Westcoast Black Theatre looks back at past hits to mark 25th anniversary season

As he announces the 25th anniversary season of the Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe, founder and Artistic Director Nate Jacobs is in a reflective mood about the impact his company has had on the community and a generation of artists who have been given training and performing opportunities that were not previously available in Sarasota.

“25 years means dreams come true,” Jacobs said before Monday night’s private announcement of the new season. “It means a change for the cultural landscape of this area and the amazement that I have been able to be a catalyst for that change. And the company itself has been a catalyst for more inclusion and diversity in Sarasota’s cultural scene.”

WBTT has grown from its early days as a fledgling operation with erratically scheduled musical revues that Jacobs created and presented at whatever venue was available to him. The shows often celebrated Black artists from the past, like the opening “Cotton Club Cabaret.”

For the company’s 25th anniversary, dubbed “Black Heritage,” Jacobs is taking a look back at the shows that carried the company through periods of financial struggle to owning its own theater complex with full-time staff, an education department, classes, a summer training program and affiliation with Actor’s Equity Association, the actors’ union.

"As they're stripping history out of the schools, institutions like this are vital" for sharing African-American history and culture, Jacobs told a crowd at a season announcement program Monday night that included scenes from the shows coming next year.

Jacobs and Executive Director Julie Leach are bringing back several past shows and creating one significant new revue along with a holiday special for 2024-25.

It will open with “Soul Crooners Solid Gold,” a new twist on Jacobs’ 2009 review that became a breakthrough hit for the company during an extended run at Art Center Sarasota. Jacobs used that show to introduce WBTT to a national audience at the National Black Theatre Festival.

More importantly, Jacobs said the show’s stars, including Sheldon Rhoden, Leon Pitts II, Michael Mendez and Christopher Eisenberg “are the epitome of the vision I had with mentorship. They are home-grown talents since they were teenagers.”

The season will continue with August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Fences,” the company’s third production of “Five Guys Named Moe” and the tap dance-based revue “Syncopated Avenue.” For the holiday season, the company will bring back “A Motown Christmas,” one of several shows it rotates each year.

Leach said the company has matured since marking its 20th anniversary with a gala concert event at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center. The company will mark the 25th landmark with a Nov. 14 celebration at Van Wezel, she said.

“We’re the third-biggest theater in Sarasota. We have solidified our production department with more people, increased theater qualities, better sets and we’ve made a lot of investment in making it a better theater company and moving toward the next generation of leaders.”

She said the new season is “more focused on some of the things we’re known for and things that have gotten us to where we are.” Even past shows will be new to some in the audience, which has changed over the years, particularly since the theater reopened after the pandemic.

“We definitely have new audiences coming. Our audience is now a little young and a little more diverse” than it was before the pandemic, she said.

Just two months before the world shut down for COVID, the company opened its newly renovated and expanded theater, which has about 200 seats, compared to 180 in the old facility. There are fewer sell-outs now, which means there are more opportunities to introduce newcomers to the company’s productions, Leach said.

Jacobs, who first came to Sarasota in the 1980s, started the troupe to provide more opportunities for work for himself and other theater artists of color.

At first, he ran it by himself, struggling to keep up with business operations while putting together shows. He got help on the business side from Christine Jennings, a former bank president who helped to wipe out the debt and led WBTT to buy the buildings it was renting on North Orange Avenue. Howard Millman, the former producing artistic director of Asolo Repertory Theatre, became president of the board and served as a mentor to Jacobs on running a theater company.

Jacobs said the theater’s success shows that “Sarasota is a very special community. I don’t know if what I was able to do could have been done anywhere else in the country. This community truly loves the arts, number one, and really believes in supporting the arts. I’m a beneficiary of the generosity and passion that the people of this city have for the arts. I’m so glad that they gave the new voice a chance to be part of the arts scene.”

Here is a look at the 2024-25 season.

‘Soul Crooners Solid Gold’

Oct. 9-Nov. 17 – A revised version of Jacobs’ hit revues about the “Soul Crooners,” a group of artists who perform classic R&B favorites from the 1960s and 1970s, including “Reach Out, I’ll Be There,” “Love Train,” “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)” and more by such artists as Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, The Commodores and The Stylistics.

‘A Motown Christmas’

Nov. 27-Jan. 5, 2025 – Each holiday season, Westcoast Troupe rotates among three different shows that capture the season through song in different ways. “A Motown Christmas” features familiar songs performed with arrangements that recall the sound of Smokey Robinson, the Jackson 5, The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas and more. (This show is not part of the four-show subscription season.). Jacobs said several other theaters around the country have begun producing their own versions of this holiday revue.

‘Fences’

Jan. 15-Feb. 23, 2025 – A new production of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play set in Pittsburgh about a man struggling to provide for his family and provide the right kind of nurturing to his teenage son, while being confronted with his own failings as a brother and husband. The theater first presented the play in 2013.

‘Five Guys Named Moe’

March 5-April 6, 2025 – This will be the company’s third production of this musical celebration of the pioneering music of rhythm and blues composer and lyricist Louis Jordan. It features big dance routines and tender ballads as a group of singers tries to raise the spirits of a despondent young man whose girlfriend has left him.

‘Syncopated Avenue’

April 16-May 25, 2025 – A new musical revue built around tap dancing is the first of its kind at Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe. The show will explore a variety of music and dance styles with popular jazz standards by such composers as Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake and Irving Berlin. Lamont Brown, a dancer featured in the national tour of “Funny Girl,” is expected to lead the cast.

For ticket information: 941-366-1505; westcoastblacktheatre.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota’s Westcoast Troupe explores ‘Black Heritage’ in 25th season