Harlem memorial tribute to Glenda Dicke...

 Harlem memorial tribute to Glenda Dicke...

Richard Corkery/New York Daily News

Woodie King says he was proud to give Glenda Dickerson at shot at Broadway by picking her to direct "Reggae" in 1980.

When I went to New York, I realized I could make it myself, say it myself, and do it myself. It real ly changed my life. It was not too long after that when I directed a play on Broadway, only the second African-American woman to do so.

Glenda Dickerson, in a University of Michigan interview for Transforming Through Performing: Oral History, African-American Women's Voices and the Power of Theater.

The African-American theater world will gather in Harlem on Monday, April 30th, for a memorial tribute to one of their own: the late Glenda Dickerson, who died Jan. 11 in Yipsilanti, Mich.

She was 66 years old.

An actor, writer, director, and folklorist, Dickerson in 1980 was the second black women after Vinnette Carroll to direct a Broadway show when producers Woodie King and Michael Butler chose her to helm the play Reggae.

Glenda was one of the few black women to get a shot on Broadway, and I was proud to give her that shot, King said.

Reggae, whose stars included Sheryl Lee Ralph in her Broadway debut, Philip Michael Thomas, and the late Calvin Lockhart, ran for 21 performances.

Guests at Mondays memorial, scheduled for 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the National Black Theater, 2031-2033 National Black Theater Way (Fifth Ave. between 125th and 126th Sts.) will include actress Lynn Whitfield, Carol Maillard and Louise Robinson of Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Dr. Eleanor Traylor.

Several of Dickersons former students at different times she ran theater programs at Howard University, Spellman University, and at the University of Michigan will give readings or perform. The will include Mutiyat Ade-Salu, an actor and administrative assistant with New Federal Theater, who took several of Dickersons classes before graduating in 2007 from the University of Michigan.

She was a force to be reckoned with, Ade-Salu said. She was demanding, she did not allow her students to slack off creatively. Many of my stronger points of my craft I learned from her.

One classroom exercise inv olved students forming a class mob to criticize a classmate. The mob could swing back and forth between encouraging and deriding the person, Ade-Salu said. It was a great demonstration of how an ensemble can affect an actors performance.

Ade-Salu plans to sing the Nina Simone classic, Four Women at the memorial.

King, 74, started the New Federal Theater in 1970 as a way to showcase black actors performing the works of black playwrights.

We started it thinking it would last two or three years, then we had a hit every year for 10 years, King said. The older, major artists (including James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison) contributed to what we were doing. We performed early works of artists like Ed Bullins and Amiri Baraka. These artists didnt have an outlet for their work. We didnt know that when we started.