Don Sherman's big dreams of last spring have turned into manageable realities almost a year later.

        This is the third time Mr. Sherman and a group of passionate volunteers have put together a biennial Black Theatre Festival.

        This year the plan was to expand. They added the word “Midwest” to their title and talked of multiple venues, late night readings, cultural tourists, poetry slams, collaborations with the city's primarily Caucasian theater scene.

        The Midwest Regional Black Theatre Festival will be more local than anything else as it unfolds over the next week and a half. But it has grown. A handful of productions go beyond Arts Consortium to Cincinnati Museum Center.

        It's no small accomplishment to be mounting a festival of African-American theater at the anniversary of last year's civil unrest (a coincidence; the dates were already booked) and during an entertainment boycott that's hobbling some of the city's biggest presenters.

        It is a huge risk, says Mr. Sherman, who orchestrated the festival during weeknights and weekends around a full-time job. “It's something I prayed on for a long time,” he says. “It was some time before the word came to me.

        “We knew going in it would be a challenge,” he adds, “considering what's happening here, the divide in the city.

        “Whatever happens, we'll be proud because we've opened some eyes. We'll have shown the value and given audiences a chance to support another kind of theater.”
       

One-woman show

        Performances kick-off this weekend with Letitia Guillory in from New York to perform her one-woman show The Further Adventures of Gussie Mae in America and a reprise of I Found the Answer: Songs of Mahalia, which director Dhana Donaldson says has had some tweaking since its last appearance at Arts Consortium in 1999.

IF YOU GO

What: Midwest Regional Black Theatre Festival     When: Continuing through April 14     Where: Arts Consortium (1515 Linn St.): The Further Adventures of Gussie Mae in America, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday; Beast of a Different Burden, 8 p.m. April 10-11; House of Blues ('Cause Your Blues Ain't Like Mine), 8 p.m. April 12, 3 and 8 p.m. April 13; Every Voice Counts (A Poetry Anthology for Youth), 4 p.m. April 14     Cincinnati Museum Center Reakirt Auditorium: Mahalia Jackson: I Found the Answer, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; Opera from the Soul, 8 p.m. April 10-13; Flava of the Month, 3 p.m. April 13     Tickets: $25. 241-6060

        “I hope people will feel supported by my presence,” says a thoughtful Ms. Guillory, who is aware of the boycott. Her show, she believes, will do more good by being seen than by not being seen.

        She will perform two of five segments here. Gussie looks at the life of Augusta Maybelline Genessey. Ms. Guillory uses poetry, dance music and storytelling to punctuate the details of dirt roads, shotgun shacks and the blues.

        Gussie, says Ms. Guillory, is about a woman “whose primary interest is the health and welfare of her children, who is discovering her soul and self-esteem and comes to know that if she doesn't save that, everything else is unimportant. Claiming what you need is the most courageous thing anyone can do.”
       

In the old days

        The second half of the show is Gussie's grandma In America. She sits on her porch and recalls a time when sharecropping was a way of life. “But Grandma also freely discusses the politics of the day. I'm sure she'll have something to say about what's going on in Cincinnati.”

        Songs of Mahalia director Ms. Donaldson is the former Dhana Bradley-Morton, who left her post as executive director of Arts Consortium at the end of January.

        Mahalia, she points out, “was a legend and a pioneer. She was the one who broke all the rules and all the barriers. Kids are now challenging the music she established — they're doing what she did.”

        Songs include 20 of her biggest hits (including “Elijah Rock,” “How I Got Ovah,” “Come, Children, Let's Sing”) performed by Sharron Hunt of Louisville and the Nu Family Gospel Ensemble.

        Local theater fans are bound to note that none of Cincinnati's better known African-American directors have productions in the festival. All are busy, says Mr. Sherman, adding that veterans including Charles Holmond and Tony Davis serve on the advisory board and will lead theater workshops. “They may want to allow younger artists the opportunity” to try their wings, says Mr. Sherman.

        Early promotional material for the festival promised audience-grabbers like a Jackie Wilson revue and a revival of Love Child, by one-time Arts Consortium theater director Luther Goins and a hit in Chicago and for Ensemble Theatre last fall.

        The money just wasn't there, Mr. Sherman sighs.

        He hopes this festival helps establish a track record in Cincinnati's corporate community because “the festival will be back in 2004 and we want it to come back bigger.”

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