Danitra Vance

Raised in the South Side, Chicago, Vance grew up with her mother, younger sister, and maternal grandparents in a household where telling stories was the main form of entertainment, and graduated from nearby Thornton Township High School in 1972.[2] In high school she was active in theater and was a member of the debate team. She later attended National College of Education[3] before transferring to Roosevelt University in 1975, where she studied playwriting and acting,[1] and graduated with honors.[3] She then moved to London to study at Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, where she was classically trained in Shakespeare and earned a MFA.[1]

Vance started her career performing with The Second City improv group before moving to New York City in 1981[4] with goals of performing only to face direct discrimination and return to the midwest to teach high school in Gary, Indiana, where her students helped inspire characters in her next show. She initially performed the characters in Old Town, Chicago.[4]

From November 30 – December 11, 1984, Vance mounted the show, "Danitra Vance and the Mell-o White Boys," at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.[5] In a review of the piece that ran in the Village Voice, theater critic Alisa Solomon wrote that Vance's comedy "stabs while it entertains, actually causing a physical catch in your laughter, as she undercuts every pose she takes... Beginning with and then undermining stereotypes, Vance creates an unsettling tension among stereotypes, reality, and the conditions that create stereotypes."[6] Among the characters she performed in the show were several that she later developed on Saturday Night Live – including teenaged mother Cabrini Green Jackson and Flotilla Williams (who performs a version of Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene from her fire escape), described as a "ghetto Shakespearean actress".[2][3][7]

Vance was the first African American woman to become an SNL repertory player in 1985[3] (not to be confused with Yvonne Hudson from season six, who first appeared as a recurring extra for season four (1978–1979) and season five (1979–1980) and was hired as a feature player in 1981), the only SNL cast member to have a learning disability, and was the first lesbian cast member hired (though her sexual orientation never became public knowledge until her death). Her casting alongside Terry Sweeney was also the first time that Saturday Night Live had two LGBTQ+ cast members (as Sweeney was the show's first openly gay male cast member).[8] She is best remembered for the sketch "That Black Girl," (a spoof of the 1960s sitcom That Girl), and for her character Cabrini Green Harlem Watts Jackson, a teenage mother who dispensed advice on the dos and don'ts of being pregnant. Both were recurring characters during her time on SNL. She had dyslexia and was the only SNL cast member to have a learning disability. According to Al Franken in the book Live from New York: The Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, she had trouble memorizing lines and reading cue cards, though this was not made apparent in most cases and, in one case, ad-libbing covered it up.

Vance appeared on SNL during a time of great transition for the show outside her roles, while she herself became frustrated over being put into roles that were stereotypically associated with young, black women:[1] such as waitresses; nurses; secretaries; unwed, welfare-dependent mothers (her recurring character, Cabrini Green Jackson, easily fell into this category); and "mammy"-style maids/house slaves in Civil War-based sketches. The last type of role was made evident during the episode hosted by Oprah Winfrey in spring of 1986 where in the cold opening, Vance played Lorne Michaels' personal slave (supposedly as Celie from the movie The Color Purple) who convinces Michaels to force Oprah into performing stereotypically black roles by beating her, only to have Oprah choke Lorne in a headlock while opening the show with its opening line, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" In a short musical sketch on the same episode, Vance sang "I Play The Maids" (a spin on "I Write the Songs"), a satirical song that expressed frustration over black actresses (and herself) being typecast as maids in films and on television shows. Ironically, one of Danitra Vance's celebrity impersonations was of Cicely Tyson (in The Pee Wee Herman Thanksgiving Special sketch), who avoided film or TV roles that stereotyped black women, and, during her hosting stint on the fourth season (1978–1979), was shocked and disgusted that Garrett Morris was put in lesser roles on the show.

Vance ultimately was let go SNL at the end of the 1986 season along with many other cast members from that season who were dismissed, including Joan Cusack, Robert Downey Jr., Randy Quaid, Anthony Michael Hall, and Terry Sweeney, the other first LGBT member of the SNL cast.

She was awarded an NAACP Image Award in 1986 and later won an Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actress for her performance in the theatrical adaptation of Spunk, a collection of short stories written by Zora Neale Hurston.[9] That same year, Vance was also in the original cast of George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum; she would go on to reprise some of her performances therein for a 1991 Great Performances restaging of the play.

Vance was the second female lead opposite Nancy Allen in Limit Up, where she played a guardian angel on assignment for God being played by Ray Charles. She had small roles in The War of the Roses and Little Man Tate and a more significant role in Jumpin' at the Boneyard, for which she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1990, Vance underwent a single mastectomy and incorporated the experience into a solo skit, "The Radical Girl's Guide to Radical Mastectomy". She expanded on her experiences in a second, autobiographical show, titled "Pre-Shrunk" which was to be performed at The Public Theater. However, she was unable to perform as her cancer recurred in 1993. She died of the disease the following year in Markham, Illinois.[3] She requested her funeral be held at an amusement park, and her family threw her a "going-away party" with apple bobbing and bean bag tossing to respect her wishes.[1] She was survived by her partner, Jones Miller.[1]

• Danitra Vance at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Danitra Vance on IMDb
• Danitra Vance at AllMovie
• Biography from the website of the Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival
• Danitra Vance at Find a Grave
• Danitra Vance's artist page on La MaMa's Digital Collections website.