Playwright, director and producer Ken Widelo, along with his wife, Vi Higginsen, has given his life to Broadway's gospel musical “Mama, I Want to Sing,” a permanent Black Theatre production that ran over 2,800 performances. I saved it. He passed away on January 21st at his Harlem home. He was 81 years old.
The cause was heart failure, his daughter, Ahmaya Knore Higginson, said.
“Mom, I want to sing,” tells the story of the pastor's daughter, who rises to international fame as a soul singer. The show is loosely based on the life of Higginsen's sister, Doris Troy. Doris Troy had a great time by honing the singing chops at Harlem's father's Pentecostal church and later co-written and recorded “Just a Look.” It was her top ten single in 1963 and later hit with both the Hollys and Linda Ronstadt.
Troy also made her mark as a backup singer for Rock Anthems, like Rolling Stones. Supporting cast includes George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Billy Preston.
“Mom, I Want to Sing” is a “Black Cinderella Story,” Widro said in a 2013 interview with entertainment website Call Mee Adam. “Come from behind and find yourself through loss, pain, and family love.”
“Mama” eventually ran a marathon, but success was not guaranteed. Almost every major theater producer in New York refused the show and feared that gospel-rich musicals would attract a limited audience.
The show was a family affair. Wydro was the director. He and Higginssen produced it, writing many of its original numbers books and lyrics (Wesley Naylor and Grenold Frasier wrote the music). Troy himself was cast in the role of mother, but Higginssen, a well-known New York disc jockey and television host, provided the stage narration from inside the booth, like a radio announcer. (Their daughter eventually took over the leading role).
On a budget of just $20,000, Widelo and Higginssen are far from the lights of Manhattan's theatre district, instead raising the curtains in 1983 at the long Heckshadow Theatre in East Harlem. Without the money to promote in major newspapers, they were primarily dependent on word of mouth.
“We did grassroots marketing, went to black churches and then touched on the basis of schools, sororities and professional business groups in the black community,” Widro said in 1990's Philadelphia Inquirer. He spoke in an interview with Ra.
The words certainly came out. In a 1984 review in the New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, “Recent performances have culminated in the audience of gospel standards.
The following year's Times article noted that “Mama” portrayed an audience “from a distance, literally by busroad, from Boston and Decatur, Georgia.” Another article in 1987 describes the cough of the theatre's “whooping cough, cheering, mouth s”, and the musical has already recorded 1,500 performances, making it the longest-running black show in off-Broadway history. It's there.
Kenneth Wayne Widro was born in Queens on February 11, 1943 and is the elder of two sons of insurance salesman Kashmir Waidro and real estate broker Olga (Savic) Waidro. His father was the son of a Polish immigrant. His mother's parents were from Ukraine.
After graduating from Chort Rosemary Hall Boarding School in Wallingford, Connecticut in 1960, he attended the University of Rochester University in Rochester New York in 1964, where he received his bachelor's degree before heading to the University of California, Berkeley. I did. Master's degree in theaters in 1966.
Wydro spent some early years running seminars in public speaking and communications at companies such as IBM and General Foods. He wrote four books (1981) including “Thinking Your Foot: The Art of Thinking and Speaking Under Pressure.”
He and Higginssen changed the “O” of her last name to “E” when she joined show business, and married in 1981, and a few months later “mama” while walking around the beaches of Jamaica. I've started to draw the outline. The 1990 sequel, “Mom, I Want to Sing: Part II” and the third in 1996, “Born To Sing.”
In February 1994, thousands of people were able to see the original show, played at the Paramount Theater in Madison Square Garden. In many ways, “Mama” toured widely in the United States, not only in Europe and Japan. Film adaptations with Ciara, Lynn Whitfield, Patti Labelle and others were released in 2011. In 2023, my daughter oversaw the 40s revival of “Mama.” Del Barrio.
In 1998, the couple and their daughters started the Mama Arts Foundation to support music artists who work in traditionally black genres.
The couple continued to work as producers for many years. Wydro also wrote a play that included the 2006 drama Secrets: The Untold Story of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Widelo was survived by his brother Lawrence.
Later in years, Widelo often expressed pride in the impact “Mama” had on the Black Theater. “What we could do was appeal to an audience that had not been invited to the theatre before,” he said.
