01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 25, 2004

BY RICK MASSIMO
Journal Arts Writer

"Oftentimes," says Joaquina Bela Teixeira, executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, "when we're not allowed into organizations, we create our own."

Donald King did just that. And the Providence Black Repertory Company, which he founded and of which he's artistic director, is probably the most visibly successful minority-led arts organization in Rhode Island.

Sitting in the Black Rep's cafe, in the group's new building on Westminster Street in Providence, King talked about how building a minority-led group hits at the problem from a different angle.

"We're trying to fight the good fight," King says. "Instead of complaining about a lot of the challenges, or the things that don't happen here in Providence, we . . . decided to create an institution that would thrive and survive."

Of growing up in Providence, King says, "I grew up in neighborhoods where I felt like there were some of the most beautiful, some of the funniest, most talented people, and there was no place in this city that was celebrating us and was telling our stories."

He sent a résumé to Trinity Rep, but there was no response. (He now says, "I don't think that that was, or would have been, the right place for me.")

Eventually, AS220's artistic director, Bert Crenca, brought him in to program the alternative arts center on Monday nights.

The experience, King says, was beneficial all around.

"The way people were oriented to AS220, and the artsy, weird veneer over there, was broken down because [I] was over there." The black community, he says, saw a connection with AS220, and it "took away some of the hesitancy . . . .

"I wasn't the first black person to do programming at AS220, but I think that helped make AS220 a bit more accessible. And that's because I lived and worked there. And people stopped in to visit me, and they knew me, and they knew Raidge (a rapper-actor who often performed at King's shows and also once lived at AS220).

"Those same things need to be happening in museums."

Meanwhile, the symbolism of the Black Rep, its mere existence, is breaking down barriers, King says.

"I talk all the time about how powerful it must be for a young black kid from Camp Street, Chad Brown or the West End to ride his bike through town and see an image of Paul Robeson, Billie Holiday and B.B. King big and bold on the window. And I feel like that begins the whole process of 'I could participate in the arts here.' "

The diversity that King helped create at AS220 was in the forefront of his mind when he started his own group.

"I was always mindful of and sensitive to the fact that diversity must be a philosophical way that we run the organization. . . . And so when you look at the makeup of my staff, there are black people; there are white people; there are Asians; there are Latinos.

"And that happened naturally, but it also happened by design. Because we live in America, and an institution, whether you know it or not, it sends out a message. . . ."

So is the point to build up the Black Rep until it's in the mainstream?

"I challenge that. Because I don't think that white is the mainstream. . . . It's black people that influence it. We don't have any power, but we have a stronghold in affecting the cultural nuances of this country, and we got taken for granted. . . .

"I don't know if the question is about becoming the mainstream as much as it's not being taken for granted. We are in the mainstream, but we don't reap the economic, social or political benefits of that. If you look at the music industry, say no more."

Still, King is cautiously optimistic about the future.

"We've got a long way to go, but people come down here from Boston, and Boston doesn't have a black repertory company. . . . These kinds of institutions send a message to people about how sophisticated a city is or can be. And there are some people in this community, people of power, who understand what we mean in this city. . . .

"It's a struggle every week to keep this place running, but . . . this cafe . . . . It's not a bar; it's not a nightclub. It's a place where you're starting to see all kinds of people talking to each other, smelling each other.

"And that's exciting."