Julius B. Anthony
Metro Theater Company Board Member Julius B. Anthony is a host committee member and sponsor of our June gala After Dark! We are grateful for his leadership, creativity, and generosity. He is the President of St. Louis Black Authors of Children’s Literature. We asked Julius a few questions about theater, the arts, and what inspires him.
How are you connected to Metro Theater Company?
I am serving my first term as a Board member for Metro Theater Company. I am excited about that!
What do you love about Metro Theater Company’s work?
What I love most about Metro Theater Company’s work is the joy-experiences they create for children and youth who are seeing live theater for the first time! My organization, St. Louis Black Authors of Children’s Literature and our Believe Projects are in schools where many of the children rarely leave the neighborhoods, they live in. We are fortunate to have a partnership with Metro that gives our children a chance to travel to the Grandel Theatre and see live performances, and for many of them it’s their first time seeing a live performance! In addition, for those students who can’t make the trip Metro makes the performances available through a live stream. That’s an innovative and important way to give children theater experiences. We recognize that these performances are synergistic with our mission around children having access to meaningful literacy experiences. The literacy synergy and the joy for children! What’s not to LOVE about that?
Why do you go to the theater?
I go to the theater to feel deeply and be reminded about what LOVE in the world should look and feel like.
How have the arts changed you or the young people in your life?
I think in many ways the arts have been a central part of who I have become. My entire being from birth until today has been surrounded by music, theater, beautiful things, dance – cultural arts. I am a Black male from a Black traditional St. Louis church family whose roots come from Alabama and Mississippi. There was always music playing in my home. My older brother Eric was a piano prodigy, and I don’t remember a morning waking up and not hearing him playing a sonata or jazz or even a Baptist hymn. In my world that was normal. My father was a Baptist minister, and we did church seven days a week. The Black church is theater! Nothing else to say about that!
However, the first live theater I remember seeing was a college student performance of “The Me Nobody Knows” at the St. Louis Community College Forest Park Theater when I was in fourth grade. I was blown away so much that in high school the first classes I signed up for were music and theater and took every theater and music class I could until I graduated! In college I survived on debate and public speaking scholarship and sang in choir – all performance-based activities. Today I am a creative writer, a children’s book author.
Here’s the point, the arts haven’t necessarily changed me. The arts have made me.
What are you inspired by?
Plain and simple, Love inspires me. In all its facets, definitions, ideas, forms, beauty, and ways, Love inspires me. Love found in music, in the illustrations of a children’s book, in a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie, in the enthusiasm of a “hello” or “good morning,” in the tenderness of kindness, and the thoughtfulness of a meaningful gift - Love inspires me. The love given to me by the people who raised me – my parents, aunts, uncles, teachers, deacons, church mothers, Sunday School teachers, neighbors – that Black Love village. Love inspires me.
