Rites and Reason Theatre was established in 1970 by the late Professor George Houston Bass—personal secretary to Langston Hughes and executor of his literary estate—Brown students, and Rhode Island community members as a direct result of the Black Arts Movement and the Black Student Walkout at Brown University in December 1968.

Professor Bass worked with Professor Rhett S. Jones, Rites and Reason's Research Director, to create a space to express the cultural, social, and ideological concerns of the African Diaspora. Together with Producer and Managing Director Karen Allen Baxter, the group codified new methods for play development.

Today, as one of the oldest continuously producing Black theatres in the nation, Rites and Reason Theatre furthers its mission of developing new creative works through its unique Research-to-Performance Method under the leadership of its current Artistic Director, Professor Elmo Terry-Morgan, ’74.

The Research-to-Performance Method (RPM) is a systematic process that organizes teams of artists, scholars and researchers in the scholarly and creative development of new theatrical performances. These RPM teams engage in direct dialogue with the community throughout the developmental process from ideas to readings to workshops to mainstage productions that prioritize the creation of new knowledge through collaborative creativity.