By Sean Yoes, AFRO Baltimore Editor, syoes@afro.com
Baltimore’s Arena Players is the oldest continuously operating Black community theatre in the United States. As executive director of the Arena Players for more than 30 years, Rodney Orange, Jr., had been instrumental in the ongoing viability of the theatre into the 21st century. Orange died April 22 of heart disease. He was 58.
“(He) took great joy in helping the young artist. He was very much involved in bringing top comedy acts, jazz shows and talent shows to Arena Players,” said Donald Owens, a veteran actor and artistic director of Arena Players in a recent Facebook post. “He opened the theater to many community activities.”
Baltimore Arena Players (Screengrab/Google Maps)
A military veteran, Orange worked closely with his mother Catherine Orange (his father Rodney Orange, Sr., is the former president of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP) beginning in the late 1980’s to help revive the fiscally struggling theater. He officially took the helm as executive director in 1992, according to Larry Young, the award winning radio show host, who is Arena’s chairman of the board.
“He joined up with his mother…to save Arena Players and he was asked by the board to take over as acting general manager,” Young said. “They took this theater and put it back on its footing and here were are in it’s 66th season. If it was not for Rodney and his mother we would not continue as the oldest African-American theatre.”
Young, who referred to Orange as his “little big brother” said he worked tirelessly forging relationships throughout the city to keep the theater afloat. During his tenure he raised hundreds of thousands of dollars on behalf of Arena and under his leadership he convinced Gov. Larry Hogan to contribute $125 thousand from the state for the theater. Hogan was the first Maryland governor to allot money for Arena according to Young.
“Rodney had a way of going to the corporate community to get what was needed. Ninety percent of the people that have kept those doors open have done it as volunteers,” Young said.
“There is nothing that he would not have done for that theater. We’ve got to finish his legacy.”
