HAPPENINGS
28
Rooted presented “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf’ in 2018. Photo by Ian Lyn.
Rooted in Community
Kareem Nemley remembers exactly when the idea
for Rooted Theater Company was born. In 2013, he
was riding the subway home to East New York, where
he was born and currently resides, and overheard a
nearby conversation. A few people were talking about
a recent crime in Brownsville that led to five teenagers
being wrongfully accused of raping an 18-year-old
woman at gunpoint.
It reminded him of a play he first encountered while
in college in North Carolina, Romulus Linney’s stage
adaptation of Ernest J. Gaines’ “A Lesson Before
Dying.” Set in the 1930s, the story revolves around a
young man arrested for a murder he witnessed but
did not commit. “During that train ride, I thought, of
course, these kids didn’t know what was going to
happen, but they could have said no—they decided
not to,” Nemley says. “I wished they could have seen
the show.”
So he decided to stage it himself. Working with his husband,
Wilfredo Florentino—who describes himself as
handling the business aspects of the theater company
while Nemley is concerned with the artistic direction—
they received a grant for around $3,500 from the
Brooklyn Arts Council, and developed a partnership
with the Arts East New York organization, where they
stage their shows. The play, which required seven actors
and a set built from scratch, was cast in East New York,
where three local actors, one a young teenager about
to enter college, all joined the production.
It turned out to be a success, especially the “talkback”
discussions after the show with the audience, which
typically lasted almost as long as the play. “There’s
always so much to discuss,” Nemley says. “We’re the
only theater in the area, so it’s important to us that
the community, and perceptions of it, are held in high
regard,” Florentino adds.
Rooted’s season consists of two shows, one in the fall
and the other in the spring. The spring performance is
a single play, while the fall production is a symposium,
where they accept submissions from both local and
national artists. The symposium, which was being cast in
September, showcases varieties of performance, including
poetry and one-act plays, and “is really meant to
encapsulate a host of feelings and sentiments and emotions
that are going on right now,” Florentino says.
But their main goal right now is expansion while keeping
intact the company’s mission to put on socially relevant
theater based on local experiences. Nemley and
Florentino both have day jobs—the former is an interior
designer, while the latter works for the NAACP—so
Rooted remains a labor of love. They plan to add one
show each season, working toward being able to apply
for larger grants, and dream of having their own storefront
space, which Nemly describes, with a laugh, as
“bodega-style theater.”
In the meantime, the company continues to grow.
People keep coming back -- including audience
members and those who have helped put on shows.
“Everyone who helps us out as an actor has moved onto
other things in the company,” Nemley says. “We always
say once you’ve done something with us you’re immediately
family.” —C.H.