Broadway is using its voice to be heard. Through art and activism, actors of color are standing up to say that Black Lives Matter.
"We are a chorus of voices. We are singing for our lives.”
Kendall Thomas, the Nash Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture at Columbia Law School, said it so simply. On August 1, countless members from the Broadway community came together in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Through song, poetry, spoken word and movement, they demanded change because, well, they had to.
The free event was met with a line that wrapped around the corner and down the block uptown at Columbia University, the Ivy League school that jumped on board in support when Broadway cried out.
Friends, family, fellow supporters and activists made their way into Lerner Hall’s Roone Arledge Auditorium, for the program that began shortly after the 8:30 PM start time. Crystal Monee Hall opened with Aaron Neville’s “Oh Freedom” followed by John Lennon’s “Imagine,” singing, “Imagine all the people, living life in peace…”
Towards the end of the evening, Thomas requested of the audience, “I would like to invite you to join me in what I’ll call an imagination exercise,” bringing the concert event full-circle. “It’s an exercise that takes place not in words, but in song, because we are singing for our lives. Some of you will know, and I will invite you to sing with me: Holly Near’s wonderful song, ‘We are a gentle, angry people singing for our lives. We are a justice seeking people singing for our lives’ because it is not in our individual voices, but in the weaving of our voices together, in the thunderous sound of our voices together—this wall of sound—that we will overcome.”
The crowd of hundreds sang out, and the audience stood united—black, white, gay, straight, male, female, transgender and on.
Thomas explained that “Black Lives Matter” is for not only “black” lives, but women’s lives and queer lives and immigrant lives and transgender lives. The event aimed to educate and support all oppressed lives and to promote change.
To think—it all began with a Facebook post.
This text originally ran on the Playbill and has been republished with permission. See the full version of the story here.
