Performing Arts Returns To Historic Bayou Road With The Opening Of The Andre Cailloux Center For Performing Arts And Cultural Justice

The former St. Rose de Lima Church on Bayou Road will once again serve as a site for performing arts in New Orleans. Spearheaded by three community members, Lauren E. Turner, Dr. David Robinson-Morris, and Dr. Robin G.Vander, the André Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice is being envisioned as a hub for performing arts and as a promoter of cultural justice for New Orleans-based organizations.

Located on historic Bayou Road, the site of the former church was transformed into a theatre space in 2018, as a joint project of Alembic Community Development and Rose Community Development Corporation. With this new initiative, the Andre Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice will operate as a hub for performing arts, a meeting space for community-centered organizations, a venue for public programming and gathering, and limited special events rentals.

Harkening back to the historical origins of the location, the Cailloux Center views this undertaking as an act of reclamation for both the historic Indigenous and Black presences along the Bayou Road corridor. Central to its mission is a commitment to promoting the power of the performing arts, addressing issues of cultural justice, modeling cooperative leadership, and empowering economic freedom for global majority-led organizations.

The site will serve as the home for local, predominantly Black-led performing arts organizations that have operated without having permanent access to performance spaces of their own. In creating the Cailloux Center, the co-founder's Turner, Robinson-Morris and Vander were cognizant of the economic impact Black performing arts and culture have had on both the local and regional economies while the artists and companies themselves have often struggled to financially sustain themselves and their work. By creating an organization that would provide space and infrastructure, the Cailloux Center is addressing this and other historic inequities within the performing arts community and the community at large. The strategy is to create a performing arts ecosystem housing seven organizations, each with its own respective performing arts season. Of the seven, three will be designated "Legacy residents," organizations with lengthier histories of offering live performances that have contributed to African American culture in New Orleans.
While in its initial stages, the Cailloux Center is already garnering support from local and national agencies who readily understand the purpose of such a project. The Greater New Orleans Foundation provided funding to facilitate strategic planning for the Center. Most recently, No Dream Deferred-NOLA under the direction of Turner was awarded a grant by the Mellon Foundation that will support both programming, capital improvements, and purchasing of equipment.

New Orleans-based Junebug Productions has agreed to join the Cailloux Center as its Legacy Partner. With its deep roots in the Civil Rights Movement and the Free Southern Theater, Junebug Productions' mission is to create and support artistic works that question and confront inequitable conditions that have historically impacted the Black community. Founded by John O'Neal in 1980, Junebug has cultivated a history of over forty-two years producing and presenting performance art that amplifies Black stories and celebrates the richness of Black life and culture. As the Legacy Partner, Junebug will leverage its history and expertise in the performing arts to support the Center in its mission.

The André Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice honors the life and legacy of the late 19th-century free person of color, André Cailloux. Understanding that history is never past but always carried with us in the present, the Center spurs new revolutions and continues the pursuit of freedom and justice by engaging the imagination and (re)enlivening the human spirit through the performing and cultural arts. Through the arts and in public conversations, the Center seeks to render visible and disrupt institutionalized systems of oppression, to use storytelling and remembering as ways of honoring Black culture and reclaiming identity, and to promote self-determination in association with members of the New Orleans community.

André Cailloux, was an officer in the Union Army and one of the first to die in combat during the U.S. Civil War. Born in 1825; Cailloux had been enslaved, however, upon petition he gained his freedom at the age of 21. In his youth, he learned the skill of cigar making and over time became a successful businessman, landowner, and well-regarded member of the New Orleans' community of gens de couleur libre.

While severely wounded in battle during the war, Captain Cailloux led a valiant effort inspiring others under his command to neither surrender nor retreat. On May 27, 1863, Capt. Cailloux died in battle and for over forty days, his body lay on the battlefield until the Confederate-held Port Hudson was surrendered. Only then were his remains claimed and returned home for burial.

On July 29, 1863, André Cailloux's funeral was held in New Orleans with Father Claude Paschal Maistre, a French Catholic priest and abolitionist, presiding. The funeral procession stretched several city blocks as residents lined city streets in paying homage to Cailloux for the dignity with which he carried himself in life, his heroism in battle, and his willingness to die in pursuit of freedom and liberty. His final resting place is in Saint Louis Cemetery #2.

For more information, please visit: https://www.rosecollaborative.com/andre-cailloux-center.

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