(upbeat music)
- Black Theatre United is out with a powerful new anthem
and a new music video.
This is, "Stand for Change."
♪ I can't tell you how ♪
♪ I can't tell you when ♪
♪ But we'll lay this burden down ♪
♪ And lift our hearts again ♪
♪ Cause life has one refrain ♪
♪ One eternal flame ♪
♪ Nothing stays the same ♪
- The song, brought to life by some of the biggest names
and biggest voices in the Broadway community.
13 founding members of BTU,
including Billy Porter, Audra McDonald,
Brian Stokes Mitchell, LaChanze and Vanessa Williams.
Black Theatre United was formed last summer
in the spirit of activism, advocacy
and creating lasting change in the theater community.
I had a chance to talk with Tony nominee Vanessa Williams
about the origins of "Stand for Change"
and what it means to BTU.
Well, so how have things been going during the shutdown
and everything for you?
I know we're all waiting for Broadway to come back
and there's been some movement recently.
- Well, I was in the West End in London
ready to open "City of Angels".
We were a week away from opening
and Broadway shut down that previous Wednesday
and we thought, "Okay. Maybe London's gonna muster through"
and they shut us down five days later.
So, I ended up coming home.
I would say the the most serious end of everything
was after George Floyd.
I got a call from Audra McDonald
who reached out to all her friends and said,
"Guys, what can we do?"
So we created a Black Theater United.
- Let's talk about the organization as a whole
and what people need to know and what you're doing.
- We are an advocacy group.
We've got mentorships.
We've been able to do these amazing town halls
which we started out with
when we first came together in June.
We want to be an advocate for taking action
and making change.
♪ And when you stand ♪
♪ Take a stand for change ♪
♪ Save the day ♪
- One of our recent ones, which just came out,
is our single called "Stand for Change"
which came to me from one of my dear friends
who wrote one of my biggest hits,
"Save the Best for Last", Phil Galdston,
who is a professor at Steinhardt at NYU.
And Dave Schroeder, another professor at Steinhardt
wrote a song after we were all grieving
and stunned about George Floyd and said,
"I had you Black Theater United in mind.
Do you think you'd like this?"
And I played it for our founders and we all loved it
and thought it would completely line up with our mission.
And we all recorded it, COVID style.
Like whether it's a mic like this
or whether it's on your phone doing voice memos.
We broke everyone's lines down
and then Karen Ford, who's one of our members,
who's one of the only black female sound mixers on Broadway,
she produced all of it and had to sync up all of the vocals
and mix them.
Then one of our other members, Michael McElroy,
who is the head of Broadway Inspirational Voices,
got all of the choir to sing the background parts.
And of course he arranged those.
And then we had Muse, which are the Black instrumentalists
and musical directors on Broadway,
actually play the music.
So, it was definitely kind of a family production
and then bringing it to life was the the hardest
because of COVID precautions.
- I like how you likened "Stand for Change"
to possibly, "We Are the World" one day
and having that same message that resonates year after year
and it's timeless.
- You can't ignore the change that has happened globally.
And it's almost like a giant reset button.
Everyone is listening.
Everyone is ready to morph and change and restart.
And I think that's where we.
(upbeat music)