Heritage House - Images for Episode 102

Above: John Allen leads a movement class in the basement of Heritage House.

When the John Allen and the Freedom Theatre first arrived at Heritage House in the fall of 1970, according to Inquirer reporter Bill Thompson,"the basement was a wreck - sixteen rooms of water and litter. The theater had grown to about 10 students."

"They and Allen sorted out the storage material of Heritage House, piled and disposed of the litter, hired electricians and plumbers, installed dimmers. They paneled the walls, built the stage, laid carpet and decorated the lobby."

"Now there is little trace of the mess that first dominated the basement," wrote Thompson. "When you enter it, you are seized and embraced by an overpowering atmosphere  . . . . There is no other way to describe it."

Allen standing in front of the Freedom Theatre on Broad Street, in a 1975 photo from the Philadelphia Department of Records.

By 1975 the Freedom Theatre and School had grown to more than 150 students, both youth and adults. But it was still on a highly limited annual budget of about $10,000. It was producing plays - occasionally at other Philadelphia venues - and was actively seeking to recruit and develop local Black playwrights. Future plans at the time included expanding to a new facility Allen planned to build across Broad Street, and the to create premier training facility for Black performers in the city.

"Everybody who comes through Freedom Theatre won't be a great actor," predicted Allen. "But they will have discovered themselves in a positive way."

Above: Undated photo from the Temple University Library, SCRC archives: "Temple University Associate Vice President for community relations, Thomas Anderson, Jr. with John Allen, Artistic Director of the Freedom Theater."

John E. Allen Jr. died at the age of 58, from lung cancer, but his life’s work went on, as others continued down the trail he had blazed. Within a decade, a brand-new theater space, built above the former basement theater in the annex of the Forrest mansion, was constructed and named in his honor.





Above: In a photo by Susan Winters in June of 1991, Patricia Scott Hobbs leads a summer dance class at the Freedom Theatre School.

Below: In a photo by Gerald S. Williams from November 2000, actor Johnnie Hobbs rehearses the part of the Griot for Black Nativity at the Freedom Theatre. In the foreground is director Walter Dallas.