Theater company to launch with story of trailblazing Black woman who played pro ball in Indianapolis

“Toni Stone,” a play based on a woman who joined the roster of Negro League baseball’s Indianapolis Clowns in 1953, will serve as the debut production of the Indianapolis Black Theatre Co.

The professional theater aspires to create a space for Black artists to collaborate and thrive, founding Artistic Director Ben Rose said.

The group executed a “soft launch” this spring, when it co-produced and presented “Platanos y Collard Greens” in Anderson, Muncie and at the Indianapolis Black Theatre Co.’s home venue of The District Theatre, 627 Massachusetts Ave.

Rose told IBJ he’s assembled a dozen of the 15 members he plans to hire for the theater company. Rose’s work in the Indianapolis artistic community includes his founding of the Indy Filmmakers Bootcamp in 2010 and the co-founding of the Black-n-Brown Soulidarity Festival in 2021.

How does the structure of a theater company set it apart from other ways plays are presented?

Honestly, I don’t think there’s a model here locally for the type of theater company that I’m putting together. A lot of times, belonging to a theater company means you get to audition for roles first or you might get together once a year as a company.

But from what I’ve seen locally, there’s not a lot of intentionality put toward building the theater and the actors together. What I’m trying to do is build a support system for actors as Black creatives. I’m developing a theater that I hope is going to be a more sustainable model than just me being an artistic director who fundraises every year.

One of the things I’m pursuing is being able to represent our company members as an agency. A lot of people know this, but theater doesn’t make any money. It’s something our community sponsors at a corporate level and at a personal donation-giving level to make that happen. Very few people can actually make a living just doing theater.

Film, on the other hand, commercial projects, print work and things like that are all very lucrative things actors can do. … I’m bringing those into the theater space.

Does the company include positions beyond acting?

I’m in talks with a few writers in town, and I have two directors on board. I’m probably looking to pull maybe one or two more in because another arm of what we’re doing is creating original content.

I’m getting ready to announce a national Black playwriting contest. The winner of the contest gets a one-year development deal. We will actually give them a cash prize, and then we’ll also produce that play in our next season. The ultimate thought with that is, eventually we’ll be able to take things all the way from stage to screen.

It starts off with writers developing monologues for our actors, just to practice and to work with. But we might say, “Hey, that’s a really great monologue. Can we expand that into a two-person piece and then develop original content from there?”

We want to be known as a place that provides content for people outside Indiana, just like we want content that’s coming out of New York and coming out of California. We’re reversing the flow and making it so we’re licensable to the rest of the world.

What can you share about the upcoming “Toni Stone” production?

A friend of mine, Don Burrus, who I used to work with at the Phoenix Theatre, called me up and said, “Have you heard about this play, ‘Toni Stone’?” I said, “No.” He said, “She was the first female baseball player, and she’s Black, and she played for the Indianapolis Clowns.” I said, “What? How do I not know this history?” It’s kind of like not knowing about Major Taylor or somebody like that.

These people have a lot of recognition outside of here, but we’ve lost track of our own history. [Chicago-based playwright] Lydia Diamond wrote a play based loosely on a historical book about Toni Stone.

And there’s a reading scheduled?

We’re doing a reading on July 13, just to build partnerships with a lot of people. It may be kind of a non-traditional reading, because the first half of the play might have one Toni Stone and the second half of the play might have a different Toni Stone. It’s not meant to be the final product. It’s meant to be, “Let’s get this started. Let’s listen to it. Let’s have some discussion about it and how we can collaborate.” Then we’ll do the full production in late September.

Technically, was “Platanos y Collard Greens” the company’s first production?

I don’t really call it the first production, but it was a co-production that kind of fell into my lap. Teresa Reynolds, when she lived in New York, was a part of this production for several years. And I saw it when it came to IUPUI almost 30 years ago.

[Treva Bostic, founder of Cultured Urban Winery in Anderson] decided they wanted to produce this play, and they reached out to Ophelia Wellington from Freetown Village saying, “We need a director.” She reached out to me, and I said, “I know the perfect person in Teresa.” I also knew they needed support, and I was working out the details for being able to take our content to other Indiana cities that have high Black populations. I looked at it as an opportunity to kind of figure out how we could do this traveling show. It was great, even with bumps in the road we got through.

By this time next year, I’m hoping to have other cities—probably Fort Wayne and Evansville, maybe Michigan City and Gary—all mapped out. When we do our original content that premieres in Indianapolis, we can take it to some of these other cities with at least 15,000 Black residents that don’t get the kind of cultural input we do here.

Does economy of scale have something to do with the roadshow concept?

It just made sense to figure out, “How do we extend the life of a contract for an actor?” Right now, somebody might do six weeks: three weeks’ worth of rehearsal, three weeks’ worth of shows, and generously they might make $2,500. Most of the time, it’s maybe $1,000, and these are on professional stages. A lot of these folks are working for free.

So if I can take somebody from a six-week contract and extend that into a two-month contract, and we’re doing weekends and they’re making that money, I can turn that into more like an $8,000 contract. That becomes so much more sustainable.

Then we can stop people from saying, “Hey, I need to move to L.A. I need to move to Chicago,” just so they discover that it’s not sustainable there, either. And it’s more expensive. Why not stay here, where you have friends, family and resources? My goal is for people in my company to be making $15,000 to $20,000 a year as the base of their salary. Instead of the creative being the supplemental, they’re looking at other things to be their supplemental income beyond that.

Is it correct that Indianapolis Black Theatre Co. is independent of The District Theatre—but related?

District Theatre did the wonderful thing, headed up by Brian Payne while he was at [Central Indiana Community Foundation], of raising money to start this as a resident theater within the District [Theatre] but also give it its autonomy.

They’ve helped me with the structure, in terms of getting the not-for-profit together and establishing all of that. Basically, they helped hold our hand at the beginning and gave us budgeting for the next three years. I will be able to focus on the creative and infrastructure more than fundraising.

I have not seen this done in our city at this level, so it’s really a gift.

When does the funding expire?

It’s more about when the money runs out. They raised $1.5 million. They hired me a little late in their process, but it’s basically meant to be budgeted out over a two- to three-year period. When people hear $1.5 million, they may say, “That’s a lot of money.” … It seems like a lot of money, but we’re trying to set up the infrastructure in a way that we can be more self-sustainable when that money runs out.

It can be said that there’s presently a renaissance in Black theater in Indianapolis, including Naptown African American Theatre Collective, Urban Musical Theatre Urban & KaidyDid Productions, OnyxFest and the Black Light training initiative that’s related to your company. What do these organizations mean to the city?

Part of our mission with IBTC is to work with other Black cultural organizations. … I was just in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” with the Naptown African American Theatre Collective. I think it’s important for us all to play together.

I got my first professional acting gig through Freetown Village. I’ve known Deborah Asante [of Asante Art Institute] for a long time. For me, it’s very important that these groups operate as a fabric and a network of resources, more than thinking of it as competition.

A lot of people said, “Why do we need two Black theaters in town?” I say, “We don’t. We need four or five.” I think the city sees how important it is because, as we grow and we get more tourists in and as we do more events, people want culture and experiences they can’t get in other places. If somebody’s coming from New York, they already have New York. They want to come here to see what’s different about a city in the Midwest.

Why did you pursue this role, and were you motivated by pitfalls or roadblocks in your own career?

It’s taken me a long time to come full circle with my creative career, especially in Indianapolis. I’ve left twice. I moved down to Atlanta for about three years. I lived out in the L.A. area for about a year and a half.

Mostly I left because I couldn’t access the types of resources or the opportunities in Indianapolis that I wanted to as a Black actor. I was doing lots of work at the Phoenix Theatre, but I didn’t have a degree in theater. So Beef & Boards and League of Resident Theatres spaces like the Indiana Repertory Theatre weren’t accessible to me.

And to be really transparent, being a lighter-skinned Black man affected accessibility. When you have institutions looking to put on “Black plays,” they want a certain type of Black person to be in certain types of productions. I was just really frustrated.

I also was early in the film industry in Indianapolis, when we didn’t have networks. Cameras and editing equipment were still very expensive. There wasn’t a lot of crossover between the acting world and the cinematographers in town. I saw things transform in other cities, but not here. I felt like I didn’t have a support system for understanding the business, even in terms of whether you join Equity or don’t join Equity.

On the whole business side, it was hit or miss, and I was making a lot of mistakes. There were productions that people enjoyed and appreciated, but it made me broke trying to put those things on. When I saw this opportunity, I saw it as a way to be in the driver’s seat and make decisions in how this structure would be formed—to benefit Black creatives more than anything.•

Correction: The original version of this story inaccurately described Indianapolis Black Theatre Co. as an equity theater. While it is a professional theater, it has not been designated an equity theater by the Actors’ Equity Association. See more corrections here.