Paul Robeson Players Put Compton on the Map for Theatrical Excellence
Legendary L.A. Rebellion filmmaker Jamaa Fanaka showcased 1970s life in his hometown, Compton, in the 1976 film "Emma Mae." In the credits, Fanaka named a group of performers featured amongst the supporting and background cast and critical to the promotion of dramatic arts in Compton: "Special thanks to the Paul Robeson Players."
That same year, the Black World magazine's annual theater issue recognized the Paul Robeson Players as "major presenters of Black theater" in Los Angeles, having arguably "received more public praise and written endorsements from elected officials throughout the state than any other Black arts group."
By the time of its closure in the early 2000s, the Paul Robeson Players had maintained its dedication to theatrical excellence from a home in Compton for over 30 years — and had served as one of the longest-running Black theater companies in the Los Angeles region.
Here's the story of how it got its start — and the lasting legacy it left behind.
Beginnings
The theater ensemble began in November 1971 as the adult drama workshop of the Compton Communicative Arts Academy (CAA). Actor Robert Browning began it by hosting two three-hour sessions during the week. Then Academy director John Outterbridge hired a theater student from Cal State Dominguez Hills, Robert Carmack, to teach a drama workshop for children on Saturdays.
The adult workshop's first participants included Naomi Pryor-Stenson, Ruth Culmer (née Emerson), Owen Wilson, Phillip Jackson, Hilman Moffett, Marvin Clayton and Geraldine "Gerry" Dunston. Stenson's mother had known Carmack from Cal State Dominguez Hills, and Culmer had studied visual arts at the Academy and under beloved Compton High School art teacher, Wes Hall. Hall also taught and mentored visual artist Cedric Adams, who later assisted with stage designs for plays.
They rehearsed at CAA's Happening House and performed plays at The Arena, a former warehouse that the academy turned into a multipurpose arts and performance space.
Within a year of their first workshop, the group decided to form a theater company. Once they received a namesake blessing from the family of actor and activist Paul Robeson, they officially became The Paul Robeson Players — the first and only theater company in Compton founded by Black artists.
The Players performed their first play as a company in 1972: "Man's Best Friend," a comical, coming-of-age story of a young, Black man, directed by Browning and featuring Carmack, Emerson, Pryor-Stenson, Clayton and Michael D. Roberts in the cast. The play was written by then-UCLA School of Film, Theater, and Television student Tony Cox, who was part of Charles Gordone’s Pulitzer-winning "No Place to Be Somebody," the first production of a play by a Black playwright in UCLA history.
The Paul Robeson Players produced at least two theatrical performances per year and became renowned for staging plays from local and national Black playwrights and theater companies — such as "Anna Lucasta," first produced by American Negro Theater in 1944 , and "The River Niger" by Black playwright Joseph A. Walker and originally produced by the Negro Ensemble Theater in 1972, which Black World magazine reported "played to packed houses" during its run at CAA.
The Players worked for many years with Black playwright Mildred Dumas and first brought her "Uncle Rufus" to the University of Southern California's Bing Theatre in 1989.
They presented plays in spaces across Compton — including Compton College, where they performed Ed Bullins' "Going to Buffalo" and an original "Cabaret Extraordinaire," and the English Square No. 2, a banquet hall and auditorium, cited as one of the first of its kind owned by African Americans in the country.
Outside of Compton, they launched a successful run of "Three Hundred Sixty Degrees" written by Kenneth B. Davis and directed by Browning, at Theater of the Arts in Los Angeles.
On a World Stage
After incorporating as a non-profit in 1975, with Browning as Executive Director, the Players became a fully-operational arts organization. That included hiring paid staff, thanks to the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), which provided funding for artists to work in the community. Through CETA, member Vel Omarr (formerly Vel Syed), with assistance from the artist Adams, led workshops for youth and adults at Compton's Wilson Park, where they also performed plays.
In 1977, the Paul Robeson Players received the opportunity of a lifetime: to attend and perform at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, or FESTAC '77 in Lagos, Nigeria. Along with musicians and artists from the Compton Communicative Arts Academy, the Players made up a large part of the small West Coast contingent of artists selected to attend this historic international celebration of art of the African diaspora, representing the artistry and craft they developed in Compton.
They brought an original play to an outdoor FESTAC stage: "Dahomey Dance," written by Mattie Kennedy and directed by Browning. The players who performed included Browning, Debra Crosby, Catherine Cummings, Ernest Johnson, Paula Mack, Pryor-Stenson, Pamela Roberts and Augustus C. Stone. The festival offered an opportunity for the Players to travel out of the country for the first time, which provided perspective that affirmed their — and Compton's — contributions to Black arts, according to the Players.
Upon their return, the group performed "Dahomey Dance" at UCLA, this time with a friend of Kennedy's, director and actor Bill Duke, at the helm.
Bringing New Energy Back to Compton
In 1980, the Players relocated to a space of their own: a house on Bullis Road and Palmer Avenue in Compton.
A summer youth employment program intern, Joseph Nichols, painted images of various Black historical figures and performers, including Carmack and Stone, on the home's exterior. The house served as their official headquarters, while the group also offered improv and theater workshops elsewhere, like at Tibby and Caldwell elementary schools.
The group's members brought lessons and new energy from their time amongst Black artists in Lagos. In the early 1980s — with Augustus C. Stone as the new company director, and with the support of its board member, Johanna Martin-Carrington, a prominent civic leader in Compton and Los Angeles — the Players developed a plan to strengthen and maintain Compton's creative culture for generations to come.
Their participation in the international festival had exemplified their achievements and significance and offered the potential to make their work and Compton a significant draw for the arts in Los Angeles. So, their new plan proposed to make Compton a destination of the arts — by developing Compton High School as a center of arts and culture.
The school's central location, arts resources, and history of quality arts instruction — not to mention its facilities, including a state-of-the-art theater that hosted high-quality performances — would provide a physical center to connect and bring in programming and workshops from a constellation of arts groups, including the Paul Robeson Players. According to Stone, the group presented the idea to Compton's city council but they did not receive any follow-up from the council regarding it.
Despite not being able to expand to the full extent of their vision, the Paul Robeson Players continued to be active in the theater community of Los Angeles through the 1980s and 1990s, even receiving funding from various entities (including the National Endowment for the Arts) in the 1980s.
Recognition & Impact
The Paul Robeson Players were widely recognized both locally and beyond.
Mayor Tom Bradley signed a proclamation for the City of Los Angeles to declare June 3-9, 1989 "Paul Robeson Players Week" and recognized "their outstanding contributions to Theater Arts" as "one of the oldest Theater Arts groups in the Los Angeles community."
[Paul Robeson Players] received more public praise and written endorsements from elected officials throughout the state than any other Black arts group.Black World magazine
Their performances garnered numerous awards, including the coveted S.A.L.L.Y. award (Spotlight Awards in Los Angeles for the Learning and the Livelihood of Youth), a community theater competition once held by Los Angeles County where the company won top honors.
The Players themselves were featured on such television programs as KNBC's "Focus" and KCET's "Doin' It at the Storefront"hosted by Sue Booker. The "Black Compton" episode of "Black Journal," the predecessor to public television's "Tony Brown Journal," captured Carmack leading a drama workshop at the Academy in 1972. And the group's productions were documented and reviewed in print outlets such as Playbill, the Los Angeles Sentinel and Los Angeles Times.
Beyond the popularity and critical acclaim of their productions, the impact of the Paul Robeson Players can also be measured by something else: how it offered a direct line to the film and television industry for Black performers, particularly as new opportunities were becoming available to members of the community. This group — as well as others like Mafundi, the Los Angeles Inner City Cultural Center (ICCC), Ebony Showcase Theater and the Performing Arts Society of Los Angeles (PASLA) — provided a training ground for acting, production and directing that prepared community members for opportunities newly available to Black performers in Hollywood.
Paul Robeson Player Al Cowart held a supporting role in Fanaka's aforementioned "Emma Mae" film that also featured other troupe members as extras. Michael D. Roberts went from playing "Man's Best Friend" to the role of "Rooster" on the popular 1970s-'80s show "Baretta," which marked the beginning of a long and successful television and movie career. His wife Pamela, who'd traveled with the FESTAC '77 group, found success in roles in "Dynasty" and "L.A. Law" and in films such as "Minority Report."
Members of the Paul Robeson Players contributed to the industry in a variety ways such as Patricia Turner, who led a successful career as a stuntwoman and served as an active member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Vel Omarr, who secured background roles in TV shows such as "Good Times."
Tony Cox, who began as a playwright, went on to become an award-winning Los Angeles news journalist and professor at Cal State Los Angeles.
A Lasting Legacy
Despite the Paul Robeson Players' achievements and longevity, as the years passed, the support that they received could not sustain their programmatic and performance efforts. The group felt the impact of the defunding of the arts through the elimination of CETA and continued repercussions of Proposition 13 on cities like Compton (where inequitable home valuations resulted in limited funds for city-funded programs). By the end of the 1990s, without a donor and fundraising base comparable to groups like the ICCC, the Paul Robeson Players ceased operations as a company and community arts organization.
But its legacy was lasting. The timing of its development and relationship to the CAA made it a crucial part of the post-Watts Uprising arts renaissance, described by theatre scholar Margaret B. Wilkerson as "stimulat[ing] artists to use theater as a means of collective self-assessment and a vehicle for exploring the conditions and the potential of their community."
While the programs offered by the Paul Robeson Players ended, their commitment to their craft and friendship didn't. Naomi Pryor-Stenson became a board member of Canyon Theatre Guild. Pryor-Stenson and Dumas extended their years of friendship and collaboration in April 2023, when Pryor-Stenson directed a Dumas play familiar to the Players, "Uncle Rufus," at The MAIN theater in Newhall, California, nearly 50 miles northwest of Compton. The success of the April performance prompted a request for a performance of the sequel, "Uncle Rufus II: Odella's Revenge," at the theater in 2024, presented by the Dumas-Stenson Thespians.
Carmack produced shows and plays at the Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center in the Los Angeles community of Leimert Park — and, during the shelter-in-place period of the COVID-19 pandemic, staged a play over Zoom that featured Stenson amongst others.
Stone shared unheralded or forgotten stories in African American history at community venues and events as a contemporary African-American griot. Moffett, who assisted as a stage technician for many of the Players' performances, maintained a successful career providing lighting and video production work for large-scale concerts and stage performances. Culmer contributed her artistic skills as a visual painter and singer at her church in Texas. Omarr led an accomplished career as a singer and performer and as part of the doo-wop vocal groups The Robins and The Olympics.
Some remained in the Compton and Long Beach area, like the late Browning and late board member Thelidria Calhoun, who dedicated their lives to uplifting the arts in the community. For decades, Browning had been a beloved and awarded high school theater teacher at Long Beach Jordan High School and helped establish Long Beach's Renaissance High School for the Arts.
In December 2022, the group gathered in person and virtually to commemorate more than 50 years since the founding of the group that brought them together. They shared memories of performing together, each playing varying roles as actors, directors, playwrights, teachers, stage technicians.
Together, they represented one of the longest running arts groups to come from and connected to the Communicative Arts Academy and an important part of the history and legacy of Black theater and performing arts in Los Angeles.
