Rebecca Rice

Rebecca Rice (1947–2002) was a performer, teacher, playwright, anti-racism/anti-oppression activist, and community-based artist. For over 30 years, she created theatre that impacted directly on the lives of people who are often overlooked by mainstream theatre.

Biography Born in Tyler, Texas and relocated to Chicago at a young age with her parents and sister, it was through drama classes with Johnny Houston, a dedicated Chicago Park District employee who ran after-school and summertime recreation programs for children that Rice first realized she had a gift for singing, dancing and theater.

After Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were both assassinated, like many who came of age in the 1960s she felt called to take action to right wrongs and redress social inequalities. Rice soon discovered the theater could not only be for entertainment, but to critically engage, uplift, memorialize and celebrate the lives of marginalized poor and working-class people. She traveled to New York City for a bit but landed in Washington, DC joined the Black Panther Party and began teaching at RAP, Inc. (a center for ex-addicts in the District). In 1970, she saw an ad for auditions for the Living Stage Theatre Company, the newly established community "outreach" and educational theatre arm of Arena Stage. Under the direction of Robert Alexander (1929–2008), Living Stage was emerging as one of the first multi-racial, improvisational theatre companies dedicated to art for social change in the nation. For 14 years (1970–1984), Rice was a lead actress and associate director at Living Stage. There she authored over 50 theatre works for audiences of all ages and abilities, and conducted thousands of workshop for children, youth and adults from the DC area including work in prisons, substance abuse rehabilitation facilities, shelters for the homeless and schools.

In 1971, Rice published an article in off our backs, one of the earliest second-wave feminist publications to come out of the nation's capital, in which she reflects upon the transformative power of performance:

I stand before the mirror and examine this face, my face. I know this face, I know the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the skin, the bones. Unique only in that they are together to make this face. I know this face, yes, but do I know its limitations? No. How many faces will I make today? What roles will this face portray? A black militant, a bigot, prostitute, infant, gorilla, guerilla, an Indian, an angel, a grandmother or a paper doll. It could be one or all, all and more. Take this face, add this body and there is within them the possibility to experience every emotion ever felt, all the actions and reactions that have ever occurred since the dawn of man. I have only to open my being to all of these possibilities.

In the article, Rice also offers this description of the work of Living Stage and the practice of theatre for social change:

What is my task? I might be standing before an audience of ex-drug addicts or a group of jittery five-year-olds from a public school, teenage runaways, inmates of a prison or jail or a group of joyous children from a local free-school. My task is to reach them and uplift them. To provide an atmosphere where transformation and transportation can take place. Where I can reveal myself artistically, thereby enabling the audience to do the same. To discover for myself and to allow others to discover. This transformation is the most important thing. For it is during transformation that a person experiences her own creativity and is able to perceive the world through experiences other than her own; she is able to broaden her knowledge of a very specific situation and then transport that new knowledge to many other situations. A child may become a slave and then a dog and then a child again, and is able to perceive the connection between them all.

A documentary, entitled Walk With Me, features her creative contributions.