Testimonials

Check out the impact Inner City Cultural Center made on these celebrated luminaries below.

Black and white photo of a young woman with long hair looking sideways.
Jeanne Joe

“In the 30 years since Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town’ first saw the light of a stage there has been no production with casting so novel and startling…Emily…is being played by an Apache Indian, her mother by a Russian-American and her brother by a Mexican-American, her sweetheart and husband by a Japanese-American, his father by a Negro and his sister by a Chinese-American.”

“The concept is right,” said Jeanne Joe…”What’s more, multiracial casting will provide a new perspective for producers. I won’t have to wait for the next production of ‘Flower Drum Song’ before I get another chance to act.”

-Jeanne Joe, Flower Drum Song

“The ICCC is the single arts institution in Los Angeles that has addressed itself to some of the pressing problems that confront our society. There is no other place that uses this premise solely as its modus operandi.

It is the only one that embraces the belief that we are a multinational, multi-cultural society and that must be reflected on stage. For that reason, I honor it and will always be affiliated with it.”

- Beah Richards

Two people sitting and talking together.
Beah Richards (seated left) with C. Bernard Jackson (right)
Two men in vintage Western attire.
Luis Valdez in Teatro Campesino (pictured right)

“Our association with Jackson goes back to ’71 and even before. I first met him at a national conference on multi-ethnic and multiracial support in Chicago and he was one of the few voices of clearness and reason…I was a firm supporter of the Inner City Cultural Center when I was on the California Arts council Board. I still believe in their dream.”

- Luis Valdez, “Inner City Center—A Crisis of Doubt”;

The Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1984

“If it weren’t for Jack’s and Inner City Cultural Center’s nurturing I might not have had a creative life in Los Angeles. Jack was practicing ‘multi-culturalism’ long before it became a word used by so-called mainstream institutions to get funding.

Inner City embraced this American-born Philippina [sic] giving her validity, while other organizers tried to deny her existence.”

Sumi Sevilla Haru, Actress

Interview 1992
Play Video
Smiling woman in patterned attire with hands clasped.
Beah Richards

“The ICCC is the single arts institution in Los Angeles that has addressed itself to some of the pressing problems that confront our society. There is no other place that uses this premise solely as its modus operandi. It is the only one that embraces the belief that we are a multinational, multi-cultural society and that it must be reflected on stage. For that reason, I honor and will always be affiliated with it.” ---Beah Richards

Mike Adams

“Experiment at Inner City.”
Travel and Arts, October/November 1974, pp. 12-13

“We are his band. His richly diverse, anarchitically outrageous marching band. And from this day forward, we will all go marching into our disparate fields--celebrating the life and brilliance of C. Bernard Jackson by the quality of our choices and the depth of our commitment to our beliefs. "

-George C. Wolfe,

“Recalling C. Bernard Jackson's Gift”
- Special to The Los Angeles Times;
July 22, 1996
Group of people posing in front of mural.
George C. Wolfe front row kneeling center with the cast of "Summer Suns Tails of Night" 1977-1978
Group of people enjoying drinks and smiling together.

“The characters in Elmer Rice’s original, STREET SCENE, were entirely white…It was Langston Hughes, America’s foremost black poet, who brought to Rice and Weill’s attention the fact that black people also reside on America’s streets.

A short walk through the neighborhoods surrounding the Inner City Cultural Center would reveal that in this community reside people of every description. America is a multi-racial society. In this production, the Inner City Repertory Theatre Company again reiterates its stand that the American Theatre must reflect that fact”

- C. Bernard Jackson, Out of the Ashes

“So overall, Inner City is the only place where the non-white community can go see a play it can identify with."

- Carmen Zapata ​

A joyful couple laughing together in a black-and-white photo.
Portrait of an elderly man wearing a blue sweater and cap.
Fred Beauford, Editor and Publisher of Neworld Magazine

“Our strength is our diversity,’ exults Fred Beauford of the center’s staff. Diversity now is not just casting of drama across racial lines, or the appeal to multiracial audiences or even the tapping of talent from all of the cities communities. It is the variety of activity the center has managed to place under one roof.” --Fred Beauford

Leonard Gross

February 1975,
Westways