Today we’d like to introduce you to Tara Lake.
Hi Tara, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a storyteller, actress, scholar-artist, and soprano. I started out with my eye on a purely academic career, even though I grew up with a love of performing. Coming from a very traditional middle-class family, having a career that incorporated the arts wasn’t an option for me. Over time, my scholarly career collided with my creative career. I started out academically with an interest in researching and teaching about the African American experience in the Nineteenth Century, largely in the South, but after encountering publications on early African American theatre, I began researching the creative production of African American theatre artists — writers, creatives, and performing artists like Noble Sissle and others working in New York City, Philadelphia, Cleveland and elsewhere in the early Twentieth Century. Little by little, an unlikely series of events drew me back into the world of acting, to storytelling, to classical singing, to my jazz and gospel roots, and to storytelling. Eventually, I founded the Afro-Southern Education Project and began presenting educational concerts richly infused with literature and storytelling at museums, campuses, and libraries. Much of the work that I do, including with my solo show – I Know It Was The Blood: The Totally True Adventures of a Newfangled Black Woman – celebrates the human story and the broad tapestry of American culture. I wrote the show to tell the story of my own family history and faith heritage, yet every stop on tour brings me in contact with individuals and families from all backgrounds who see themselves in my tellings and the characters I create. I know that this work is so deeply needed right now, and I’m very grateful to undertake it and to gather new “cousins” every time I perform the play.
Ohio is where my creative life was reborn, and it is the creative home for I Know It Was The Blood: The Totally True Adventures of a Newfangled Black Woman in a very real way because I wrote the play while living in Cincinnati’s Over-The-Rhine, surrounded by a community in passionate pursuit of the arts and inspired by an entire city constantly enraptured by the power of song and music. The area really gains so much from the work of organizations like The Music Hall and Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and I soaked in that atmosphere. It happened that I had the opportunity to tell the title story, “I Know It Was The Blood,” at Cincinnati’s Memorial Hall. The story requires singing and has theatrical moments, and on stage, I realized — Oh, this is definitely a play. I got to work writing it, and now the play has won awards and has toured to festivals in London UK, New York, Chicago, Providence, and beyond, and finally returned to Ohio in summer 2023.
At the historic Mercantile Library in the heart of Cincinnati’s downtown district, I debuted a concert of spirituals and art songs by African-American Women composers – along with poets and lyricists – writing and composing over the last 200 years. Ohio inspired a new creative journey for me that has never stopped, despite the very…inconvenient disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown. It’s not surprising for me at all, then, that this year, when the production was finally able to tour again, its homecoming to Ohio was auspicious. Not only did we meet the most amazing audiences at the storied Hermit Club of Cleveland, but we also received the 2023 Margaret W. Wong Hope Award, becoming one of only four productions among this year’s 130 shows to win an award at the celebrated Borderlight Fringe Festival.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Some of the biggest challenges I’ve faced have had to do with “crossroads” I have faced in the journey of producing and touring I Know It Was The Blood: The Totally True Adventures of a Newfangled Black Woman. As artists, when we are pushing the limits of the craft and the mission, there are moments where we have to decide whether we are going to stay the course with our artistry. These “tests” show up under many guises — ethical, professional, material. Ultimately, I strive to consistently make decisions that uphold the integrity of the production and other aspects of my work; I’m grateful that these challenges have given me an opportunity to grow and evolve. Each of these cleared hurdles to showing up in strong performances — for I Know It Was The Blood and for my teaching concerts — because I know the depth of my intention toward my audiences.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a scholar-artist, a classical soprano, and storyteller, and an actress. I am known as for my acting, my original concerts, and for my award-winning solo show, I Know It Was The Blood: The Totally True Adventures of a Newfangled Black Woman, which incorporates my work as an actress, a poet, a singer, and a historical and cultural observer reporting from the front lines of African American girlhood in the 1980s and 1990s. This play centers a family navigating a changing world and wrestling with the impacts of Reaganomics, the Crack-Cocaine Epidemic, shifting family and cultural dynamics, and queer identity while choosing a fierce love that conquers all.
My work as a scholar-artist has also led to a cycle of concerts that are presented under the auspices of the AfroSouthern Education Project — presenting spirituals, folk songs, gospels, and literary works by African-American communities and artists from the 1700s through the present. The flagship concert, The Christmas Spirituals Project, began with my research on the original Christmas-themed stories of the African-American press in the 1800s. As an actress, I’ve always sought to select roles that matter — ones that both celebrate and challenge America’s heritage and story. An example — In one role, I stepped into the world of puppetry with The Center for Puppetry Arts (Atlanta) to originate the role of Ruth in Ruth and the Green Book, a powerful take on Jim Crow Segregation told through the eyes of a young girl traveling with her family from Chicago to Alabama.
My lens makes my work unique. In the case of my solo play I Know It Was The Blood: The Totally True Adventures of a Newfangled Black Woman, there aren’t many voices like mine, and audiences walk into my performances expecting a narrative they’ve heard before. My own experiences as an African American daughter of migrants from South Carolina, raised in the Northeast’s black middle class, steeped in church culture and conservative Afro-Christianity, raised amid the vestiges of the Great Migration, the legacy of the Civil Rights movement, in the bloom of the Hip Hop era and the collapse of the Baby Boomer dream — let’s just say audiences haven’t heard a story like mine. And also, they’re surprised to find themselves laughing so hard!
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
I predict that in the next 5-10 years, the arts will become increasingly hyper-local and hyper-niche. This is certainly happening for people working in my general arena: scholar-artists, classical vocalists, solo performers, actors, and the like. I’m excited for this shift because art is a vocation, a calling, and a ministry. We have to serve the communities where we live and serve as embedded agents of celebration, of education, of criticism, of reflection, and of change. For many artists, this hyper-local/hyper-niche development is a welcome transition that is already underway due to the role of social media, video, digital production, and other means. We will see work that is authentic, and that has the potential to breathe life into communities that haven’t seen themselves accurately represented. That means life-giving artistry for Bavaria, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Scranton, Rochester, Erie — not just large urban areas or entertainment epicenters. We are more likely to see uncompromising artists emerge who are deeply in touch with their cultural and faith identities. Committed artistic creatives are likely to enjoy a greater sense of belonging and purpose in their local communities and cities and to become more integral to daily life. In my own community of creatives, I’m always “preaching” about the calling of the artist, and our responsibility to our communities — our people. Scholar-artists, and artists generally, are tasked with singing our communities’ distinct, vivid, beautiful songs. The work is a privilege. It’s great to see, on the horizon, new methods for serving and foregrounding our cities, regions and cultures with heart, with a sense of accountability, and with a commitment to limitless possibilities.
Pricing:
- Performances: $10-$20
Contact Info:
- Website: www.TaraLake.com
- Instagram: @TaraLakeCreates
- Facebook: @TaraLakeCreates
Image Credits
D.A. Adisa
