The classics often don’t reflect today’s values on topics such as race, class and...
J. Robert “Jimmy” Moore is executive and artistic director of the Classic Theatre of San Antonio, which plans to produce “Fences,” a 1985 play by August Wilson, next spring — marking its first production of a play by a black playwright.Since it was founded in 2008, the nonprofit Classic Theatre of San Antonio has focused on staging performances of classic plays by the likes of Arthur Miller, Henrik Ibsen and above all, William Shakespeare.
“We see that yes, minorities are not represented correctly in this play. But this specific piece is not so horrible, and Shaw is not so horrible, that it would be like, ‘Ban that. We’re never doing that piece again.’” he said. “It’s about saying every piece of classic theater is going to have some drawbacks.”
Moore grew up in San Antonio, earning an undergraduate degree in performance and a Master of Fine Arts in directing from Texas State University. He met his husband while working as an actor in New York City. J. Robert “Jimmy” Moore, pictured in his San Antonio home, is the executive and artistic director of the Classic Theatre.Q: What drew you back to San Antonio, versus living somewhere like New York that has a huge theater scene?I’m extremely close to my family. I knew that I was going to end up here because that’s where my family was, that’s where my heart has always been.
There’s a specific line in the show where they use the N-word. For us, that really was over the line. But I was like, “Well, do we need to say that it was there?” The current version of the script — which is changing hourly as we approach rehearsals — I was like, maybe we just need to say in narration that this word would have been here, and we decided to cut this as an organization.