Patricia R. Corbett: Girl in a Tie
Interview by Rose Norman, December 2, 2015, updated summer 2023
Rose Norman: How did you get involved in playwriting?
Patricia R. Corbett: I became involved in writing my first play, Fall of the House of Snow, while teaching in Washington, DC. I had already published a short story of the same title. Prior to writing Fall of the House of Snow, I had never written a play, I was encouraged to convert the short story into a play. I had no intention of being a playwright. The key, as with all mediums of artistic expression, is strong storytelling which is the core of everything I do. At the time, I considered myself a poet and short fiction writer. When I wrote Snow, it wasnât very polished; yet I won a Maryland State Arts Council award for playwriting. I used the award funds to rent the Warehouse Theatre in Washington, DC. I held a private reading of the play there. I soon discovered that all of my work led me back to Virginia. Eventually, it would lead me further south to North Carolina, the birthplace of my father, Reverend Linwood Corbett, Senior.
The South is very important to my artistic work. I was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond is the former Confederate capital of the South. Very early in life, I was exposed to many racially charged experiences. I learned of Southern racial politics from my fatherâs civil rights activism. With blood, sweat, and tears, and great resilience, he put himself through Virginia Union University. And he sent my mother, myself, and my three siblings to the university while he was working as a custodian. He told my mother later that he had wanted us to be on campus to encourage an interest and respect for education. My father was a civil rights activist, a Southern Baptist minister, a baggage foreman at Greyhound Eastern Lines, and a custodian at Virginia Union University. He is one of the most influential persons in my life and in my art.
My father was a minister, but he also wanted to be an actor. My mother was the first, Black professional clown in Virginia.
During the early civil rights struggles of the 1960s and â70s, her father was one of the very vocal young leaders and ministers in Richmond. He led protests, and he was arrested many times. As a graduate student at Goddard College [Vermont], I wrote a piece called Why I Hate the Circus. The night when the circus came to town, my father was arrested and brutally beaten by police. The next day, I saw my father in jail. He was black and blue. I equated the treatment of the circus animals with the brutality my father experienced. My father was a minister, but he also wanted to be an actor. My mother was the first, Black professional clown in Virginia.
While at Goddard College [Vermont], I also worked with a dramaturge to write two versions of the play, Fall of the House of Snow. It is a three-act play in two versions, one for traditional theatre, and the other for unconventional spaces. What I learned as a graduate student in interdisciplinary arts was that you donât look for art. Art finds you. I think my interest in art and community activism allows me to shift art across the disciplines, reflecting the creativity of both parents.
Biographical Note
Patricia R. Corbett, born in 1966, was raised in Richmond, Virginia. Her father was her greatest influence: Reverend Linwood Corbett, Senior, a Southern Baptist minister and a baggage foreman, was a graduate of Virginia Union University, a Black Baptist university.
Patricia is an artist, storyteller, award-winning playwright, educator, writer/editor, and entrepreneur. Her passions include community service, social justice, and education.
Among her many accomplishments, Patricia is the recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council for her play, Fall of the House of Snow. In 1998, she founded and owns JUSTaSISTA Productions, a company that has grown with her development as a writer and artist.
Patricia has received several awards for her service to Black and gay pride communities. Patricia has several works in process, including Rise of the House of Snow, Perils of a Southern Black Woman, and Aunt Maggie’s Mojo or The Devil in Angel Brown. Her work weaves themes of gender identity, feminism, death, secrets and family into taut complex stories.
RN: How long have you worked with Richmond Triangle Players? Were you involved when Jacqui Singleton was directing her own shows? Have you worked with her?
PRC: I am aware of Jacqui Singleton because of Phil Crosby at Richmond Triangle Players. Phil shared to me that Jacquiâs absence at the theatre left a space for artists of color to fill. Through Philâs generosity, I was able to hold my first full theatrical reading of Fall of the House of Snow at Richmond Triangle Theatre.
RN: Fall of the House of Snow is about Black men who are female impersonators. Have you done any plays about lesbians, butches, or any specifically lesbian-feminist themed shows?
PRC: The play Fall of the House of Snow is very different from the short story. The central character of the short story is a young Black woman who is starting to come out, and who meets a group of female impersonators. It explores how she is impacted by the AIDS epidemic. In the original story, the only female character was a Black lesbian. At the time, I knew Black lesbian women in the community who took care of sick and dying friends. I wanted Snow to reflect the bond lesbians have with their gay male friends.
My current project is Perils of a Southern Black Woman: stories, tales, and nightmares told in the light. Perils is a one-woman show inspired by the work of Audre Lorde, and by my performance with Brown Girls in the Ring, a brown girl collective that I founded with a group of women at Goddard College. Perils weaves through the complex issues of race, religion, and gender. This collection examines life as seen through the eyes of the daughter of a civil rights activist, Baptist preacher, and teacher. Through a âsermonesqueâ performance that employs commentary, short stories, poetry, and extemporaneous discourse, the show celebrates blackness, strength, resilience, love, and the contradictory existence of being Black and American in the South. The stories feature three Black women and a doll. First is sixteen-year-old Virginia Christian, a Black teen who was the first woman executed in the state of Virginia. Entertainer Gladys Bentley was a Black American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance, and she was well-known as a lesbian, cross-dressing performer. The doll is the first transgender Barbie, put on the market by Mattel. The play ends with Harriet Jacobs, a slave who ran away and hid in an attic space in a barn on a plantation for seven years. [Harriet Jacobs wrote a memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, under the pseudonym Linda Brent, published in 1861, while she was still a fugitive.]
My other project is Aunt Maggieâs MoJo or the Devil Angel Brown. This novel is about three generations of Black women who are clairvoyant in some way. The protagonist is a Black lesbian detective. While Fall of the House of Snow is the first project that’s getting a lot of attention, I think those two projects are strong. I hope this will be the catapult for Snow.
RN: JUSTaSISTA Productions seems to be the business you started for marketing your various services, as well as for producing plays. How long has that been going on, and how much business are you doing with personal histories?
PRC: I founded JUSTaSISTA Productions in 1998 as Just Another Sister Productions. I was very young then, and didnât know what I wanted to do with the company. I worked with a video production company, and JUSTaSISTA evolved from me writing scripts, biographies, and copy, to producing art that is designed to educate, enlighten, and provide a space for the storytelling of marginalized populations. All of the work that I do in writing and editing for clients funds my art endeavors. I write and edit most types of copy ranging from white papers to screenplays. Right now, there is a surge in people wanting to make sure that their stories are preserved. I donât seek them out. Itâs what I do that tends to bring people to me. The idea is that the company will generate money for artistic projects to benefit various communities.
RN: Have you done any personal histories that might fit into our Sinister Wisdom special issue?
PRC: I have been a ghostwriter for over fifteen years. Although I am unable to share a great portion of this work because of privacy agreements, I am able to share a snippet. I have a project that a couple began. Later, the couple separated. I can share a bit if anyone reaches out and who would like to see this work.
RN: Tell me about the Sisters Rising Mentoring Organization. When did you start that?
PRC: About fifteen years ago, I was teaching eleventh-grade English at the Adult Career Development Center in Richmond, Virginia, when I started Sisters Rising Female Education, Enlightenment, and Empowerment, a mentoring organization for teen girls and young women. The organization began by providing a space for after school hours, a space where they could share personal concerns and do conflict mediation. Eventually, Sisters Rising evolved in its support to help its members establish bank accounts, apply for college, and find housing. Sisters Rising flourished for the entire five years that I was teaching at the school. [It did not continue after she left.]
After those five years, I moved to Maryland to study the charter school system with the plan of founding Sisters Rising Academy, a boarding school for girls. The school would have a college track and a certification track, with an emphasis on art and vocational jobs. I have a broad vision that I plan to achieve. Sisters Rising Mentoring Organization was the incubator for a much broader vision [that is still incubating]. I do believe in the importance of sisterhood.
I was closeted when I worked for Richmond public schools, which is laughable to me now. But there are some cultural issues involved in being out. Many of the women I knew and still know are not living their lives openly. I left Richmond with a partner who insisted on being out. Thatâs where I grew my wings, moving freely as an out and proud lesbian. The one thing that I learned being in Washington, DC, was that if I came back to Richmond, I could never go back in the closet. I would have to stand up in ways that other people cannot.
As we look at whatâs happening in society, none of us has room to suppress our stories any more. It is my goal to fight harder for human rights than individual rights in order to leave a legacy of love and the value of community service for my family.
Just recently Iâve been reading and trying to balance whatâs happening in our world with my art. How do we justify the relevance of the stories of Black gay men who died in the HIV epidemic when we are faced with police brutality and more and more violence. Iâve been looking at some of the Black protest writers, Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael. Die, Nigger Die! by Rap Brown (1958) is a book that belonged to my father. It is about a Southern, free, Black theatre traveling with the civil rights movement.
As an artist, a Black lesbian, a mother, and a grandmother, all the things I am, I speak quite openly about what it is to be a Black, invisible lesbian. As we look at whatâs happening in society, none of us has room to suppress our stories any more. It is my goal to fight harder for human rights than individual rights in order to leave a legacy of love and of the value of community service for my family.
This interview has been edited for archiving by the interviewer and interviewee, close to the time of the interview. More recently, it has been edited and updated for this website. Original interviews are archived at the Sallie Bingham Center for Womenâs History and Culture in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
See also:
“Check Out Patricia Corbett’s Story,” VoyageRaleigh, May 15, 2023.
Merril Mushroom, âVirginia Artist Patricia R. Corbett,â Sinister Wisdom 104 (Spring 2017): 153-55.
Twitter: Girl in a Tie
Web: Just-a-Sistah: Girl in a Tie Productions
Blog: Out Black Voices
LinkedIn: Patricia R. Corbett
Facebook: JUSTaSISTA Productions â âUtilizing Writing, Public Speaking, Artistic Productions, and Networking to create Paradigm Shifts in Education, Business and the Community.â
Facebook: Fall of the House of Snow, a staged reading of the play performed by Richmond Triangle Players on November 21, 2015. The play is about Black men who are female impersonators in the late 1980s, based on a story told to the author (from YouTube).