Marie Goodman Hunter, a longtime fixture in the productions of Richmond’s theater troupes, a singer and actor in many events celebrating the city’s Black community, has died at 95.
Hunter, a mezzo-soprano, was a Virginia State University graduate who also studied at Columbia University. She taught music, speech and drama at John Marshall High School for 30 years and was music minister at Garland Avenue Baptist Church.
She played a variety of singing and speaking characters with many of Richmond’s theater companies over nearly 50 years. She was closely associated with Theatre Virginia, performing in its productions more than two dozen times, culminating in its farewell show in 2002.
Roy Proctor, theater critic for the Richmond News Leader and Richmond Times-Dispatch, dubbed Hunter “the first lady of the Richmond stage.” In Richmond and elsewhere, she was cast in plays and musicals as diverse as “Tartuffe,” “Having our Say,” “A Christmas Carol,” “The Threepenny Opera” and “South Pacific.”
Praising Hunter’s “most outstanding performance” in a 1985 production of Lorraine Hansbury’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” in which she played Mama Younger, The New York Times theater critic Alvin Klein wrote, “The actress is not physically imposing, but her underplaying underscores the quiet affirmation in Miss Hansberry’s writing.”
Singing in recitals and performing at local civic events, Hunter was especially well-known for re-creating speeches of Maggie L. Walker, the pioneering Richmond businesswoman who founded the St. Luke Penny Bank, one of the first Black-owned financial institutions in the US, and for appearing in events commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. and recalling the Black community’s role in Richmond’s history.
Hunter’s daughter, Kelley Hunter, incapsulates her mother’s legacy as one of “love and peace and happiness” in an interview aired on WTVR:
http://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/marie-goodman-hunter-oct-22-2024