House, the nation’s oldest Black theater, surges forward in spite of ‘a rough few years’

CLEVELAND, Ohio >> Nestled in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood, just east of Downtown in the shadow of the Cleveland Clinic, sits Karamu House.

Recognized as the oldest African-American performing arts institution in the United States, it has served as an incubator for some of the country’s bestknown Black artists since it first opened its doors in 1917.

Founded in 1915 by two white social workers, Russell and Rowena Jelliffe, it opened as a settlement house, named the Neighborhood Assn., on E. 38th St., in an area then known as Cleveland’s “Roaring Third” — home to bars, brothels, flophouses and gambling dens.

The Jelliffes wanted to create an environment where people of different races, religions and socioeconomic backgrounds could come together to find common ground through the arts. They began producing plays with interracial casts in 1917.

Rechristened the “Playhouse Settlement,” it quickly became a magnet for some of the best African-American artists of the day — actors, dancers, printmakers and writers all found a place where they could practice their crafts.

In the 1930s, the Playhouse Settlement relocated to its current home at 2355 E 89th St. and 10 years later again underwent a name change — to Karamu House, a Swahili word meaning a “place of joyful gathering.”

The guest book at Karamu reads like a Who’s Who of writers, dancers, actors and producers, the most notable of which was Langston Hughes.

Hughes — one of the most popular writers of the 20th century — grew up in the Central neighborhood of Cleveland and taught art classes at Karamu while attending Central High School.

The poet, writer and playwright wrote his first play at Karamu — “The Golden Piece” in 1921 — and went on to write and debut several other works on its stage, including a show commissioned by Karamu in 1961. “The Black Nativity” is still performed annually.

Hughes is quoted as saying in 1961, that “It is a cultural shame that a great country like America, with twenty million people of color, has no primarily serious colored theatre. There isn’t. Karamu is the very nearest thing to it. My feeling is not only should a Negro theater if we want to use that term, do plays by and about Negroes, but it should do plays slanted toward the community in which it exists.”

In addition to Hughes, other notable Karamu alumni include authors Zora Neale Hurston and Lorraine Hansberry; and stage and screen actors Ruby Dee, Robert Guillaume, Ron O’Neal, Bill Cobbs, Ivan Dixon, Minnie Gentry and more recently, James Pickens (“Grey’s Anatomy”), Imani Hakim (“Everybody Hates Chris”), Debra Byrd (vocal coach and arranger for “American Idol” and “Canadian Idol”).

But it wasn’t that long ago that the 100-plus-yearold theater was in a state of crisis.

In 2015, Karamu faced fiscal issues and a shrinking audience base almost caused it to close its doors for good.

Enter Tony Sias, Karamu’s President and CEO.

“There were so many financial challenges when I arrived in 2015. Those first two years were rough,” he recalled.

In 2016, Karamu laid off 15 staffers, including longtime artistic director Terrence Spivey, in a dramatic cost-cutting move. Shortly thereafter, the IRS revoked Karamu’s precious tax-exempt status, saying it had not received a tax return from the nonprofit for three consecutive years. Karamu filed an appeal and the non-profit status was quickly reinstated. But turmoil and financial troubles persisted.

Sias took a deep dive into operations and in three years had managed to stabilize the theater in what American Theater Magazine called the “most under-rated turnaround in theater history.”

Audiences had returned and ticket sales hovered around 80+ percent of house in March 2020. The theater was undergoing a massive renovation, “and we were doing exceptionally well,” Sias said.