Lead Minister at First Parish in Cambridge Unitarian Universalist, author, educator, LGBT Activist. Unitarian Universalist Chaplain at Harvard. A believer in bodies and liberated religion.
We’re talking about the Monroe Doctrine when we should be talking about the American Colonization movement. Not as a distraction, but as acknowledgement that what we are living through has its roots in some of the earliest movements of exclusion in this country’s history. Please watch…and learn more. – ALD
Sources:
American Colonization Society. Annual Report of the American Colonization Society: With Minutes of the Annual Meeting and of the Board of Directors. (Washington D.C.), American Colonization Society, 1910 1818, 91 volumes.
Guyatt, Nicholas. The American Colonization Society: 200 Years of the “Colonizing Trick” – AAIHS. Abolitionism. December 22, 2016.
Sparks, Jared. A Historical Outline of the American Colonization Society, and Remarks on the Advantages and Practicability of Colonizing in Africa the Free People of Color from the United States .. O. Everett, 1824.
Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. Octagon Books, 1980.
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917. Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, 2007.
WHHA (En-US). “The American Colonization Society.” Accessed January 8, 2026.
On December 23, 1999 I had the immense pleasure of opening with one of the most astoundingly talented casts in Cameron Macintosh’s Martin Guerre at the National Theater (aka, the Kennedy Center). Despite all of the drama involved in us getting there, it will always remain one of the highest points of my entire performing career. It was special because, well,…duh, it was the freakin’ Kennedy Center. Not everyone gets to perform on that stage, let alone with that kind of talent. We were small, just 27 of us, and by this point we knew each other exceedingly well. For everything that had gotten us to that point, it all felt like the most precious gift.
We had developed the show at the old Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and already done our first tour stop at the Fisher Theater in Detroit. I had been Equity Deputy, so I was busy, mostly with policing the major special effect of the show…the set burning down at the end. Technically, it was definitely a stretch. Yet, for all of its spectacle, literally burning down the house couldn’t save us from a weak plot and less than stellar book. Not to hold anything against any of the creative team, it just felt like the whole production was one of those all-the-right-pieces-at-all-the-wrong-time moments. This was also the Millennium and we would be in DC for that fated moment in time. While no computers stopped running that day, it was shortly afterward that we were told that our show wouldn’t be going to New York after all.
I can’t possibly get into all of the feelings about being told half way through a pre-Broadway tour that you are actually NOT going to Broadway, or the politics or the suspicions or the realities. But what I can share is that being at the National Theater was a treat. A cavernous space where, if you’ve got an orchestra pit, which we did, you feel MILES away from the audience. At the same time, it holds so many people that when they applaud, it is an impossibly huge storm of sound. Sadly, Bill and Hillary didn’t make it to the show but apparently Chelsea did and many of the usual Broadway, and entertainment hoi palloi who hadn’t seen it already in Minneapolis, many of whom were in DC for the Millennium events.
Performing at the Kennedy Center was one of my bucket list items. Unlike my dream of getting to Broadway (which happened in 1998) I didn’t share that with anyone, but I had held a fascination with that space since I was a child. That dream sat alongside the other one that I still have of performing at Lincoln Center. I had two chances that didn’t work out on that one, but maybe the third time will be the charm.
Being very much in my performing years at that point, while we were in Detroit, I was already auditioning for my next gig. Like I said, we kind of knew that the show wasn’t going anywhere so we were all traveling on our days off or letting the swings “swing in”. On one of these trips, I had the good fortune to catch my friend Patty Goble the first time she went on for the beloved Marin Mazzie in Kiss Me Kate. I was sorry to miss Marin of course, but seeing Patty was an incredible gift. She and I had joked and talked a lot about old musical theater and I was excited because her classic theater style was exactly right for the show. Afterward, I went back stage and found myself behind an older woman being escorted by a much younger man. It wasn’t until we were climbing the steps to the stage door that I realized I was walking behind film and Broadway legend Celeste Holm.
When we got to Patty’s dressing room she was of course blown away to be greeted by Miss Holm, but also surprised to see me as well because I often remarked at how much Patty looked and sounded like a young Celeste Holm ca. Oklahoma. The backstage chat was lovely and I made sure not to overstay my welcome. Before I left, Miss Holm shared something that will always stay with me. When I mentioned that I was performing at the Fisher Theater in Detroit, she made the perfect “disgusted Celeste Holm face” and said simply “EVERYONE gets sick in that place…”. And she was right, we were all getting sick. She added that theaters don’t change. What they are is built into them. You can change the décor but what the theater is at its heart is in its bones.
I guess that’s my point. Someone can come along and slap gold letters on it, or a hyphenate name that doesn’t belong, but the Kennedy Center will at its heart always be the Kennedy Center. It was built as an important tribute by people who themselves would go on to be celebrated. It was not an act of hubris. It was an act of commitment. Whether you like Kennedy politics and/or celebrity or not, the people who designed and built the Kennedy Center got it right. May it stand long enough to see all of the gold leaf and stupidity scraped off and washed away.
