Interview with Dr. Patricia Caple

This interview took place at Dr. Caple’s home on Lindhurst Drive in Raleigh, NC, on June 30, 2005. The interviewer is Sherronda Dudley, a History major at St. Augustine’s College. The words of the interviewer and interviewee have been transcribed as they were spoken with the exception that when the interviewee starts a response and then rewords it, only the rewording is retained in most occasions. Conversational words and phrases like well, okay, of course have often been omitted.

Dudley: Dr. Caple, could you please give me some basic background information about

Caple:

yourself: your full name, the date and place of birth, parents, and siblings?

Okay. I was born in Tryon, North Carolina. In case you are wondering where Tryon is—I saw that look on your face—it is about thirty miles from Ashville, it is in the mountains, so I grew up a mountaineer, you could say. I went to a private boarding school in Ashville and I went there for five years. And then I really wasn’t at home very much other than holidays because when I was in the eighth grade I was twelve years old but I was thirteen that following December. I was born on December 19 and I won’t tell you whether I am under thirty or over thirty [both laugh], but it suffices to say that I am over thirty, well over thirty. I went to Hampton University. That is where I did my undergraduate and some of my graduate work, and then I got my PhD at the Union Institute. My life here in Raleigh started when my husband and my two children and I moved into Raleigh in 1969 and we were professors at Shaw University. So I have a pretty long history with Shaw. My husband and I founded and directed the Shaw Players Company and we instituted the Theater major at Shaw. Then, after a while, I was ready for a new challenge, and in 1986 I went to North Carolina State University where I am director and founder of Black Repertory Theater and I am an Associate Professor in the Communications Department, and I teach theater courses and I have taught at times Public Speaking. One of the things that I dedicated myself to, in going back to Shaw, is to do theater productions by black or/ African American playwrights. We also toured from as far down as New Orleans to Chicago to Texas to California, so we went all over with our theater productions. And we toured all over North Carolina, Virginia, and other places. But when I got to State, that was one of the things I did not want to do was to tour, that’s very difficult work, and I wanted to concentrate on other kinds of things rather than touring. At North Carolina State, I have dedicated myself to doing works of August Wilson. Of course you know he is our premier African American playwright. To date he has written ten plays chronicling every ten year

period in the life of African Americans here in American since 1900. I have directed eight of his shows. In fact, last fall we did a revival of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and | played the title role in Ma Rainey and it was, of course a very successful production and very rewarding for me because I co-directed the show with the director of the University Theater and I was in the show with a lot of people whom I have directed over the years, as well as some students, and it was a fun kind of thing to keep up with them. I think that when you can keep up the young people and with those who have grown into maturity such as I have, then I think you are doing something really special to be able to work with that mix of people. I think I’ve already said that he has written ten play and I have directed eight of them. The only ones I have not directed are the