Episode 51: Wayne Cook - A Dream Recalled

Wayne Cook calls himself bumpy. Which is an apt metaphor for the story we are about to share. In it, Wayne plays a promising young athlete, a crash victim, a soldier in Germany, a child therapist, a stage actor, the Black Mr. Rogers, an arts administrator, a successful author, and Langston Hughes.

Wayne Cook worked at the California Arts Council for 23 years, where he was Program Manager of the Artists in School’s Program and the ADA/504 Disability Coordinator. He Currently consults for the William James Association and Arts in Corrections at Solano State Prison and other correctional institutions in California. In previous years, Mr. Cook consulted with the Educational Department for the Sacramento Theatre Company (STC) and was an actor in such productions as, “To Kill A Mockingbird” at STC. Other notable productions Wayne acted in were “The Iceman Cometh” for the Actor’s Theatre of Sacramento and only a few years ago received the Elly award for acting in “Learning Spanish” at the Wilkerson Theatre. Mr. Cook is the author of a drama curriculum, “Center Stage”, A Curriculum for the Performing Arts can be purchased on Amazon.com.

Mr. Rogers: Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003), also known as Mister Rogers, was an American television host, author, producer, and Presbyterian minister.[1] He was the creator, showrunner, and host of the preschool television series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 to 2001

Performing Tree: The Performing Tree was as arts education program that worked in schools in the Los Angeles area in the 1980’s and 90’s. 

Arts in Corrections: In the early 1970's, a time when work opportunities for artists and arts educators were diminishing in the mainstream culture, many professional artists began to look to society's forgotten corners for a new constituency. Patients and prisoners offered an alternative opportunity for artists to respond to a crying need to be valued. The emergence of these institutional art programs also provides a challenge to artists' preconceptions about the value and potential of the creative processes--a value which was as rooted in the issues of survival as those of aesthetics.

California Arts Council: Culture is the strongest signifier of California’s identity. As a state agency, the California Arts Council supports local arts infrastructure and programming statewide through grants, programs, and services.

Langston Hughes: Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of black intellectual, literary, and artistic life that took place in the 1920s in a number of...

Wayne Cook calls himself bumpy. Which is an apt metaphor for the story we are about to share. In it, Wayne plays a promising young athlete, a crash victim, a soldier in Germany, a child therapist, a stage actor, the Black Mr. Rogers, an arts administrator, a successful author, and Langston Hughes.

Wayne Cook worked at the California Arts Council for 23 years, where he was Program Manager of the Artists in School’s Program and the ADA/504 Disability Coordinator. He Currently consults for the William James Association and Arts in Corrections at Solano State Prison and other correctional institutions in California. In previous years, Mr. Cook consulted with the Educational Department for the Sacramento Theatre Company (STC) and was an actor in such productions as, “To Kill A Mockingbird” at STC. Other notable productions Wayne acted in were “The Iceman Cometh” for the Actor’s Theatre of Sacramento and only a few years ago received the Elly award for acting in “Learning Spanish” at the Wilkerson Theatre. Mr. Cook is the author of a drama curriculum, “Center Stage”, A Curriculum for the Performing Arts can be purchased on Amazon.com.

Mr. Rogers: Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003), also known as Mister Rogers, was an American television host, author, producer, and Presbyterian minister.[1] He was the creator, showrunner, and host of the preschool television series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 to 2001

Performing Tree: The Performing Tree was as arts education program that worked in schools in the Los Angeles area in the 1980’s and 90’s. 

Arts in Corrections: In the early 1970's, a time when work opportunities for artists and arts educators were diminishing in the mainstream culture, many professional artists began to look to society's forgotten corners for a new constituency. Patients and prisoners offered an alternative opportunity for artists to respond to a crying need to be valued. The emergence of these institutional art programs also provides a challenge to artists' preconceptions about the value and potential of the creative processes--a value which was as rooted in the issues of survival as those of aesthetics.

California Arts Council: Culture is the strongest signifier of California’s identity. As a state agency, the California Arts Council supports local arts infrastructure and programming statewide through grants, programs, and services.

Langston Hughes: Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of black intellectual, literary, and artistic life that took place in the 1920s in a number of American cities, particularly Harlem. A major poet, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays. He sought to honestly portray the joys and hardships of working-class black lives, avoiding both sentimental idealization and negative stereotypes. As he wrote in his essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” “We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.”

Senator Cory Booker: On March 23, 2022 Senator Booker quoted from Langston Hughes’ poem Let American be America Again, in his supporting comments during Senate hearings on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court. 

Senator Booker an American politician, attorney, and author who has served as the junior United States senator from New Jersey since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Booker is the first African-American U.S. senator from New Jersey. He was the 38th mayor of Newark from 2006 to 2013, and served on the Municipal Council of Newark for the Central Ward from 1998 to 2002.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: is an American attorney and jurist who has served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2021.[2] She is an associate justice-designate of the Supreme Court of the United States, having received Senate confirmation on April 7, 2022.[3][4]

Let America be America Again: A Langston Hughes poem published in 1935

As I Grew Older: A Langston Hughes published published in 1935