Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance’s son, Slater Vance, is carrying on a piece of his mother’s legacy at Yale University.
The 20-year-old has helped revive the Heritage Theater Ensemble, Yale’s first Black student theater group, which Bassett helped establish in 1979 while she was a student at the university.
At the time, Black students had few opportunities to perform on campus.
“She originally created this space because when she was here, there were no Black roles, even in the Geffen School of Drama,” Slater told the Yale Daily News.
The Heritage Theater Ensemble later went dormant during the COVID-19 pandemic and remained inactive until Slater and fellow Yale student Chin Onwu brought it back in August.
More than four decades after Bassett helped establish the ensemble, Slater and Onwu have renamed it the Heritage Production Company and expanded its focus beyond theater to include film. The two, who serve as co-presidents, plan to produce one play and one film each semester.
Slater hopes to tell stories connected to the African diaspora and motivate a new generation of Black creatives on campus. The revival has already drawn interest from students, with nearly 70 registered with the organization.
The Heritage Production Company also has its first major stage production on the calendar for next spring. Slater and Onwu will direct John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, which follows a young Black man who enters the lives of a wealthy New York couple by claiming to be the son of actor Sidney Poitier.
Four performances are scheduled at Yale from April 15 through April 17, 2027.
Slater is a member of Yale’s Class of 2028, while his twin sister, Bronwyn Vance, attends Harvard University.
Bassett earned her bachelor’s degree in African American Studies from Yale in 1980 before receiving her MFA from the Yale School of Drama. Courtney B. Vance later earned his MFA from the drama school as well.
