was in college. There was a party in Oakland that I had been to. And there was a party in Atlanta I used to go to at the Ying Yang café. So a lot of where I got the courage to play genre defining sets was realizing like playing Rolling Stones and then playing Mobb Depp. And then I would play a lot of house music. So that party kind of gave me the sense of studying audiences, studying people. I also realized that people aren’t what they seem like on their outer appearance. Just because someone wears their hat to the back, a t-shirt and forces doesn’t mean he doesn’t like Nina Simone or it doesn’t mean he doesn’t like the Rolling Stones. I’ll never forget one day a dude looked like a skinner sitting in the bar and I’m setting up. He walks up to me and he’s like “Can you play me some Nina Simone?” And I’m like how this kid know about some Nina Simone? So it’s like I’ve had a lot of situations in my life where it’s taught me not to characterize people or to stereotype people. And so I carried that over to the Black Rep and it’s hard because people want to hear the bull you hear on the radio, “Why you not playing this song, or that song.” And I’m like look I’m a cultural institution, I’m a non-profit organization. Go down the way to hear whatever the f**k people are playing, I don’t even know. Reggae ain’t even reggae anymore. They don’t even put beats in reggae anymore. They playing violins and all that s**t. so I’m like come to Black Rep and get a breath of fresh air. You’ll get organic, spirit based classics. That’s what we trying to do without being pretentious. That’s not to say you won’t hear me play some hip-hop that might have cursing or that may or may not be misogamist. That’s a part of the culture, I won’t deny that. But your not going to get hit in the head all night with just dumb s**t. Like I had a case where I was playing house and these boys came up to me like “Yo, what’s this man? Can you make me a tape?” I tell people all the time I hate house music, but I like the type of house music I play. I don’t like techno, techno’s not what I do. But if your outside of the genre people think all house music is techno. But it’s not at all. I’ll give you an example. One of my bouncers, you look at him you know he not feeling no house music. First couple weeks he sitting at the door. The fourth week he comes up to me and is like “ Yo this is house music? Yo I’m feeling this, I like this. This house music?” so we convert people because we’re f**king with those genres. So that’s really the foundation of Black Rep in so many ways. You see my staff, white people on my staff tell me all the time “what do you mean you work at the Black Rep? You’re not black.“ I’m like I go to Irish Pub, we go to Chinese Restaurants. We go to the Jewish Community Center. So what’s the difference. I never said you couldn’t come to the Jewish Community Center, so why would you assume you couldn’t come to the Black Rep? So we’re breaking down those kinds of perceptions that people have. Just cause we celebrating who we are, we’re acknowledging who we are as people and what we want to put forth to this country doesn’t mean that we are not Americans. It doesn’t mean that we are excluding ourselves or being separate from anybody else. And that happens. I think hands down there’s no non-profit organization or corporate venue that is more diverse than the Black Rep. And you get Black folks who will say, “ Oh this is a white Black Rep.” Stupid s**t like that and I’m like go to the books. Go look at my mission. Go look at what we’re doing. It ain’t no white about this organization in terms of that. We’re into serving the community, but then again those are ignorant situations that people need to move past. So we’re here to educate people about that stuff too.

Street Connfinement: So as far as the plays, how do you decide which ones you want to have come through?
Don King: It’s difficult because there are a few factors we have to think about. First factor is cost. I would like to do the great musical Your Arms Are Too Short To Box With God. But that’s like fifty people in the cast. I can’t afford it. Also we’re in New England and you don’t have the type of gospel tradition as it is in North Carolina or Atlanta. In those places every other person on the street can sing like Mahalia Jackson. So that limits what we can do, how much money we have. And I also look at my company. Can I produce this play at the level and caliber I want to produce it that doesn’t fall below the standards we’ve set for ourselves? And also what does it say to the community?

Street Connfinement: As far as your own In-House acting company how do you go about some of the plays that they do?
Don King: We have about seventeen affiliate artists right now. Megan, who you met, is the captain of them. Megan’s my associate artistic director in another life. So during Sound Session lifetime she’s press and during the year she’s a wonderful director. We just produced a play called Etymology Of Bird, which is about a Brooklyn MC that was dating a girl named Birdie who was about to leave for college and it’s about the tragedy of what happens to their love affair. He’s on the roof top in Brooklyn waiting for her and an undercover cop gets word that there’s a shooting and he’s checking all the buildings and he comes up and shoots the other guy by accident. So Megan just directed that. She did an outstanding job. And I directed a Sam Sheppard play. I don’t always want to do plays by Black playwrights. I put my black consciousness on it.

Street Connfinement: So with the plays do you keep them just over here or do you travel with them?
Don King: Oh we travel all the time. We just did a big Caribbean play by Derrick Wolcock, Two Can Play, and we brought it to Boston. Sold out for a whole weekend. So we had a great weekend. We had sold out here with The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and we sold out. And we sold out in Boston. So we definitely not afraid to take a play to Connecticut if Connecticut’s trying to see us.

Street Connfinement: As far as the Sound Session how did you come up with the whole idea for that?
Don King: I was out working with Cliff Woodrew at the time who is the head of our department of Culture and Tourism and we thought we were ready to come together and produce a festival. We produced a Jazz Blues Festival and we felt like we wanted to do something else but we didn’t want to do a Jazz festival or a Blues festival so I said let’s do a genre defiant festival. Let’s not have it be any specific kind of music but be allowed to do as much as we want.

Street Connfinement: So how do you run that and you still have your business to run over here and you have to organize everything. How do you go about that?
Don King: It’s madness. The way we pull this off is only because I have an amazing staff, and because Megan is an amazing talent person. Michelle is an amazing talented executive assistant to me. My director of operations, Tonya Harris is outstanding. My festival coordinator Mike, also Brown graduate. I graduated from Brown University, Megan also did. I teach at Brown right now. I tell people all the time. This event people get paid another salary to do this all year long. So we don’t get no more money. I don’t get a bonus in my salary. She doesn’t get a bonus in her salary. This is just what we do in addition. So for like three months, May, June and July we take out of our regular work and produce this festival.

Street Connfinement: What was the main purpose of this festival?
Don King: The main purpose of this festival is to raise money for Black Rep, to raise consciousness about what Black Rep is doing. Flag shipping to the world to let people know we’re here, and hopefully they’ll come back and be members of what we’re trying to do.

Street Connfinement: For someone who has never been here how would you sum it up?
Don King: I would sum it up that aside from Brooklyn, I’ve been to Connecticut. I know a little bit about Boston. I would say this. There’s something different. It’s different from Brooklyn, it’s different from Connecticut, its different form Boston. You tell me. Next year when you come back you tell me. But there’s a special kind of magic that exists here that’s really beautiful that we spoke about earlier when we talked about the relaxed setting in a café. That was a dancehall show. Dancehall people get shot. And you will see there’s heads out there, but we chill everybody out at the door. Even when thugs come in there my man at the door is one of the notorious thugs and he checks everybody telling them don’t come in here with that madness. What makes Sound Sessions I think there’s something really unique. On Sunday we start off with gospel, and we end with the Caribbean style parade on Saturday night. We go from the sacred to the profane and everything in between. So there’s some debauchee happening over here, and there’s some deep prayer. Everything is all in good fun. We not going to let anybody get hurt or too drunk. There’s going to be scantily clad women backing it up and it’s going to be beautiful. And you gon see all nations held up. So that’s the big thing about Sound Session. And then after all of that its education stuff. We’re building a tradition In Rhode Island and I need your help. And we a lot of cats. Wherever I’m at or you as long as you guys are serious I want to network. We’ve giving passes to people and they have been shooting stuff for like four of five years and we have never seen it put nowhere. We trying to raise money to get this facility right. We have a campaign where everybody throw a dollar in at Sound Session and fifty thousand people come so if everybody put in a dollar that’s fifty thousand dollars we raised and we’re closer to meeting our goals.

Street Connfinment: So if anyone has any questions, comments, concerns about the soul session where can they go to find out information?
Don King: They can go to www.providencesoundsession.com or www.blackrep.org if you want to find out about Black Rep and that will link you to Sound Sessions website or you can go directly to the website.

Street Connfinement: Sum up Don King in your own words.
Don King: I’ll sum up Black Rep. Black Rep is that we really believe in love. That’s the only way we’ve been able to pull off what we’ve been able to pull off. My staff is not big. We got twelve to fifteen people, maybe ten full time. It’s a small staff that’s pulling off what we’re pulling off. And it only comes from love. We have disagreements but we sit down and we settle it. And a lot of intelligent people who are really connected to our mission. And so Don King is just trying to serve this particular community, this world. I got two kids, a eight month old baby boy, and a two year old girl going on thirty or thirteen. And I want to make sure that she comes into a world that’s about something. So Black Rep is my effort to try to be the change that I want this world to be. We’re not always on it, but we come close. And we hit the mark a few times in a Sound Session. I see us hit the bull’s eye already between Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. The past three days I think we hit it everyday. But tonight we’ll see if we can knock it off.

Street Connfinement: What’s the highlights for Sound Session so far?
Don King: So far the highlights for Sound Session I would have to say Jose’ James.We linking up with people all over. We can do something. But Black Rep and Sound Session hopefully we’ll see a profit this year and that will show that I been on my p’s and q’s.
Street Connfinement: Anything else you want to say?
Don King: No I just wamt to say thank you. What’s up Connecticut