RECAP: Black Theatre United Founders Talked About Its Origin on STARS IN THE HOUSE

Stars in the House continued Thursday night (8pm) with Black Theatre United Founders Brandon Victor Dixon, LaChanze, Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Lillias White. This episode was in support of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

LaChanze began by talking about the origin of Black Theatre United. "Audra and I got on the phone after several posts about the fact that our industry seems to have been silent about what's been happening. This was early on. A lot of us have gotten a lot more aware of what's going on and we just said 'we have to do something. We can't just sit by and watch everything that's going on in our country and our city in response to everything that's happening and we need to galvanize.' We pulled some of our favorite people together and got a Zoom going with 19 of our closest and dearest and two weeks later here we are."

Audra McDonald added, "We've all known each other for decades...For me, it was great fellowship...from that we decided that we needed to speak out in some way and see if we could galvanize and gather and we wanted to do something that effected change civically and within the country as well as start to address the issues of systemic racism that is in the theatre."

Lillias White talked about the 2020 Census. "We are starting working in the Census and getting people really to pay attention to the Census and fill out the Census forms and be a part of that because it's very important for our communities to get funding for schools, for hospitals and stuff like that."

LaChanze added, "We're all so anxious for this to change. We want to be equal. Now is the time. There's a crack in the ceiling right now...we love the fact that we have our allies, the producers saying 'hey, we want to help. Point us in the right direction.' That's one thing with BTU, that's one of the things we plan to do, we're gonna shine the light when someone says 'how can we be of service?' We're gonna say 'this is what you should focus on right now.'"

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Photo Credit: Linda Lenzi