Cecil Alonzo: Brooklyn’s Live Soap
Day 8, Cecil Alonzo, Actor, Director
Deceased: dates to come
My first meeting with Cecil Alonzo.
One morning, in the early days of the first iteration of ROUTES (1977-1980), I was sitting at my desk in our 20 ft x 20 ft. office space at 230 West 41st on the 13th Floor, when the door burst opened and a man sprung in shouting “Who is the publisher of ROUTES Magazine?” I looked at that overly excited person and said “I am”. He continued excitedly speaking: “I’m Cecil Alonzo. I have a weekly black soap opera in Brooklyn, and, none of the press will write about it. It’s your responsibility as a black publisher to write something about it. No one else has ever performed a weekly black soap opera.”
So below, you’ll find our take on Cecil Alonzo’s Brooklyn Live Soap. One of my very good actress friends, Marjorie Johnson, began her acting career at the Cecil Alonzo’s Brooklyn Live Soap.
Not until just reading the byline of the writer of the article on Cecil, I’d forgotten who’d written it—A. Peter Bailey. My heartfelt thanks to A. Peter Bailey for being so generous, over the 37 year history of ROUTES. He has written at least one article in each of the 3 iterations. I met A. Peter Bailey in 1977, when he worked for the Black Theatre Alliance. Tomorrow, I’ll publish the list of more than 30 black theater companies that were in existence in the mid 70s.