Roshaunda Ross, Chris Brown, Keianna Richard, Robyn Lee, and Marrissa Weaver, all majoring or minoring in theater, were displeased with the small number of African American roles in plays produced through the Theatre Department, so they founded the African American student theatre group Strange Fruit in 2002. The first project was production of The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe, which opened in the Clarence Brown Lab Theatre on April 3.
The name of the group came, Ross explained, from Billie Holiday’s recording of the song “Strange Fruit,” which had its genesis in an incident in which she was walking along a road and saw a black man hanging from a noose on a fruit tree. A variety of organizations assisted in the formation of Strange Fruit Productions, among them the African American Achievers Program, Minority Student Affairs, the UT Department of Theatre, and the African/African American Studies Program. In 2005 Strange Fruit started the first African American dance company for UT.