The listing on the City of Norfolk's events calendar is spare: "Born a Revel: Alumni & Community Reunion Production," historical theatre performances, at the S.L. Roundtree Theatre inside Booker T. Washington High School, 1111 Park Avenue. Two days, four performances. That is nearly all the public record says about the show itself. But the room it is being staged in carries a story of its own, and that story explains why an alumni reunion production would choose this stage and this name.
The theatre was named for Samuel L. Roundtree, the teacher, director and choreographer who, according to the New Journal and Guide, elevated Booker T. Washington's drama program from 1984 to 1991. When the auditorium was formally dedicated to him, the New Journal and Guide reported that the ceremony fell on his 78th birthday and included tributes, performances and the unveiling of a commemorative plaque.
"Mr. Roundtree expected your best and did not allow any excuses from any of us," Hermione Patrick, a former BTW student and Thespian, said at the dedication, according to the New Journal and Guide's account.
The push to put his name on the auditorium came from the community rather than from the school district. A petition circulated in support of renaming the space the "S.L. Roundtree Theatre at Booker T. Washington High School" made the case in generational terms: he may have taught your mother, maybe your grandmother, decades before he had the chance to teach you. The petition credits him with overseeing the development and introduction of the Academy for Visual and Performing Arts at Booker T. Washington, and notes that he ran his own studio at the same time he was teaching in the public schools.
That academy is now central to the school's identity. Booker T. Washington High School was founded in 1911 and is today a public high school of roughly 950 students in the Norfolk Public Schools system, with maroon, white and gold colors and the Mighty Bookers as its mascot. Its arts academy has been the subject of sustained public attention in recent years, including a 2019 Norfolk School Board resolution to fund planning for the 111-year-old building and its arts program, and community meetings at which residents were invited to weigh in on the academy's future. Principal Matthew Mason, speaking at the Roundtree dedication, told the gathering he had never worked at a school with so much history.
That history reaches well beyond Norfolk. The New Journal and Guide, in its coverage of the dedication, traced the school's legacy from the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis to Lyon, France, where the drummer Grover "Sangoma" Everett is regarded as one of the world's top jazz drummers. The point the paper was making is the one the reunion production seems built around: a neighborhood high school whose arts program has sent people out into the world for generations, and whose graduates now come back.
Which is what "Born a Revel" appears to be. The title reads as a pun on being born to revel — to celebrate, to make merry, to put on a show — and the event is billed as both an alumni gathering and a community one, a reunion framed as theatre rather than a banquet. The city calendar categorizes it simply as "historical theatre performances," which suggests a production that looks backward at the school and the neighborhood it has anchored on Park Avenue for more than a century.
Anyone planning to attend should pay close attention to the schedule, because the calendar entry is easy to misread. The event's date is listed as October 24, 2026, and the overall time window as 9:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., but the actual showtimes are spread across two days: October 23 at 9:30 a.m. and again at 7:00 p.m., then October 24 at 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. The city's own listing advises attendees to "please check the time details for show times" — good advice, since the 9:30 a.m. slot belongs to Friday, not Saturday. The venue is the S.L. Roundtree Theatre at Booker T. Washington High School, 1111 Park Avenue, Norfolk, VA 23504.
Details beyond the schedule — ticket prices, whether the production is devised from alumni recollections, who wrote and directed it — are not posted on the city calendar, and no program or ticketing page for the show surfaced in available sources. What is clear is the shape of the thing: four performances over two days in a theatre named for the man who built the school's arts reputation, staged by and for the people who came through it. For a school that has been on Park Avenue since 1911, and an arts academy that has spent decades sending students into careers on stages far from Norfolk, a reunion told as theatre is a fitting form. The room, after all, is already a monument to one of its teachers.