Nesbitt is on a Mission

Clark E. Nesbitt is a man on a mission.

As director and founder of No Dreams Deferred  Community  Company, he works for no pay, sparse recognition, but no limits. He knows what he wants and how to get there.

He should.  He’s been acting, teaching and coaching acting since he can remember. In fact, there is no time in his recollection when he was not obsessed with the stage, dancing, playing his baritone saxophone or even singing for a minute.

Clark received his BA in English from Benedict College in Columbia, SC, where he studied acting under Grace Palmer, John Grace, and Elizabeth J. Hart.  In addition, Clark studied voice with Lucille Smith and Leonard Mansfield Johnson.

Nesbitt discovered, however, timeless ages ago that acting is his calling.

Nesbitt started his venture in 1980. He has never looked back. Growth has been steady and solid.

Born on July 4, 1953, and reared near the peach fields of Greer, South Carolina, in the middle of the Dobson community. His mother, Lillie Mae Gregory-Nesbitt, showered Nesbitt with praise and strong encouragement.  She was his biggest fan.

Some comment on meeting Nesbitt that he must be the product of New York or Los Angeles, not Greer, South Carolina.

Nesbitt drew additional strength from Ms Edith Mack, a drama enthusiast at the Maple Creek Baptist church in Greer.

Under her tutelage, no one missed their storylines. They had too much respect for Ms Mack than to waste her time and embarrass her at rehearsals or a pubic performance.

Ms Mack was the pied piper of Greer.  She was duped that moniker because every Sunday morning she trudged a certain path to church, and the children and others fell in line behind her and marched on to church.

Dutifully, his mother guided Nesbitt through segregated and integrated schools.

The small town of Greer during the 50s and 60s had no repository of black history. So, imagine how it blew his mind after he enrolled in Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina.

He was promptly introduced to the likes of Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, and James Weldon Johnson and other outstanding black writers and performers.

Phillis Wheatley, a poet, wrote for a broader audience. Her first poem was published in 1767. Only whites were then legally permitted to read, so she had only that audience. Blacks were forbidden to read by statute of law. Of course, her trailblazing work is monumental, but there is also a place for writers who wrote in their natural voice, not the language of the establishment.

We are proud of all our alumni when we were part of the Phillis Wheatley Repertory Theater. Here we name a few.

Phillip Boykin

Phillip Boykin is an American actor and singer who has performed in many Broadway shows, including Porgy and Bess and Once on This Island. He is known for his powerful bass-baritone voice and on-stage transformations. 

Boykin was born in Greenville, South Carolina. He was one of ten children.

GiGi Allen moved to Las Vegas. She is the niece of Carl Allen, a drummer.

La Fredrick Coaxum

Coaxum, a South Carolina native,  was accepted into the Juilliard School of Music because of his exceptional voice and talent.

Coaxum was the music director for the funeral for Andre Leon Talley and the special showing of ALT’s iconic fashions.

Andre Leon Talley

Talley was a fashion journalist, author, and television personality. He was known for his flamboyant style and his work at Vogue magazine. He died from a heart attack in 2022 at the age of 73. 

Dominant influencer

Ms. Mae Lucille Smith, the most prominent black music teacher around Greenville, was closely associated with Virginia Aldridge, the founder of the Governor's School. They collaborated on many musical projects and they mutually respected each other’s talent and professional prowess.

The choirs led by Lucille Smith were always top-notch.

However, while in college, she turned down an offer to play with an all-female jazz ensemble for a chance to play basketball. Where was Dawn Staley when she needed her?

Smith asked Nesbitt to sing a song. He confessed that he could not sing. Dubiously, she hit a piano key and asked him to sing it.  He did, nailing it. She repeated the process several times and convinced him that he could hit any tune.

Nesbitt says, “I still don’t view myself as a singer, but I can tell when someone else misses a note.  Everything I have learned over the years has been channelled into my acting repertoire in one way or another, even singing.

Grace Palmer

Later, Grace Palmer, who taught theatre, was so impressed with Nesbitt’s singing that she got special permission from the dean of Benedict College to give him private voice lessons for a year.  During those 12 months she crammed more than two years of learning invested in Nesbitt because it was just her and him.

Palmer even administered Nesbitt’s tests at the same desk, with him on one side, and she on the other.  He said, “I will always treasure her for taking such a special interest in me, but nothing can supplant my love of acting.”

“My singular mission is to awaken the deep and rich culture that has been lost in our community. Nothing must prevent us from expressing ourselves in our natural voices straight from the heart,” he said.

Nesbitt says that this work is the culmination of all the toil that went before him.

We need to remove all impediments and stop deterring deeply held dreams that have been unwittingly suppressed for decades, even centuries.

Instead of relegating black history to the shortest month of the year, we need to celebrate it all year-round. Every day of my life, we see the history and culture cherished by others. Now is the time for us to cherish our history and culture.

No one can tell our stories better than we can.

I believe so strongly in this mission that I work for free, and I have to raise money to pay the rent for this place and everything else.  The production of one set can cost $20,000. Just the rights to do three plays can cost thousands. And that’s just the beginning of my overhead here.

But I cannot relinquish control to others in exchange for grants and other funding. The value of this venture lies in keeping it authentic and the only way we can do it is keeping it uniquely ours.

I’m not good at being politically correct. It’s not in my DNA to say anything needed to easily obtain funding. I would forsake my core values by doing that. And I cannot do that.

I have earned the right to initiate this mission, not by artificial means like a master's in fine arts degree, but by the blood, sweat, and tears of my life toiling during the repressed 60s in segregated schools and enduring every manner of privation and indignity for the cause.

I know who we are; and I love who we are.  For me, theater is the only way that I can express all that I am and all that we are as a people.

My first love is acting.  Uniquely I create and exist in diverse forms.  By acting I step out of myself and walk in the shoes of others and feel like them.  Acting allows me to dismiss myself and become another.  It’s how to leave oneself to become someone else.

Dancing gives me the freedom to explain, interpret, and to be unapologetic about expressing what the music is calling on me to be.  Not just responding to the music, but being part of the music; and the body needs to conform to its rhythmic demands.

With dance, you find yourself intuitively understanding how air flows through space and time.

Antonette Hall, director of the Young Artist Program at the Phillis Wheatley Community Center, perfectly understands movement and how the body moves rhythmically, swaying with the music.  Dance elevates the soul, yes, the entire being into a sublime and expressive life form.

I’m working out an idea for a play involving the ever-changing relationship between Martin and Malcolm. Each has etched their stances in stone; or at least it initially seemed.

However, in time, their ideas came slowly closer together.  In my head, I can hear their voices reaching for harmony. We can only imagine what could have resulted had they both lived longer.

For example, sources show that Martin may have started questioning the long-term benefits of nonviolence. And Malcolm discovered that not all whites are bad. Both men had softened their positions.

We have not been good storytellers. In fact, we have many

self-inflicted wounds, which are as harmful as blows struck by others. We are lynching our minds by denigrating and undermining our history and stories.  We need to stop deferring our dreams.

No Dreams Deferred was organized as an LLC, a limited liability corporation, in December, and became a 501(c)(3). Nonprofits, though good in many ways, can compel you to play politics to obtain funding and often to relinquish much of your autonomy.

Nesbitt strongly prefers the freedom of telling the story of his people unfeathered by often arbitrary constraints of others. These are our histories for our education, motivation, and entertainment.

Why should we work only at the whims of others, waiting in the shadows until they call us, and then summarily dismissing us until they deem it fit to call us back again. We can be in charge of our destiny.

We can simply have our own thing.

I have never had a job that was purely or mainly about money.  For example, my work at the Phillis Wheatley Center was about service.  I’m in a stable financial position to develop what could be here forever.

There are five other theaters in Greenville, all headed by others. We stand alone.

Grace Palmer of Columbia

During the 1960s while traveling with a black theatre company, Palmer often passed for white during the civil rights era. She was a renowned speech teacher who majored in theater. But, make no mistake about it, she was a firebrand of the highest order. Her activism was first and theater was next; but both threads ran together and overlapped.

Little wonder that I am her disciple.

Palmer traveled with the play Pearly on the road, underpinned with fiery political rallies to push their radical agenda of equality forward through several Southern states. 

With her flaming red hair and pale face, she often drove the vehicle at night, something blacks were not allowed to do on pain of harassment, arrest and detention.

Palmer got permission from the Dean of Benedict College to give me private theatre classes. What a wonderful learning experience. Sadly she later stepped in front of a speeding car and was tragically killed.

Antoinette Hall

Hall came to No Dreams Deferred as a volunteer. Nesbitt met Hall while he was directing A Raisin in the Sun in Greenwood. He says that Hall is a wonderful actress. She is smart, self-motivated, serious about the craft, willing to learn, improve, and diversify.

William Burgess, Michael Young, and Donald Lawrence

Nesbitt has been fortunate to have worked alongside Burgess, Young, and Lawrence as music directors and creators, and technicians.

It’s been a good run, but we’re far from done yet.