Communities in Connecticut are facing many challenges these days. Can theater help to meet and resolve those challenges? Kristin Huffman and Jeffery Fletcher say yes. Kristin Huffman is the co-founder and artistic director of The New Paradigm Theatre in Stamford. Jeffery Fletcher is the owner and collector of the Ruby and Calvin Fletcher African American Museum in Stratford. They speak with WSHU's Randye Kaye about their collaboration on the play, Hairspray.
WSHU: Now, full disclosure, Kristen and I know each other. I've performed with you numerous times, and most notably in two of your summer productions, which also had nonprofits that summer, and it was always a fabulous experience. So let's start by telling us about the mission of New Paradigm and what makes it different from other theater youth programs in the area.
KH: We promote social responsibility, foster creative problem solvers and leaders and global citizens through theater arts education and productions. And I don't know if we'd call ourselves a youth theater, I think we would just say a theater that has a very strong emphasis on creating young leaders through the arts. So they get to learn from people like you. And that's how I learned the best, if we're just talking theater in general, that's how I learned the best as a Broadway performer and working at a ton of other nonprofits around the country, was working with people better than me, more experienced than I am. I learned what to do, and sometimes what not to do. And so I thought I want to set up my theater company that way, so that the young people, and I mean, like even college kids, you know, we've got a lot of them in Hairspray, can learn what they're supposed to do from things like make sure you do all your background work, make sure that you wear a rehearsal skirt. Things that maybe they're not being taught. And then the even younger kids learn from those young people how to be professionals. It's not that we're not trying to make little Broadway stars, right? We actually aren't. We're trying to take a lot of those kids and teach them the sort of leadership skills through the arts that they can take into their lives. So that's our mission, sort of in a nutshell.
WSHU: And I would say definitely, because I know that you have a youth board, and the youth board is involved in leadership and decision-making. And thank you notes.
KH: Absolutely, yeah, it's not a club. We literally have an adult Board of Directors and a youth Board of Directors. I was never on a board of directors until I was a much older adult, and I had no idea how that operated. These young people handle that on their own. They report to the adult board and they work side by side with those officers.
WSHU: And I think that's such a fabulous thing, because every time you do a play, you don't just learn about your character. You have to live your character, and you live inside their head for as much as possible. You and I have both played villainous people, and you have to find a spark of empathy in there for them, or at least understanding. So tell me a bit about your idea, and I know you've done this with every single youth summer production that you've done to partner with a nonprofit. I think starting with Oliver, when you partner with Bridgeport food bank, or Okay, so what, where did this idea come from, to partner with a nonprofit, and how does that help create leaders of tomorrow?
KH: You know, my dad was a Lutheran minister. My mom was a choir director, and they're still life, and they really emphasize that service over self. We did a lot of singing for charities and so forth. And then when I went on to win Miss Ohio, and I was a runner-up to Miss America, which, PS, makes me perfect for Velma, except for all of her bullies.
However, the Miss America pageant wanted contestants to have platform issues. So it made sense to me to go, well, here's what I think altruism should be: an emphasis, not just talking about it, but really actively doing it. So I sat in a dumpster on Ohio State's campus for the homeless shelter, and people would come in and throw money in the dumpster. I took a pie in the face for cancer. I went to visit hospitals and so forth. I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back. I'm saying it because with a crown on your head, I don't know why people think that that's important. It was important for me because it paid off my student loans, but it attracted attention. You. So then I thought I had never thought about starting a theater company, but I could see where the industry was headed about 15 years ago, and it needed to be more social media. It needed to be more inclusive. It needed to just say something and connect to the community, because all their audiences were aging out. So how did I do that? I thought, well, it needs to be a local charity or something that reflects whatever we're doing. So, like when we did Little Mermaid, it was the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, which we partnered with, and it doesn't cost them anything. They are our partners, and they get highlighted with a spotlight thrown on things that are important. And we thought marine debris was important for that one, and we made all our props, costumes and sets out of the trash cleanups we did with the aquarium.
WSHU: Including your costume, I believe,
KH: Including mine, as Ursula, which was all black plastic bags. It was really fun, but it taught the kids at the same time. This is an important issue. It highlighted the museum. And then they speak at our curtain speech with me, or whoever, a board member you know, which is the same that we'll do with Jeffrey, so that they can get their mission and their ideas out to all of our audiences. So we feel like it's a good marketing strategy, but it's also just a good way for a theater to connect to the community, not just as here's fun stuff to come and see, but here's how this theme makes a difference in the world.
WSHU: Absolutely. And so Hairspray, for people who don't know it, what are some of the themes that you saw in the script that led you to Jeffrey and the Ruby and Calvin Fletcher African American History Museum?
KH: Well, if you know Hairspray at all from the John Waters movie and then all the different versions that have been on TV. You know that part of it is about Tracy, who is not tiny, skinny, but is of a robust size. She's a wonderful dancer, and she wants to be on the Courtney Collins show. And Velma is insistent in the 1960s on keeping it just thin white girls. So what's great about it, and we taught our youth this through workshops, is that this is not just about Tracy. She then becomes an ally for the African American community and says, Listen, if I'm going to be on the show, you need to have more people like our viewing audience, which is exactly what I did for Oliver and all that. I made sure we had diversity on stage, because that's who our audience wants to see. They want to see themselves on stage. You can tell you get excited when I talk about the themes, which were African American people at that time. What were they going through? And I wanted some place. And Jeffrey's going to tell you that they're the only African American History Museum in the state, I believe. And it was great. They're in our backyard. They're in Stratford.
Randye Kaye - All right, thank you. And I know that you also had a visit there. You always include the kids. You don't just mention this, you involve the children. So Jeffrey, welcome. Tell us about this museum. Tell us what we need to know. What's the mission?
JF: This has been a passion and dedication to my parents, Ruby and Calvin Fletcher, to talk about the museum and how we got started. I would say the main motivating factor behind this, and the person who has pushed this project, both emotionally and spiritually, was my mom. My mom was a child growing up in Camden, South Carolina, during the early 1930s, and my dad was a child as well, growing up in North Carolina. But as I said, my mom has always been the motivating factor in how we came about, and I say that only because, as a child, growing up in the Jim Crow South, she lived on a sharecropper's farm with her mom, my grandfather, my grandmother, and seven brothers and sisters. Out of the seven brothers and sisters, she was one of the two oldest, and she had to work the farms. She had to help out in the fields, and back then, a sharecropper, they utilized as much help as they can, because that was their only way of being able to reside on that property and maintain their family so being that she hadn't missed a lot of school due to the fact during the harvest and planting times and seasons down there, she was very bitter about that. But her safe place was whatever little bit of money she would make; she would take that into town and buy these little tchotchke figurines, glass, salt and pepper shakers, and other things.
And she would collect those until one day she got tired, and she said, at the age of 16, she heard about this great black migration from the south, where African Americans, as we know today, migrated from oppression, civil rights violations, housing, looking for better housing and employment. So she heard that there was a place in Connecticut called Colchester, and she migrated there, got on the bus at 16, unbeknownst to my grandparents, and came to Connecticut to seek a better way of life for herself. As she got there, she realized that there were no people there who really looked like her. It was a community that was inhabited by Orthodox Jews, Russian Jews, and they saw above and beyond her color, that she had a lot to offer. And what they did was they took her in, not as a domestic but as someone who they wanted to show their culture, their spirituality, teach the religion same as their way of life. So at that point, she continued to collect. And 10 years later, my dad evolved, and they got together, and they had a family. Meanwhile, my mom continued to collect up until the time she passed, and at that point in time, being one of four children, I was the one who inherited her collection of 500 objects.
And so at that point, I had to decide, what did I want to do with this collection? Did I want to just throw it out? Did I want to just give it away? What could I do to pay homage to my mom, because she was a civil rights activist as well as an advocate for black, white, Latino, Muslim people all her life, and a testimony to all who my mom was at her services when she passed, I saw all of these hundreds of people filing in, and I asked my dad, I said to him, who are these people? He said, These are the people that your mom advocated for. They came from all walks of life. So I decided that I needed to extend and talk about their legacy. So my dad was a co-pilot in this situation, right? And my mom was the pilot of that ship, or the pilot of that plane, so to speak. And he would, she would drag him to tag sales, estate sales, and she would pick up these things that she felt were reminiscent of African American culture.
WSHU: So, how did this evolve into the museum as it is right now? Because I understand that it is a personal experience, an immersive experience. Can you tell us a bit about the museum as it is right now, and what somebody would expect when they come there?
Jeffery Fletcher - Well, the museum, if it hadn't been for the Honorable Mayor Laura Hoydick of this community, who embraced this, this concept, when I bought it to her and her administration, we wouldn't be here, but Mayor Hoydick saw that this could fit right in her community, as well as the greater Fairfield County. So when she offered me the opportunity, I always say this: my mama didn't raise any fools. So I jumped at the opportunity, and we sat down and hammered out the details, and here we are, going on four years. I'm happy to say that we will be transitioning to a bigger location in the town of Stratford, between the library and the Sterling Community Center, where we are going to be renovating the home of John W Sterling, who is a very prominent attorney in his time, and also developed and started the Chairman Stone law firm. So we will be starting the construction process over there, because the traffic here is getting to the point where this venue cannot hold the folks coming through.
For more information on the New Paradigm Theatre, visit their website.
