Stan Coleman

In this episode, Stan Coleman, co-founder of Minority Voices Theatre, tells the story of premiering his one man Paul Robeson tribute play in Eugene, Florence, and Yachats, Oregon.

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Transcript

 [00:00] Leah Velez: You're listening StoryHelix: intertwining stories past present, and not yet imagined in Lane County, Oregon. What's up Earthlings? I'm Leah Velez, and I'll be your host. The story we're about to hear was recorded in a small studio at the Oregon Wine Lab during a beautiful event on September 2022. Let's open up our ear nuggets, and give it a listen.

[00:42] Stan Coleman: Okay, my name is Stan Coleman. One of my strongest memories actually occurred in a little town of Yachats on the coast of Oregon. It's a story that starts maybe a couple of years before now, just to tell you very quickly about that. 

[01:00] Before moving here to Oregon. I had done a one man show of Paul Robeson's life, in which I played Paul Robeson, and I sang and I acted as Paul Robeson. I came to Oregon with the intention of doing that show. Again, I'm an actor, and a theater director by trade. Theater teacher. I had been for quite some time. I've been involved in theater for quite some time, actually. And I came here and I was in a meeting of theater directors downtown here in Eugene, and I met Carol Dennis. And Carol Dennis is a director, who had been here in Eugene for quite some time, she'd even had a little theatre of her own, a lot of experience directing, she had directed in New York. And I asked her if she would be interested in directing me in my one man show Paul Robeson, and of course, she agreed, and we collaborated on that production. 

[02:10] I presented that play here in Eugene at Lane Community College, and also presented that show in Florence, Oregon on the coast. And it was very successful, very well received. Of course, Eugene has a pretty large enclave of liberal minded people. So I didn't think there would be any problem accepting that play here in Eugene, or presenting that play here in Eugene. So, a friend of mine who had seen the play was from Yachats, and she asked me if I'd be willing to come to Yachats and do something, do the play or do something related to Paul Robeson, and I decided I wanted to do not the Paul Robeson play but I wanted to sing songs and play songs that Paul Robeson had sung. And that would include of course, some Negro Spirituals, that might include a few folk songs, those kinds of songs, and I figured that would be great night going to Yachats, which I thought was a small town. And I thought, well, you know, I need to take my story everywhere I go, even though I figured that small towns and rural towns were pretty conservative. And they might not accept Paul Robeson there, but you know, I had a few surprises in getting that show done. 

[03:49] So we got ready to go and I left. I forgot clothes that I was going to wear. So when I got to Florence, we went into a St Vinnies and picked up some clothes for me to wear for that night, a blazer and turtleneck and all, and we went out to Yachats. And Yachats was having bad, bad, bad weather that day and night, actually, it was raining very hard rain. It was just storming, actually, and the wind was blowing. I can remember having an umbrella and the umbrella would turn up into the air. So I knew the wind was very high. 

[04:40] Well, we had been given a place to stay. It's kind of a little beach house on the coast, where we could stay the evening. And so we didn't have to drive back home and all this weather but I remember going over to the place where the performance was going to be held. We went over there during the day, and it was just raining very, very hard. And I just had, you know, I had some idea that maybe this won't take place, and that people wouldn't come out. Already, I figured we were in a small town. So I didn't know whether we'd have a lot of people show up or not for that production. What happened was the rain, the storm continued. And we got ready to go to the venue for the performance. And it was still raining, it was still just pouring. And when was just blowing, it seemed like even higher than ever. We got there to the venue, and they had set up about 50 chairs, maybe. And so we thought, Well, okay, we'll have maybe a small crowd. And we didn't expect 50 people to show up, actually, because of the way the weather was. And of course, as I said, it was a small town. So I figured you know that with a town of quite a few conservative people, it was very unlikely that we'd have, you know, 50 people. 

[06:17] Well, we were waiting for the show to get going. And people started coming in. And they started coming in, and they kept coming in. And pretty soon the 50 seats were filled, and they had to put down more seats. And when I when I think they finished, I think they had somewhere between 150 and 200 seats that they laid out. And those seats were practically all filled by the time the show got started. And it was still storming outside. And I sang Negro Spirituals and some of the songs that Paul Robeson made famous. And I talked a little bit about Paul Robeson's life, you know, Paul Robeson was kind of a renaissance man. He was a man who could sing. He was a man who had played in sports and lettered in several different sports. He graduated top of his class. He had gone to Columbia University for a law degree. And he became a really important activist. And so a number of the songs that he's sang were songs that activists sing. So I sang some of those songs as well, thinking, you know, I'm singing to a crowd, that's probably pretty conservative... And when I finished... I got a standing ovation from the crowd. And I was just totally shocked. 

[08:03] I for one, I had been told by many people here that the rural towns and small towns were pretty conservative. And so I was not expecting to be received as well as I was received at that venue in that very small town. And then I found out that that very small town has a big, big population of liberal people. And that kind of changed my mind about small towns and about rural towns necessarily, and maybe not so much rural towns, more about small towns, and how there are people in small towns who are, number one, they are hungry for the arts. So this was an artistic production. So they came out they were hungry for the arts, but not only that, they seemed to have a hunger for the type of story that I was telling in song. So I got a real positive backup, a real positive response from those people in Yachats. And again, that just kind of changed my mind. 

[09:25] You know, I had done this performance in Florence, Oregon. And Florence, also small town but not quite as small as Yachats. But Florence, Oregon was small town, and when we asked the guy who owned the theater building in Florence, he was a little bit nervous when he heard that it was a story about Paul Robeson. And he, of course, you know, he was well known in that community, and he didn't want to be associated with something that was going to make people angry. You know, he was very reluctant to let us do the show there. So I had to do pieces of the show for him, in order to convince him that it was a show that we thought that people would really like. And my partner had come with me at all of these occasions to help out, either backstage, or help out with a front of the house, or whatever. So we had a conversation with that man at the end of that performance. Or, at the end of my giving him some little clips from that performance. And he was he was impressed. And decided, okay, yeah, I'm gonna let you all do this. And so we did the show, we found a young lady there who was very interested in doing backstage work. She was very interested in doing sound effects, and all of those kinds of things. And of course, we needed all of those things, for the show. Lighting, and so forth, and so on. So we put it together. And we had a successful production. I think we did a night performance and maybe a matinee performance in Florence. It was well received there. 

[11:25] I did have a friend from Eugene, who traveled to Florence. And he had convinced a couple that he knew in Florence, this friend of mine named Mike, Michael. And Michael brought these two people to see the performance. But I think they left at intermission, because I think they were not happy with the story of Paul Robeson. I think that they left very unhappy. But for the most part, in Florence, most of the people were very happy with the performance. And this is how I got to do the show in Yachats. 

[12:10] So my experience is that Oregon is a pretty open place, a pretty accepting place. I have felt acceptance in the art community here in Eugene. In Lane County in particular, I have felt welcome. And all of this feels very familiar to me, feels very much like home to me. So that was my experience with the Paul Robeson show on the coast. 

[12:45] I do miss... from time to time, I do miss the churches that I was a part of in Louisiana. And those churches... I grew up pretty much in the church playing music, and directing the choirs and so forth and so on. So I, you know, I kind of miss that I miss that music. My nephew or my sister sent me a piece of music just recently to listen to, and it was a gospel choir that was singing a song that I have sung many times, and I taught choirs to sing. So I had a little yearning there. But other than that, I'd have to say, I have not missed much of anything except maybe my family. And that's probably the most important thing that I have missed from back home. 

[13:42] I'm happy to be in Oregon

[13:52] Leah Velez: Thanks for listening. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you've got your own Lane County story to tell, we'd love to hear it. At StoryHelix.Wordcrafters.org