by Carlos Garza

A couple of minutes with Boyd Vance and we were already off on some manic East Side reconfiguration session. Superlatives flew by, anecdotes spun out of control, public officials were skewered. It was like listening to three people vie for your attention at once: the wheeler-dealer, the no-nonsense production manager, above all -- the storyteller. Caught up in an unabashed verbal torrent, he conveyed twenty year's experience in theater, community service, and nonprofit arts work in ways as messy and exhilarating as the process itself must have been. He speaks authoritatively without being preachy, sarcastically without a hint of bitterness. Even his critical side comes across as just another facet of his good nature.

Ax-grinding is nowhere on his agenda. Instead, he projects an unusual combination of humorously accepting his community for what it is while having committed himself to change it.

Originally from Houston, Boyd Vance attended St. Stephen's Episcopal school, then gave Rice University a whirl for two years before moving back and pursuing a career in theater. Knowing full well the struggling actor shtick would completely cramp his style, he promptly landed his first audition at the Paramount as Gitlow in the musical Purlie, which launched him on a series of successful runs at Esther's Follies and Zachary Scott. Immersed in a highly West Austin theater scene while finishing up his degree at UT, he remembers vividly an occasion when he met the incredulous gaze of a black colleague upon asking for directions to the Carver Library on the way to an interview.

Yet unlike many of us who take stock of our sheltered existence upon venturing east of Interstate 35, Boyd Vance didn't just shrug pensively and go about his business. In what he describes as an "organic process" rather than a single walloping realization or turning point, he abandoned his acting career and poured his energies into his Progressive Arts Collective, which has grown into one of the major players in the East Side arts community. "The real deal is that a legacy of racism, gentrification, and lack of political power has left this area sparse and desolate. We see all this money being poured into isolated projects, but it's not really gelling as a community. In order to turn this into a major historical district and have people feel safe to come out in East Austin to places other than church, it's going to take a major political and sociological movement. But until we stop buying into this white system of power, until we stop holding on to whatever little power we think we have, it's not going to functionally happen."

To Boyd, most indicative of this internalized racism is the black and latino community's lack of support for local productions.

"We can always get white people to come see the exotic art, but around here there seems to be this attitude that if it's East Side, it's somehow not legit. They'll wait till the last night or not show up at all for a local show, but once they find out about some fly-by-night operation from out of town, they just flock to it. The problem is that because we have less art access, we have few tools to express our culture and few models and indicators of what cultural expression looks like in a positive way. In a sense, we've become art-neutered. There's a window of opportunity where whatever spark that's in there can be kindled, but a lot of times colored people make choices to impede that, and once you've passed that point it's extremely difficult to get back. And then even within our small arts community, artists don't seem to know how to communicate and be supportive to each other. We're stuck in this 'gotta get mine' mentality where anyone who 'makes it' feels obliged not only to leave the East Side, but to stop identifying with it in any way. Artists need to be nurtured by their environment so that we feel like wherever we're going, we've got a support system behind us."

Yet with the impending threat of gentrification (such as the recent bid to cover East 11th and 12th streets with strip malls and restaurants), even the potential to create such an environment could slip away indefinitely. The coming years will determine whether the East Side re-appropriates its neglected historical landmarks or allows itself to be further subjugated, co-opted, and folklorized. For Boyd Vance, the key to reclaiming the past while actively forging a community may ultimately lie in an initiative from nonprofits to convince absentee owners of ramshackle East Side historical properties to let them move in and apply for renovation grants from the Texas Historical Commission. To house a number of future cultural institutions in these landmarks would represent no less than the culmination of Boyd Vance's struggle (as he himself so succinctly puts it) "to integrate art into the community in ways that are supportive and not masturbatory."

To that end, Progressive Arts Collective's relentless activity has involved 12 productions, three exhibits, and four dance festivals in only four years. PAC actually started out as an altogether different entity. In 1993, Boyd and a group of fellow performers simply decided to establish a code of ethics to address the inevitable unprofessionalism which can result from novice local actors also juggling with families and part time jobs. But after a series of political struggles in which many politicians and arts groups came and went (or met their untimely demise), PAC evolved into a major non-profit organization, stepping in to meet the changing needs of the East Side community. In addition to its main productions, since 1997 PAC has organized a black history program for AISD, a "Fire Safety Comedy Hour" in middle schools for the Fire Department, and an AIDS awareness program in several Catholic churches. PAC also umbrellas individual visual and literary artists and has forged alliances with the Aztlan Dance Company, Tomás Salas at the Center for Mexican American Cultural Arts, and AUSPICIOUS, dedicated to providing cultural opportunities to latino youth, including model car workshops, d.j. spin-offs, breakdancing events, and a low-rider car show.

You can find Boyd Vance and the Progressive Arts Collective at the East 13th Street Heritage House, once the home of John Frazier and his wife Laura, major philanthropists in Austin for much of the last century. After the Fraziers, it has housed a number of key artists and organizers in the black community, including our own Harold McMillan, publisher of this magazine.