Holy Cross Alumna Offers Timely Take on Race, Bias Onstage

College of the Holy Cross graduate Valerie Curtis-Newton ’81 was recently spotlighted in StarTribune, the principle newspaper of Minneapolis, Minn., for her role as director of the satirical drama “Trouble in Mind,” which is currently being staged at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. Curtis-Newton, who is a professor and the Head of Performance – Acting and Directing at the University of Washington School of Drama, is “the only black woman ever to helm a show on a Guthrie main stage,” according to StarTribune, following the footsteps of the show’s playwright Alice Childress, who became the first black woman to win an Obie Award after the show’s debut in 1995.

In the article Q&A, Curtis-Newton is asked how the play — which is about the challenges a racially mixed theatre troupe faces while working to put on a show — relates to her own milestone as the first black woman to direct a main-stage Guthrie play. “We’re still continuing to wrestle for the power to have some say in our own representation,” Curtis-Newton, a Holy Cross sociology major and theatre minor, tells StarTribune. “That’s what the play is about, and that’s what this opportunity is about for me. That’s what Childress was doing in all her work, saying, ‘Let me just tell the truth about some people, working people.’ Even though this is set in the theater, she’s dealing with working-class actors. And I think this question of representation and visibility is foundational to breaking barriers.”

Read the article on the StarTribune website.

This “Holy Cross in the News” item is by Emma Collins ’16.