Nat’l Black Theatre Festival founder dies

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Larry Leon Hamlin, who started the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, has died after a long-term illness, festival organizers said. He was 58.

Nigel Alston, co-chairman of the theater festival’s fundraising committee, said Hamlin died early on June 6. Hamlin’s family declined to comment on his cause of death, but had previously said he was recovering at home after a stint in intensive care.

At a news conference last Wednesday at Arts Council Theatre, Alston and others offered remembrances of Hamlin, who was the festival’s founding artistic director and producer.

“Larry did a great job of creating a solid foundation for the future,” Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines said. “He was such an important part of the Winston-Salem mosaic.”

Hamlin was known for wearing big sunglasses and the color purple. He often described things as “marvtastic” — a personal expression he created from the words “marvelous” and “fantastic.”

A Reidsville native, Hamlin attended Brown University and returned to North Carolina, founding the N.C. Black Repertory Company in 1979.

The National Black Theatre Festival, which is a program of the repertory company, began in 1989 and attracts thousands of people to Winston-Salem every summer. At the first festival, Hamlin proclaimed the event would mean “black theater will never become isolated and fragmented again.”

Some black actors credit the festival with raising their profiles.

Kim Brockington, who appears in the CBS soap opera “Guiding Light,” said starring in “Letters from a New England Negro” at the 1991 festival was important for her career.

“It was such an exciting thing for me,” she said during the news conference. “It was my first really big job. After that, I continued to work as an actress.”

Garland Lee Thompson Sr., one of the co-founders of the Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop in Harlem, N.Y., has been attending the festival since it started. He remembers when Hamlin first told him in 1985 of the idea for the event.

“I told him, ‘Larry, I have no idea how you are going to do this,’” he said. “It seemed an awesome and almost impossible undertaking.”

While the festival has sometimes struggled to raise money, the event has continued every year, becoming an economic boon for the city.

This year’s festival will go on as scheduled, starting July 30, though Alston said organizers will have mixed emotions.

“The sadness is because he isn’t here,” Alston said. “The happiness is that he lived his dream.”

Cheryl E. Oliver, who has been interim director of the festival since Hamlin became ill last summer, will lead the organization at least through this year’s festival, officials said.

(Associated Press)