Agape Love Stories Unfold For Shaw University At Burning Coal Theatre

RALEIGH — Several love stories were brewing inside Burning Coal Theatre Friday evening (June 28) when the curtain rose on the opening night of “Blues for an Alabama Sky,” produced by Agape Theatre Project.

On stage, the play is about an aspiring 1930s blues singer with two budding romances that didn’t work out. Full of resilient, intelligent, and talented characters without being weighed down as an issue play, “Blues for an Alabama Sky” addresses the topics of abortion, birth control, Prohibition, and LGBTQ+ rights, indeed timely topics here in 2024.

Also unfolding that evening was the enduring love story between Shaw University and its supporters. The play’s opening night at the theater was a fundraiser, with proceeds fueling Shaw University scholarships.

“I’m a creative. Anytime I can support something creative, that fulfills me,” said Jaha Avery, a writer whose parents and grandparents met at Shaw University. She will tell you that there would be no her without Shaw University.

While at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Avery pledged Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., a family legacy that started in 1945 at Shaw University.

“Shaw means a whole lot to our family,“ she said.

Kenneth Hinton is the artistic director of the Agape Theatre Project. From 1997 to 2018, he was a theater professor at Shaw University, where he ran a troupe called the Shaw Players.

It’s about family at Agape, where Hinton’s sister, Shirley, is secretary and treasurer. She was working the door Friday night.

“You have to be a well-rounded person,” said Shirley Hinton, who graduated from Shaw University in 1966.

She was a chemistry major at Shaw University when the two high-rise dorms that are landmarks today didn’t exist, and there was no student center named after alum and renowned lawyer Willie E. Gary. That part of the university hadn’t been developed.

Shirley Hinton had a long and rewarding career with IBM, mainly in New York, with time spent working internationally. Shaw University provided the foundation. Yet, understanding the importance of being able to show up at a dinner party and talk about more than hard science, Shirley Hinton added the arts to her plate.

“I needed some artsy stuff in my repertoire, and I needed the arts to make me fun,” she said.

Toward the end of the play, differing worldviews leave one character dead. Joyce Robinson, who graduated from Shaw University in 1975, expanded her view of the world in college. She said there was no theater for Black people to attend when she was in college, but there was a place where she and her friends would watch movies.

“We called it the rat box,” Robinson said.

Robinson is president of the Raleigh-Wake Alumni Chapter of the National Alumni Association of Shaw University. She said “Blues for an Alabama Sky” is the fourth play she’s attended, and she credits the history classes at Shaw University for giving her an appreciation of period pieces like the Pearl Cleage play that had patrons laughing and leaning in at Burning Coal Theatre.

“When I was at Shaw, I could attend activities that helped me understand history and appreciate the history of our Black people,” Robinson said. “I could not have asked for a better education.”

Cleage, based in Atlanta, has a mother-in-law, father-in-law, and brother-in-law who graduated from Shaw University.