Before Rites and Reason Theatre's official founding in 1970, the first cohorts of Black students at Brown University and Pembroke College, the women’s college attached to Brown, began to matriculate, immersing themselves in the Black Arts Movement and Black art as a way to ease their transition onto the campus. Aided by faculty in the Theatre and Performance Studies department, and inspired by Brown’s new open curriculum, James Borders and Sheryl Brissett-Chapman ’71 and Ramona Kolobe and Zylpha Pryor-Bell ’72, played significant roles in the founding of Rites and Reason Theatre through their producing Black plays and organizing Black Arts Festivals on campus, and eventually interviewing and hiring the late George Houston Bass in 1970. Once he accepted the position, Bass- personal secretary to Langston Hughes and executor of his literary estate—became the founding Artistic Director for Rites and Reason Theatre.

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. Early productions and festivals traveled throughout public spaces, city parks, and centers and offered a unique space on Brown’s campus to surrounding Black community members and arts practitioners.

Elmo Terry-Morgan’74 became Artistic Director in 1991 and remained until his retirement in 2023. During his tenure, Morgan pioneered courses and archival collections organized around the scholarship of Black Queer theatre artists. He worked alongside Karen Allen Baxter to continue the tradition and ensure plays produced by Rites and Reason Theatre incorporated students, faculty, and community practitioners as playwrights and theatre artists on the stage and behind the scenes. 

Today, the Department is engaged in a multi-year project in partnership with the John Hay Library to build the Rites and Reason Theatre Archive. Currently available resources are archived in the University’s digital repository, available here.

Rites and Reason Theatre turned 50 in 2020. To mark the occasion, the Department conducted interviews with the then Artistic Director Elmo Terry-Morgan’74 and Senior Managing Director Karen Allen Baxter.  These interviews were recorded on October 20- 21, 2019 in the George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space at Churchill House, Brown University.