The (Postmodern) Chitlin' Circuit Lives

The World of Black Theater Becomes Ever Bigger
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

BALTIMORE, Feb. 18 — Urban theater — or what has been called over the years inspirational theater, black Broadway, gospel theater and the chitlin circuit — has been thriving for decades, selling out some of the biggest theaters across the country and grossing millions of dollars a year.

In the last two years, however, the tenor of the business has changed, especially since Tyler Perry, the circuit’s reigning impresario, took in $110 million at the Hollywood box office with “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” and “Madea’s Family Reunion,” movies that were based on his plays; they cost less than $7 million each to make.

The bigger players are developing television series, and veterans who have been part of the circuit for years suddenly have movie deals. The word in the industry is that urban theater is about to go mainstream.

“A year and a half from now, if you’re not coming with a play, film script and sitcom spinoff, you’re not going to be able to go anywhere in this business,” said Gary Guidry, one of the founders of I’m Ready Productions, based in Houston, another of the circuit’s big producers.

But the sight of crowds of theatergoers slowly streaming into the Lyric Opera House here on Saturday and Sunday, continuing to walk through the door throughout the first act and eventually filling just about every one of the 2,564 seats for a performance of “Men, Money and Gold Diggers,” prompts the question: If this is not already mainstream, what is?

As white theatergoers were lining up for “Wicked” at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center across town, the audience filling up the Lyric, a slightly larger theater, was almost exclusively black, mostly middle-aged women. Many said they had heard about the play through the traditional lines of the circuit’s promotion: radio ads, fliers in local business and church parking lots and an astonishingly effective word-of-mouth network that precedes the show from city to city.

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