Spotlight On: Juneteenth Legacy Theatre [reprinted from Arts and Entertainment Guide 2004]

Juneteenth Legacy Theatre will work with children this season to stage "Tall Tales and Short Sayings," which the company performed last season. Juneteenth Legacy Theatre is "Kentucky's Only Professional African-American Theatre Company!" — right now. Founder and director Lorna Littleway, an actress, playwright and director from New York, says there have been other groups with the same focus in the past, but none that lasted as long as JLT, now entering its sixth season.

This year, with a longer schedule and a broader focus, JLT hopes to extend its streak. The company's upcoming schedule runs from October to June. The year's first event, "Juneteenth at the Apollo," is Oct. 16.

"We don't give anybody the hook or anything," Littleway says, adding that the event will mimic the famous amateur nights at the Apollo Theater in New York. During last year's season, a smaller version of "Juneteenth at the Apollo" was such a hit that JLT brought it back to stand alone this year. Littleway says the audience will have a say in the preliminaries, and a panel of judges will decide the winner.

Also this year, JLT is teaming up with the Louisville Housing Authority to expose young people to theater. All season long, JLT and the kids will pair in workshops and productions at the Baxter Community Center. (The project is funded, in part, by the city.) By the final curtain call, the children will have performed their own version of a previous JLT production, "Tall Tales and Short Sayings," an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's short stories.

Juneteenth Legacy Theatre will again present its "Bold Journeys Tour," "Cotton Club Review" and "Juneteenth Jamboree."

Littleway says she sees JLT filling a "niche market" in a city where "African-American theater arts is under-represented."

But she is positive when asked about community support in the first five years, saying she doesn't think any group could make it to its sixth year without that support. Two of the group's largest benefactors are PNC Bank and Target Corp., but audiences have brought ample support as well. Littleway says that the audiences at JLT performances aren't exclusively African Americans; she estimates 60 percent of the JLT audience is African American and 40 percent is white.

Littleway adds that every major American city has strong African-American theater companies. "It's a good identity for [Louisville]," she says. —Josie Swindler