Debbie Allen, the dancer, choreographer and director whose career spans Fame, the Oscars and Broadway, has recalled a private tour of Donald Trump's superyacht in the 1980s, when he was a property developer and she was a judge at the Miss America pageant. She described the vessel's lapis lazuli bathroom and nightclub, and remembered telling him: “If I do it, honey, it's going to be all Black people.”
Four decades on, Allen, 76, struggles to reconcile that “showman” with the polarising figure he has become. She told the Guardian: “He was a fun guy back then. I don't know what happened.” She said she did not think of him as racist or sexist at the time, but now wonders “if that's really him or is it people that are encouraging him to act like this”. She added: “We're living in a time where it's like we're in an earthquake every day here in America.”
Allen's own achievements are formidable: a Golden Globe, Emmys and an Olivier award, ten times choreographer of the Oscars, founder of the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, and a prolific television director on Grey's Anatomy. Her London production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won an Olivier in 2010.
Now she is back on Broadway directing Joe Turner's Come and Gone, August Wilson's 1911 drama about African American life in Pittsburgh. Denzel Washington, who has championed Wilson's ten-play cycle, suggested she direct the stage version first.
Allen wrote a 40-page study guide for the production. She said the play speaks to her because it is “intergenerational” and explores memory, religion and spirituality. The protagonist, Herald Loomis, is a victim of peonage, a forced labour system that extended slavery into the 20th century. Allen sees his search for identity as a question for America: “Who are we? What is our identity? Because everything that's happening right now is beyond ex...”
The production has already drawn an enthusiastic response, with a recent audience cheering her arrival at the Barrymore Theatre. Allen, who was appointed US cultural ambassador of dance by George W. Bush in 2001, continues to shape American culture while reflecting on its divisions.
