Back in 2009, two longtime supporters of the National Black Theatre Festival struck up a conversation about its history.
The supporters were Herman LeVern Jones, who once served as a special assistant to Larry Leon Hamlin, the festival's late founder, and Joan M.E. Gaither, a Maryland resident who has been attending festivals since 1991.
Jones runs a management-consulting firm and is the founding artistic director of TheatreSouth Atlanta. He had negotiated contracts for past festivals, as well as serving as a volunteer coordinator and grant writer. He missed Hamlin and wanted to do something in his honor.
When Gaither told Jones she was a fiber artist, he asked her if she could capture the festival's history in a quilt. She said she could and spent much of the next two years doing just that. The result — called "Marvtastic Memories of the National Black Theatre Festival, circa 1989-2011" — is now hanging on a lobby wall of the Womble Carlyle Gallery of the Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts on Spruce Street.
"It is just an incredible collection of the fabric of the city of Winston-Salem and the National Black Theatre Festival," Jones said. "It's got all of this stuff."
The "stuff" derives from such festival memorabilia as photos and brochures. It documents the essentials of every festival from the first one in 1989 to the current one happening through Saturday.
"I thought it really outlined the history of the festival," said Hamlin's wife, Sylvia Sprinkle-Hamlin. "I thought it was really awesome."
Hamlin, wearing one of his more flamboyant costumes, takes up much of the quilt's left-hand side. The two terms he coined — "marvtastic" and "Black Theatre Holy Ground" — also appear on the quilt.
The quilt's materials are primarily fabrics. But Gaither said that she used "anything and everything" to tell the festival's story, from sections of T-shirts to beads.
Included in the quilt are headshot-like photos of more than 200 festival leaders and celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington, Maya Angelou, James Earl Jones, Woodie King, August Wilson, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. The festival's celebrities performed, saw their works staged and served as chairmen or honored guests.
Can't remember when "The Jackie Wilson Story" was first staged at the festival? The answer is 2001. The show is listed in a 2001 section of the quilt, along with other production titles and celebrities. There are similar sections in the quilt for every other festival, which is a biennial production of the N.C. Black Repertory Company of Winston-Salem.
More than 260 theater companies have appeared at the festival. Their names appear on the quilt as well, with letters of each name spelled in small, cubed pieces of white wood.
"They're like little letter beads," Gaither said.
Gaither, a retired arts educator who taught for 40 years in the Baltimore school system, specializes in creating quilts about the American experience. One of her other quilts, called "Journey to the White House," is about the rise of President Barack Obama.
"Marvtastic Memories" also attempts to place the festival within a larger historical context. It features symbolic representations of Africa and the pain of being pulled from the African homeland and into the New World.
Jones and Gaither say that the quilt is worth $250,000. The artwork will hang in the center through the 2011 festival, which ends Saturday. After that, it may continue to hang in the center through September, said Richard Emmett, the chief operating officer of the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, which owns the center.
Eventually, Jones said, he'd like somebody in Winston-Salem to purchase the quilt and perhaps to lend it to museums, colleges and community centers across the country. If the quilt sells, Gaither will collect 70 percent of the proceeds, and Jones will take 30 percent.
"We'd like to take this, quote, on tour," Jones said. "We'd like to get more information out about the National Black Theatre Festival through this quilt."
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