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| Doudou Boicel (courtesy of Doudou Boicel) |
I'm black and I'm proud On the eve of their 25th annual Vision Awards, Black Theatre Workshop looks back on their humble origins 40 years ago
by Richard Burnett
One night in late 1964, a group of West Indian immigrants met in Montreal for dinner and founded what six years later would become Montreal's Black Theatre Workshop.
"We were drinking and talking about Trotsky and Che Guevara and how we would make the world over while listening to Sarah Vaughan and James Brown's Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," remembers Dr. Clarence Baynes, now 78.
Baynes, BTW's founding executive director and still VP of the group's board of governors today, goes further into the history: "So we started the Trinidad and Tobago Association, of which the Trinidad and Tobago Drama Committee was one of several committees. We developed [plays] around calypsos and presented them at Westmount High. This was not what Montrealers were used to seeing back in 1970."
