Lorna (Mills) Hill ’73

A playwright/actress/director/educator on the arts

“I fell in love with theater as a student usher at the South-wark Theater Company in Philadelphia. The moment I’ll always remember is getting to watch Diana Sands warm up on stage, doing Phaedra, because I cleaned up the theater when no one else wanted to. I didn’t know Phaedra or Racine from a hole in the ground, but Sands was my favorite actress. I was mesmerized.”

“You can’t be in the theater because you want fame and recognition. For that, invest in a press agent.”

“I’m in the theater because I believe in building Martin Luther King’s ‘beloved community.’ I see it as possible; I see it as real; I see it as an obligation.”

“Being a black female at Wellesley was a lot scarier than being a black female at Dartmouth. My class at Wellesley blew the number of black students up to 54, and people there reacted as though it was the Mau Mau Rebellion. They just didn’t know what to do with us.”

“Dartmouth wasn’t used to women being on campus but had the sense to ask us, ‘What should we do with you?’ And accept our answer. And make changes that provided for us.”

“In many ways Dartmouth saved me. It gave me an opportunity to find out who I really was.”

“The performing arts are something young people can very easily say yes to. It gives them safe mind space in which to imagine themselves in the world they’d like to live in. It gives them a chance to learn history. It gives them a chance to understand why we have the social and cultural mores that we have, how they evolve.”

“The lack of support for the performing arts in secondary schools is one of the reasons why our children can’t read, can’t write and cannot com- municate verbally.”

“There’s an ancient idea that theater people are ragamuffins, scalawags and scoundrels, whores and profiteers, ignorant and untutored. It goes back before Shakespeare. People think your job is only to be good looking and deliver a performance. Who can make a life out of that?”

“I love homework, and theater requires you to do homework, to examine the human condition constantly. I don’t know of any other profession that requires that.”

“Children taught me how to teach theater, and they keep reopening my eyes to where the world is going.”

“Initially my theater students were saying, ‘What do you mean we have to write? What do you mean we have to read? I thought this was a theater class.’ I gave them the new York State standards, so they could see what I’m being paid to teach them. I tell them, ‘So now you have to decide whether you’re going to learn it or tread water. I advise learning it.’”

“Part of my responsibility is to make it clear to the children I work with that they’re not responsible for their own poverty—and that they shouldn’t be limited by it. I make sure they understand I come from the same place they come from.”

“Children have to know they are worthy of beauty.” “A director is God in the theater; it’s a huge responsibility. You have to be omnipresent, all knowing. It makes me extremely appreciative of the differences in people. It heightens my enjoyment of life.”

“Everybody comes to Ujima Company, despite the fact that it’s a so-called African-American theater company. You will not go into any other house and see that kind of audience. Everybody feels at home.”

“The arts may be a vehicle for redemption in this country. They’ve gone a long way toward that end already. We’ve all participated in some crimes against humanity for which we have to redeem ourselves. And the only way to redeem ourselves is to build community at every opportunity.”

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS: Founder (1978), artistic director and executive producer, Ujima Theater Company, Buffalo, New York; winner of numerous regional awards for acting, directing and community service; plays include Opportunity, Free Fred Brown, Please Knock! and Yalla Bitch; produced and hosted radio program focused on African-American women; awarded a Reynolds Fellowship, 1973 CAREER: Teacher, Buffalo Academy for the Visual & Performing Arts, 2008-present; guest artist, consultant and teacher across Western New York, 1976-present EDUCATION: A.B. history 1973 (entered Dartmouth from Wellesley as a sophomore exchange student); M.A.H., in theater, University of Buffalo, 1978; currently a Ph.D. candidate (ABD), University of Buffalo FAMILY: Single mother of Amilcar Cabral and Zoë Viola