Black Horizon Theater

Black Horizons Theater was a community-based, Black Nationalist theater company co-founded in 1968 by Curtiss Porter, Tony Fountain, E. Philip McKain, August Wilson and Rob Penny in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.

The Black Horizons Theatre began in 1968 with funding from the Program Committee of the Black Action Society, a student-community activist group at the University of Pittsburgh. A committee of students consisting of Curtiss Porter, Program Committee Chair, Tony Fountain, Political Action Committee Chair and E. Philip McKain Community Action Chair met with poets and playwrights Rob Penny and August Wilson at a Community Action Program office, where Penny on Chauncey Street in Pittsburgh's fabled Hill Distract, where Penny was employed, and laid plans for a community oriented, politically motivated theater along the lines of Barbara Ann Teer's National Black Theatre in Harlem, Amiri Baraka's Spirit House in Newark, and other Black Theatre groups across the country.

In 1967 Penny began to write plays, influenced by the example of the poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, and completed two one-acts. Wilson intended to direct them. He obtained a copy of The Fundamentals of Play Directing by Pittsburgh's directing guru, Carnegie Mellon University's Lawrence Carra, and studied it. In 1968 Penny and Wilson joined the Black Action Society effort to begin the new venture as Black Horizons Theatre. The initial production of the Black Horizons Theatre was, Amiri Baraka's, "A Black Mass", directed by Curtiss Porter. Black Horizons Theatre's later productions included Rob Penny's early plays flanked by an ensemble format of poets, drummers, dancers and speeches.

As noted in The Pittsburgh Courier, on August 16, 1969 The Black Horizons Theatre performed at the First Annual Homewood Black Arts Fesrival. Homewood, is another of Pittsburgh's historically Black neighborhoods. Homewood, like the Hill District, had been a Mecca for Black talent and the festival featured artists ranging from the Manhattans to Pharoah Sanders, with crowds over 10,000. Black Horizons Theatre produced the play, "Evolution to Revolution," written and directed by Curtiss Porter, with an all University of Pittsburgh student cast.

...
Wikipedia