By SHARON EBERSON
Mark Clayton Southers pauses periodically to instruct son Marcus and nephew Matthew as they work behind the scenes:
“Lemme see what you got. Oh, perfect. Get the big ladder. OK. Marcus, call your mom right now though. Tell her I’m doing an interview.”
It’s early on a Monday morning, and Southers, founder and producing artist director of Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company, is surrounded, as usual, by family members who multitask as staff, crew and cast members.
They have learned while observing someone for whom multitasking is seemingly a compulsion. A former steelworker and news photographer, an accomplished playwright, director and designer, Southers previously acted in one of the shows at hand: August Wilson’s prescient Radio Golf.
That first production was in 2013. Radio Golf, circa 2024, puts Southers’ company one shy of a second turn around Wilson’s American Century Cycle. He will take his time mounting the play that will complete the second Cycle, Two Trains Running, which was performed at Pittsburgh Public Theater in 2022.
The play, opening August 10, will have two sets for scheduled viewing and potential rainouts: in the annual production at the August Wilson House in the Lower Hill District, and at Madison Arts Center, Pittsburgh Playwrights’ home in the Upper Hill.
Southers also was preparing for a fundraising production of his play, The Bluegrass Mile, which landed in North Carolina for the International Black Theatre Festival, July 29-August 3.
He points out that while handling technical director, designer and set dresser duties, his main role this time around is as a producer. Pittsburgh native Montae Russell (TV series ER, Pittsburgh Public Theater’s Thurgood) will direct Radio Golf. Southers is writer-director of the The Bluegrass Mile, which debuted in October 2023 at Madison Arts.
How appropriate and deserving, then it is as a producer that Southers has been named recipient of the 2024 Larry Leon Hamlin Producer Award, named in honor of the founder of the National Black Theatre Festival. The award is presented to “an individual who accepts the challenge to sustain and enrich the vision of the founder of an established institution devoted to the development of Black culture.”
“I’m still in shock,” Southers says of the honor. “First of all, I’m super appreciative. I’m on top of the world about it. I think it’s beautiful.”
He pauses again, this time to reflect. “It’s also telling of how, and I’m just going to relate it to Pittsburgh because that’s all I know, because I’ve been in Pittsburgh my whole life. It’s telling that a lot of Pittsburghers have had to leave – Billy Porter, Tamara Tunie, August Wilson – and I’m not putting myself in their class – not so much to be successful, but to be appreciated for their work.”
Not wanting to dwell on negative thoughts and to extend his gratitude, he continued, “It’s really a nod to the talent that we have in Pittsburgh and the support that we have, because I can’t do anything by myself. And it’s as a producer, which is something that I never, ever dreamed that I would be. I found myself thrust into this in order to get my own work done, and now I’m finding joy in producing other people’s work, because I know how it felt as a Pittsburgh playwright, to have your first play done.”
Radio Golf, representing the 1990s, was August Wilson’s final play, first produced at Yale Repertory in 2005, the year of his death. Legacy, progress and politics in the Hill District are at odds in the play, whose protagonist, ambitious real estate developer Harmond Wilks, is determined to become the first Black mayor of Pittsburgh and revive his blighted childhood neighborhood. Wilks is self-assured about his ambitions, until he is forced to question how pursuing change could put his neighborhood’s history at risk.
The Pittsburgh of Wilson’s youth is ever present in the play, in the venues and directly on stage.
Cast member Maurice Redwood’s grandfather, Carl Redwood Sr., is the “Mr. Redwood” name-dropped in Radio Golf. His father, Carl Redwood Jr., is a longtime activist and advocate for the Hill District.
“And don’t forget,” Southers said, “that it will be in the Carter Redwood Theatre,” the Madison Arts Center auditorium that is named for Maurice’s brother.
Other cast members include Sam Lothard, Karla Payne, Mike Traylor, Dominique Briggs, Roosevelt Watts Jr. and Rich Dickson.
“I love the voyage that Montae Russell is taking this cast on. He brings a whole lot of Wilsonian-type vibes to the whole process because he’s been in all these plays,” Southers said. “He’s lived and breathed these words. He’s been in Radio Golf before, and he’s done these on the bigger venues.”
Southers recalled traveling with his wife, Neicy, to see Russell in a production of Jitney at Pasadena Playhouse, and Russell’s appearance as Sterling in Radio Golf, directed by “my old friend” Ron OJ Parson for Pittsburgh Public Theater in 2008.
Radio Golf lands differently now than it did even 20 years ago, with Ed Gainey, the city’s first Black mayor, in office. Politics, however, doesn’t much interest Southers, outside of the confines of the script.
And while the recognition awaiting him in North Carolina is nice, his mind is in Pittsburgh, where he is faced every day with the complexities of running a theater company while trying to cultivate the next generation of theater lovers.
“What excites me is to make the atmosphere believable for the audience and realistic for the actors and the director to work on. So that’s been my focus,” Southers says.
Noting that August Wilson House takes place a stone’s throw from streets that were part of the development discussed in the play, Southers lamented the difficulties in attracting African-American audiences to dramas about their culture and community.
“It is really hard to cultivate someone to become a theater lover,” he said, “and it is a mixture of things – the expense, the time … I’m talking about the Black community in particular. … I want people who look like me to see the work that we do. I want the actors to look out in the audience and see people who look like them, appreciating the work that they’re doing.”
Southers knows from experience .He became hooked as a theater fan “on a whim,” when he was asked to videotape a play, back in his days as a photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier.
On the other hand, presenting Radio Golf at the August Wilson House “is a really good fit, particularly because right across the street is the Bedford Dwellings.”
To bring in more present and hopefully future theater-goers, the August Wilson House has 100 free tickets available for a preview that is “essentially a community night.”
Southers himself has had 2024 already. His play, The Coffin Maker, was produced by Pittsburgh Public Theater and made available for an online audience.
As he was preparing to head to the International Black Theatre Festival, Southers was reminded of his early days attending the festival, when he first met founder Larry Leon Hamlin.
“So he never really got the admiration from the traditional Black theater companies, and it bothered him,” Southers says of Perry. “I can remember going down there in the Nineties and sleeping in my car, because I couldn’t afford a hotel room, and now they’re giving me this award as a producer. …”
He pauses again, to yell instructions, then he comes back to say once again how appreciative he is of his family and his Pittsburgh theater family, which in many ways are the same.
“I’m just grateful that I’m being honored, especially as a producer. … It’s our third time going down to the festival as a production company,” Southers says, “which is beautiful.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company’s production of Radio Golf will be outdoors at the August Wilson House, 1727 Bedford Street, Lower Hill, Thursday-Sunday, August 10-September 14, 2024, with the exception of 2 p.m. matinee performances, which will be inside Madison Arts Center, 3401 Milwaukee Street in the Upper Hill. Visit: https://www.pghplaywrights.org/season-info/radio/ . A special “Divine Nine” event is August 16. Visit: https://www.pghplaywrights.org/season-info/radio/#divine .
INTERNATIONAL BLACK THEATRE FESTIVAL
- Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company will perform The Bluegrass Mile, by Mark Clayton Southers, July 30-31. Visit: https://ncblackrep.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/#/events/a0SVT000003NCun2AG
- New Horizon Theater, Inc. will perform Blues Is The Roots by Charles Dumas, August 2-3. Visit: https://ncblackrep.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/#/events/a0SVT000003PQGw2AO
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