Prof’s immigration tale preserved at Ellis Island

By Clay Evans

Assistant Professor of Theatre Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin’s distinctive experience as the child of Ghanaian immigrants, who came to North America as university students in the 1960s, has caught the attention of the History Channel. On April 23 and 24, a film crew interviewed Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin on the University of Colorado campus for a permanent exhibit at Ellis Island in New York.

“(The) Ellis Island Visitors Center is currently expanding its mission to become a museum that celebrates all immigration to the U.S., not just (during) the period that Ellis Island was in operation,” says Alison Guss of True Aim Productions, director of the 36 short video profiles about “extraordinary immigrants and children of immigrants” which include individuals like musician, Gloria Estefan, and film director Ang Lee.

At just two to three minutes long, the segments are indeed short. But creating each one takes time, careful planning and lots of footage. Guss and, director of photography, Paul Reuter, along with local sound recordist, Drew Levinson, and production assistant, Aaron Peterson, spent more than a day filming Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin teaching classes in the Loft Theatre and Old Main Chapel on the CU campus and the Chautauqua meadow.

“I come from two worlds, Ghana and America,” Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin says.

Her father, Dr. Nanabanyin Ghartey-Tagoe, now a professor of clinical pathology and veterinary medicine, and her mother, Abenaa, a senior associate at an environmental consulting firm, moved to Alabama to attend, as well as work, at Tuskegee Institute, one of the oldest historically black colleges in the United States. Tuskegee was not only home to the famed World War II-era Tuskegee Airmen and the birthplace of civil rights activist Rosa Parks; but it also became the birthplace and home of Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin and her two older sisters.

“Being the child of African immigrants in a predominately African-American city was a tremendous experience,” says “Dr. Amma,” as her students and colleagues in the CU Department of Theatre & Dance call her.  “My first experience of America’s issues with racial identity was from other black children who made fun of my ‘darker’ skin and ‘funny’ name… and I thought, ‘What is going on here?’ … Don’t you know we are all related?’” says Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin, flashing her usual smile.

“My parents … had taught my sisters and me about the interconnectedness of the African diaspora, a deep sense of self-worth, and our own family history … going back to the 1700s,” she says. That specific perspective on what it means to be African in America led to Dr. Amma’s lifelong research focus on African diaspora history and performance.

Furthermore, as her parents pursued the highest degrees in their respective fields, college campuses — classrooms, laboratories and student unions — became Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin’s literal playground as a child and spurred her love for learning. “My mother says you bloom where you are. … If you don’t know who you are, you can’t be free. You have to let your light shine.”

On the day she was filmed, Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin watched as students in her “Performing the Archive” class workshopped historical material related to “At Buffalo,” the musical she is co-developing with Jim Augustine of New York.

The play vividly explores various dimensions of African and African American identity, based on three distinct exhibits at the 1901 World’s Fair in Buffalo, N.Y.

There was “Darkest Africa,” featuring Africans brought in to “live” in an authentic African village, the “Old Plantation,” showing “scenes of a happy slave life,” and a mile away, “The American Negro Exhibit” created by African American intellectuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois.

“The play wrestles with a critical moment in the construction of race and American national identity,” she explains.

The project, a pilot production for a sustained initiative to create performances interpreting archival documents, was recently awarded a $45,000 Innovative Seed Grant from the University of Colorado research administration.

“(This) will make CU-Boulder a pioneering university in the United States that supports a new line of academic and theater-practice inquiry that has already gained momentum in Europe,” Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin says.

CU Theatre & Dance students, in turn, have helped refine the project.

As Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin observes: “Workshopping this material with students is great. I want them to let their light shine!”

May 2012