The Penumbra Theatre Company, an African-American theatre company in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was founded by Lou Bellamy in 1976. The theater has been recognized for its artistic quality and its role in launching the careers of playwrights, including two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson.
- Venue
- Penumbra Theatre Company
- Town
- Saint Paul, US
The Penumbra Theatre Company, an African-American theatre company in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was founded by Lou Bellamy in 1976. The theater has been recognized for its artistic quality and its role in launching the careers of playwrights, including two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson. In 2020, the company announced its transformation into The Penumbra Center for Racial Healing. Due to displacement and segregation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many African Americans were aided by settlement homes for not only economic and social services, but programming for the arts as well. The Hallie Q. Brown Community Center of Saint Paul, Minnesota, much like the South Side Settlement house in Chicago and Henry Street Settlement house in New York, wanted to invest more in its art programming because it gave community members the tools to craft a voice within a community through visual arts, music, literature, and theatre. These centers were not only a popular outlet for entertainment, but also a critical part of the Black Arts Movement where African Americans spoke out about racial inequalities and allowed them to shape a sense of identity. The Hallie Q. Brown Community Center's second executive director, Henry R. Thomas, drafted a construction plan to incorporate a fully functional theater within its Martin Luther King Jr. facility to support these demands. In 1976, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) awarded the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center a $150,000 grant to further develop its cultural arts programming. The CETA funding enabled the appointment of Lou Bellamy, a theatre arts graduate student at University of Minnesota, as the center's cultural arts director where he later founded the Penumbra Theatre Company. In 1991 Penumbra transitioned to a separate organization, independent of the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center. Eden (1976) by Steve Carter was the first production to launch of the 1977-78 season of the Penumbra Theatre C