Yale University juniors, Slater Vance and Chin Onwu, set out to create a space where Black playwriting and film could be spotlighted on campus. So, when they decided to resuscitate the Heritage Theater Ensemble, it was kismet when Vance found his mother’s name, Angela Bassett, among the list of founding members.
The ensemble founded by Bassett in 1979, was an on-campus engine for Black theatre for decades until it fizzled out during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ownu and Vance recently rebranded the Heritage Theater Ensemble as the Heritage Production Company.
When Bassett attended Yale in the early 80s, The David Geffen School of Drama ,was primarily producing work by prolific white American and European playwrights like Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov. Vance says there were few opportunities for Black actors and even fewer stagings of work by Black writers.
While the political climate of both Yale and the American theatre canon has evolved, Yale still needs a space that centers art from the Black diaspora, according to Onwu and Vance.
“The important thing for us is to make Black stories a regular occurrence,” said Onwu, who attended Eton College, directed the first Black play to be performed in the British boarding school’s almost 600-year history.
Heritage is not an exclusively Black ensemble; rather, it boasts a diverse cast and crew, which Vance and Onwu agree is the bedrock of good theatre.
“We’re not an exclusively Black space, but we are focused on exclusively Black art, and anyone can be a part of that,” said Vance.
Vance said that after performing in a staging of Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew, a play that depicts the post-industrial fallout of Detroit’s automotive boom, he realized there was no space dedicated exclusively to Black art and playwriting.
Onwu also said he had never played a character that was originally devised to be Black.
Vance and Onwu hope the new Heritage will create a permanent crater in Yale’s theatre scene for Black stories.
Heritage plans to revive some of Bassett’s founding traditions, like community nights where students read poetry and dramatic monologues.
Vance said that while his mother attended Yale’s David Geffen School of Drama, it was rare for Black students to be placed in titular roles or characters originally conceived for white actors.
“They would compile a list of sonnets and have some friends play jazz,” Vance said. “There weren’t a lot of opportunities for Black actors to be like an Othello or an Iago.”
The company also plans to screen one film and stage one play per semester.
Heritage’s inaugural performance will be John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation. The play follows Paul, a talented Mr. Ripley conning wealthy New York couples by posing as an Ivy League student, asking for their hospitality and a peek into their hyper-exclusive world.
“He’s not trying to take something from them; he just wants to be seen,” Vance said. “It’s very representative of a lot of Black students’ experiences here at Yale.”
The play’s take on imposter syndrome and the complex relationship between a philanthropist and someone accepting charity plays on common threads of the Black experience at Yale, according to Vance and Onwu, but they hope Heritage can produce stories outside the folds of the “Black Ivy League experience.”
“We’re in a very privileged space here at Yale, and the Black experience often lives outside that privilege,” said Vance.
Vance and Onwu hope the new Heritage will create a permanent crater in Yale’s theatre scene for Black stories.
The revival of Heritage arrives amid intense scrutiny on Yale from the Trump administration. In May, the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched an investigative probe into Yale’s admissions practices, alleging that it violated the 2024 Supreme Court decision that killed affirmative action by favoring Black and Hispanic applicants and maintaining “discriminatory” DEI programs, according to the DOJ.
Heritage’s role on campus may become even more essential in light of this novel politicized pressure from the federal government.
“Especially at a time when people are sort of afraid of being accosted or hammered down on it, it's incredibly important to have a space like this,” said Onwu.
