Nation's Oldest Black Theatre Restores Its Luster

Backstage: "In the late 1990s, Cleveland's Karamu Performing Arts Theatre, the nation's oldest African-American theatre, was foundering and rudderless. Audiences were dwindling, critics stopped attending, and actors were shunning auditions. The theatre that helped nurture the careers of such playwrights as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Lorraine Hansberry and actors like Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Robert Guillaume, and Anthony Chisholm was on the verge of closing its doors."