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SPECIAL PUBLIC AFFAIRS SECTION. HARLEM WEEK. 20th ANNIVERSARY.
The setting sun slices down 125th Street as blue barricades are shoved in front of the Apollo Theater to guide the crowd into the Wednesday Amateur Night program, a Harlem tradition since 1934.
Though the preshow anticipation outside the Apollo has long existed for Amateur Night and popular music concerts, these days, crowd control and a lit marquee could just as well signal a performance by the Boys Choir of Harlem, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater or the actress Phylicia Rashad.
Betty Carter could be on stage with her youthful "Jazz Ahead" program or the spotlight could be on poets such as Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets.
The world famous Apollo Theater has just finished its first season as a nonprofit performing arts center under the direction of the Apollo Theater Foundation, which assumed control of the theater in December, 1992. The theater had been operated unsuccessfully as a for-profit theater for 10 years by the Apollo Theater Investor Group, headed by Percy Sutton, which reopened it in 1982. The result of the new mandate...