For all of his four years at Dartmouth, Randall Dottin '94 has been a pillar of the arts community. This term he has curated the new Loews film series, "The Legacy of the Middle Passage," which explores issues of African American culture. He has also been an active member of the Black Underground Theater Association at Dartmouth.
"The Legacy of the Middle Passage" film series has drawn sizable crowds all term. It deals with the "Middle Passage," where enslaved Africans were packed into the hulls of slaveships and brought to America. From this voyage, Africans became African-Americans, and developed their own distinctive culture, a mixture of many others.
"I chose 'The Legacy of the Middle Passage' as a metaphor for African-Americans in the arts today. The films show how African Americans had to come together to maintain heritage, culture, and to survive. Artists look to the Middle Passage as a lesson-African American culture is made up of different cultures, and different types of colors, and is very complex and diverse," Dottin said.
He continued, "The films in the series are trying to depict the lesson the Middle Passage teaches. Most Hollywood films don't show these lessons, they show stereotypical views of African Americans. These films in the series show African Americans differently. Perhaps in a way that we haven't been witness to before, these films break down stereotypes and show different sides of African Americans."
But Dottin's contribution to community cinema is not his only achievement. His main involvement in the arts has been through BUTA. Dottin has written, acted, and directed in many of the group's performances.
Zola Mashariki '94, the director of BUTA, discussed his work. "Randall is amazingly talented, and has a lot of promise to be a wonderful actor/director, because he wants to pursue a career in film. He is very committed and creative. When we worked together in BUTA, we brainstormed together - he is very advanced for his work at Dartmouth."
Reagarding BUTA, Dottin said, "I started my involvement with the group my freshman year, I was interested in acting, playwriting. In the fall, winter and spring terms of frehman year, I acted in plays and directed one, also. Through the years, Zola and I have worked on many projects together, and the plays I have directed have had a profound effect on me. These plays allowed me to express blackness through performance."
"This year, as BUTA's artistic director, I worked on James Riddick's play, 'Lawd Have Mercy,' performed in Center Theater. It is one of the first student plays performed in Center Theater, a big move for BUTA, that helps make it more mainstream, a very positive move," Dottin said.
This past weekend, both Dottin and Mashariki performed at "Rock the Hop," where they did a piece entitled "Spell No. 7."
"We did this piece as freshmen, and Zola asked me to do it again, so we went for it," Dottin said.
Currently, Dottin is spending his senior spring in Boston. "I took an extra term to study playwriting in England, so I was done with 12 terms by the end of the winter," he said.
In Boston, Dottin is busy as a part-owner of a franchise of a house-painting corporation.
As to the future, Dottin said, "my current job lasts until the end of the summer. After that, I will take fall classes at Harvard [University] and apply to film schools, because I want, as a career, to be a filmmaker."
