Courtesy of Annaliese Moyer

Clinton Johnston is a theater professor at Mary Baldwin.

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• What: The Dumas Arts Festival, celebrating black theater, film and poetry
• When: Friday through Sunday
• Where: Dumas Center for Artistic and Cultural Development, 108 Henry St.
• Cost: A festival pass is $35 per person and $50 for a couple. Tickets for individual days and events also are available.
• For more information: Call the Mill Mountain Theatre box office at 342-5740. For a complete schedule of events and times, visit the Dumas Arts Festival site on myspace.com.

Another month, another arts festival.

The city's first Roanoke Arts Festival in October drew disappointing crowds -- but that doesn't seem to have deterred anyone else from giving festivals a try.

The latest is in some ways the most intriguing: The Dumas Arts Festival will celebrate black theater, film and poetry at the recently renovated Dumas Center for Artistic and Cultural Development this weekend.

The festival is a joint presentation of the Dumas Drama Guild, Mill Mountain Theatre and Hollins University.

"It's been a wonderful partnership," said William Penn, Dumas Drama Guild production coordinator. He said the event is intended for "the general public."

The festival is partly funded by a grant from former Roanoke businessman and current Hollins University playwriting student Kenley Smith. Smith started the ball rolling last fall, when he set out to find a venue for playwriting students to perform their own works in the community. Smith also is working to open an experimental theater in downtown Roanoke.

Smith and others decided to focus on new works by black artists at the Dumas festival because no one else is doing it -- and to help draw more black residents into the city's arts and cultural community.

"This is really an underserved part of the arts community," Smith said. "There's a great potential for Roanoke to become a center for new works of African-American theater."

"A weekend-long celebration of the contributions African-Americans have made, can make and will make to our community is a pretty worthy experiment," said Todd Ristau, director of the graduate program in playwriting at Hollins University. "And it is a great example of the kind of cooperation that the new Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Bridge is supposed to represent."

A festival without risk

The festival includes a walk across the new bridge from the Dumas to Mill Mountain Theatre to attend the popular late-night, anything-goes No Shame Theatre on Friday night.

Among others things, the festival helps cement the role of the Dumas Center as a lower-priced venue for staging original works.

The center at 108 Henry St. is a former hotel in what was the heart of the city's black business district, before urban renewal projects and fires succeeded in leveling most of it.

It is now home to 180-seat Barlow Performance Hall, and was the site of last fall's performance of an original ballet, "Roanoke Primeval," by Roanoke Ballet Theatre, with music by the Audubon Quartet. "Roanoke Primeval" was part of the first Roanoke Arts Festival. (The second Roanoke Arts Festival is scheduled for this October.)

Some events from the "Marginal Arts Festival," sponsored by Community School earlier this month, were held at the Dumas as well. The "Marginal Arts Festival" featured everything from independent films to power-tool drag racing.

This weekend's centerpiece is a staged reading of Mary Baldwin College theater professor Clinton Johnston's "Am I Black Enough Yet?" on Saturday night. The play is a funny and probing look at being black in America.

"Am I Black Enough Yet?" is scheduled for a full production at Mill Mountain Theatre from March 13-16, with future performances in Nelson County, Charlottesville and Washington, D.C. Festival organizers hope this weekend's staged reading will encourage people to attend the Mill Mountain Theatre production as well.

The festival also includes free talks and workshops, including Hollins University professor T.J. Anderson's Saturday morning workshop on setting poetry to music.

The festival kicks off Friday night with a screening of "If the People Could Fly," by Hollins Film Contest winner Kalimah Abioto. There will also be musical excerpts from a Hollins production of Tony Kushner's "Caroline, or Change," and two short plays by Roanoke Times editor and playwright Dwayne Yancey.

Saturday includes a free poetry slam from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday features a talk on the history of Henry Street by Roanoke Tribune publisher Claudia Whitworth, a jazz concert and a poetry reading.

Ristau said the Dumas festival is potentially "a great model. Someone makes a contribution so financial risk is out of the equation and people can really try something new and worth doing without worrying that they will lose their shirt. ... It puts the focus on the work, which is where it should be.

"What we need now is the support of an enthusiastic audience."