Veteran actor and director Wren T. Brown, who founded the only Black professional theater company in Los Angeles, highlights four generations of groundbreaking entertainers in his family in the new book, “The Family Business.”
Since the 1980s, Brown has acted in dozens of films and TV shows, including “Hollywood Shuffle,” “Waiting to Exhale,” “Whoopi,” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” and founded the Ebony Repertory Theatre (ERT) in 2008.
Before Brown, excellence in entertainment was established in his family by the likes of his jazz trumpeter father Troy Brown, Jr.; great-uncle, saxophonist Lester Young; and great-grandfather Willis Handy Young, who founded and managed the New Orleans Strutters theatrical troupe.
“I’ve been so exposed to the highest reaches of this industry, and I always had admiration for these individuals, but I never was one who worshiped any of them because I had heroes in my own bloodstream,” Brown said in conversation with the Amsterdam News.
Brown recalls being 7 or 8 years old when he began to understand the depth of history and impact in the entertainment industry in his family. It was around that age that he picked up a Count Basie and Lester Young album and asked his mother if the saxophonist was related to Brown’s grandfather Lee Young, who was the first Black president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS). NARAS, also known as the Recording Academy, is the governing body behind the Grammy Awards.
Grandpa Lee became a “living hero” for Brown early on in his life, passing on the principles of punctuality and preparedness. Lessons came during outings together to watch the Lakers, Dodgers, or Rams play, and Sundays spent watching sportscaster Howard Cosell on television. Lee Young died in 2008, just months after witnessing his grandson launch the Ebony Repertory Theatre at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center.
“I think it’s one of the greatest privileges of my life — to have been in absolute close proximity to my grandfather for all those years,” Brown reflected. “I fell in love with my grandfather when I was 10 years old, and I might imagine he fell in love with me. We were inseparable; we did everything together.”
Brown went on to learn more about the entertainers in his family. His paternal grandmother, Bertha McElroy, was a former Los Angeles Cotton Club dancer, and his maternal grandmother, Ruth E. Givens, was a singer and dancer who appeared in the 1934 movie “Jealousy,” featuring the Nicholas Brothers. Givens was also a founding member of a charity organization called the Performers’ Club, which provided financial support to aging performers in need, and met at the same performing arts center that ERT now calls home.
As Brown grew older, he began realizing that the elders in his family intentionally shared their family history with him because, as he wrote in the book, “they knew that their stories would be safe with me.” That knowledge provided a foundation on which Brown has built his career.
“It grounded me differently in life,” Brown said. “It engendered a quality of balance I don’t think I would have achieved without knowing that not only had my foreparents been people of achievement in the arts, but that they were pouring into me personally.”
“The Family Business” features a three-act structure, with sections labeled the walkaround, the olio, and the afterpiece, just as a vaudeville event would have been organized in the early 20th century. In the walkaround, Brown recounts learning of the accomplishments of his family members and lays them out in detail. The olio is a visual representation of their lives, featuring photographs, short stories, and memorabilia such as newspaper clippings and show flyers, with each family member getting their own “scene.” The afterpiece uses similar materials to illustrate Brown’s own artistic development, from a high school theater production and McDonald’s commercial in 1982, to performances put on by his own theater company during the past 17 years.
“All four of my grandparents came through their early times in the entertainment industry when the minstrel form and vaudeville — these variety shows — were the order of the day,” Brown said. “ I was struck by the fact that all of them had been participants in those types of variety shows, and I wanted to somehow allow the contemporary reader to experience the journey they experienced.”
Brown began archiving material about his family 20 years ago, but didn’t think of writing a book with it until after he founded ERT in 2008. That’s when he began to think more deeply about the parallels between his company and the New Orleans Strutters troupe that his great-grandfather Willis Handy Young, known to Brown as Papa Young, founded 85 years before.
“Papa Young, my great-grandfather, had that law that if you’re going to live in his house, you’re going to play music, and that’s what he had to give his children and the rest of his family in profusion,” Brown said. “He had pupils all around the city, wherever he lived, but teaching his family was top of the list for him.”
Through the family business of entertainment, Brown absorbed the principles of integrity, dignity, and self-worth. He hopes his family’s story inspires readers to glean strength from their own family histories.
“Valuing the self is vitally important to navigate this life — delving into your own history, knowing your own story,” Brown said. “It may not be a story that has public celebration at all, but it’s yours, so delving into and owning that, I’m telling you, will cause you to walk more upright. It will cause you to be able to breathe differently because you have a sense of self.”
“The Family Business” features a foreword by Grammy Award-winning trumpeter and bandleader Wynton Marsalis and an afterword by Tony Award-winning actor Lesie Odom, Jr. The book is available for purchase at thefamilybusinessbook.com.
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