The Providence Black Repertory Company’s business model isn’t quite like that of any other performing arts group or venue in the state.
First off, the 10-year-old nonprofit gets 35 percent of its revenue from its 3-year-old Xxodus Café, which includes a full-service bar that is open only when there is public programming on the stage. The bar revenue, in turn, funds that programming, which includes performances by local, national and sometimes international emcees and musicians.
Five years ago, the nonprofit only had one night of programming and no bar. Now it has six nights of programming.
“As our revenue began to grow, our programming grew,” said Don King, artistic and executive director of the Black Rep.
The growth began in 2003, after the company moved from a small space on the fourth floor of an old building on Washington Street to its current space at 276 Westminster St.
Since then, bar sales and cover charges have allowed the nonprofit to support nearly 150 musicians and artists who perform on the Black Rep stage each year.
In addition, the revenue helps support the 15 musicians who make up the Neon Soul Collective, a jazz/soul/afro beat group the Black Rep is cultivating by paying them to rehearse and perform. The company gets the band gigs at events such as the Providence Preservation Society’s Winter Bash fundraiser on Feb. 10.
The Black Rep also fiscally supports 10 resident artists, including six resident DJs, a resident Latin jazz composer, two resident scholars and a resident poet/emcee – all of whom are paid per performance or per project. They develop much of the public programming.
Charles “Chachi” Carvalho, the Black Rep’s resident emcee, said that as a “kid from Pawtucket,” the nonprofit has allowed him to grow as a performer and opened the door to opportunities such as traveling to New York City for a media luncheon designed to promote Providence as a tourist destination.
King, a Providence native and graduate of Brown University, said he started Black Rep in 1996 because he saw a need for black theater. As King began to travel, his artistic vision broadened. He became inspired by the African diaspora – the spread of African culture and people throughout the world – and infused the Black Rep’s programming and mission with the cultural traditions of the diaspora.
The company now has a $1.4 million annual budget and a staff of about 30, including 12 people in administration and roughly 18 bar and security employees – a far cry from the three employees at the Black Rep’s old location. Along with the bar revenue, grants and donations generate 23 percent of the budget; the rest comes from theater ticket sales, cover charges and fundraising events.
The Black Rep’s theater productions have grown along with the staff and programming. Since moving into the new space, the nonprofit has put on three theatrical productions per season, compared with two per season at the old space. The nonprofit also fiscally supports nine resident actors.
But repositioning the theater programming has been one of the most challenging aspects since the move, King said.
“What happened is, our identity as a theater company, as a performance art organization, hadn’t been established and solidified [by 2003],” he said. “Then, when we brought this café on the scene, people began to say, ‘Are you a bar?’ They didn’t understand that my model is more like … AS220’s than it is Trinity Repertory Company’s.”
King said the Black Rep wouldn’t work if it were only a theater organization, because of the audience it tries to attract. The Black Rep’s audience is much younger than audiences that attend more traditional theater companies such as Trinity Rep.
Younger crowds are drawn to other programming, such as the live music and open mic nights, he said, then, when they become aware of Black Rep’s theater productions, they begin to attend those as well.
Supporters say the Black Rep could be on to something very innovative.
“I hear a lot of folks saying that Black Rep is more of a nightclub than a theater,” said Lynne McCormack, director of the Providence Department of Art, Culture and Tourism.
“But, in fact, what’s happening there is very different. The music heard during the week is based in the organization’s nurturing of young artists, not simply by presenting them but teaching them how to be successful.”
McCormack said the music programming is also building a bridge to a new audience of theatergoers. It’s giving young people a point of entry to theater, a cultural experience with which many of them might not be familiar.
“Nationally, regional theaters are kind of looking at their models because in some ways their audiences are dying off,” King said.
Funding for Black Rep’s theater programming comes mostly from the nonprofit’s annual fundraising event – a seven-day summer music festival called Sound Session started in 2004.
The first year, the festival drew 10,000 attendees. Last year, it drew 35,000. It has become a major economic engine for downtown in the slow summer months. But King said he thinks the event could be an even bigger economic engine for the city if the business community were to take a more active role.
Sound Session is inspired by carnivals and festivals King has seen during trips to Trinidad and Brazil, and he would like to see it become more like those festivals.
“It really almost has to be like a national holiday for the city,” he said. “What if everybody started programming all week long? … What if restaurants had live music every night of the week? … What if we had someone on the steps of City Hall singing? What if banks hired a pianist to play all week? Poets riding the buses?”
King said he also wants to attract bigger acts such as B.B. King, Erykah Badu and maybe even Bob Dylan. But to do so, Black Rep will need more help from the business community.
“It does kind of need that economic injection of that sales and marketing budget,” King said. “I think the city has invested as much as it can. It would have to come from the business community in the form of sponsorship.”
Despite the income from bar sales, he said, the Black Rep struggles to find income for programming, just like every other nonprofit in the state.
The city has invested $65,000 in grants to Sound Session during the past three years, McCormack said. In addition, the city works with Black Rep to program, raise funds, and promote and produce the festival.
“I think our biggest challenge has been getting this community to understand the totality of what it is we’re about,” King said. Black Rep also spends 4 percent of its annual budget on educational programs for school-age children and teenagers.
In the future, King said, he would like to have a core of actors, musicians and writers to work with and cultivate on a regular basis. He hopes to create theater productions that can tour nationally, and “to develop new playwrights for the American stage, whose work can go beyond what happens here at the Black Rep in Providence.”
In addition, King said, he hopes the Black Rep will be a catalyst for creating more opportunities for people of color in the city and state. “There aren’t a lot of businesses or organizations of color in this city that have a prominence or presence,” he said. “We have that history … that hopefully Black Rep is beginning to change.”
Expanding Women’s Health in Newport
South County Health has expanded its award-winning Center for Women’s Health to Newport, offering a…
Learn More
