- August 12, 2026
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When Sheldon Rhoden takes on the persona of Marvin Gaye for one of Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe’s musicals, audiences go wild. That’s no exaggeration. Each time Rhoden has starred in WBTT’s “Marvin Gaye: Prince of Soul,” tickets have sold out immediately and his performance as the soulful superstar has drawn screams, applause and standing ovations.
But with four Marvin Gaye-themed shows since 2011, WBTT founder and artistic director Nate Jacobs decided it was time for something different. When he was brainstorming about the show he planned to take to this year’s International Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he remembered the traveling Motown revues of his youth.
In the early 1960s, Motown’s founder, Berry Gordy, sent the Detroit record label’s artists on a cross-country tour. The Nov. 14, 1962 show at College Park Auditorium in Jackson, Mississippi, featured Mary Wells as the headliner. She was joined by Gaye, “Little” Stevie Wonder, Martha & The Vandellas, The Supremes, The Temptations, The Marvelettes and the Contours.
It’s hard to imagine these future superstars and all their sequins and tuxes traveling on a bus, but it really happened.
Memories of those days got Jacobs to thinking: Why not try and capture the excitement of a Motown revue with a show starring Rhoden as Gaye and other talented WBTT members as the artists from the record label known as Hitsville USA?
Another factor in the shaping of WBTT’s new revue was the Gaye family’s reluctance to send a biographical show on the road, he says.
These conditions set the stage for “Marvin: A Marvin Gaye Revue,” which WBTT presented from July 30 to Aug. 1 at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. It marked the 27-year-old theater company’s seventh appearance at the biennial festival, which features more than 100 performances dedicated to Black theater and attracts 60,000 visitors.
Jacobs, who first attended the fest as an individual artist when it was known as the National Black Theatre Festival, calls it the “powwow of Black professional theater. It literally takes over the city."
Founded in 1989 by Larry Leon Hamlin, whom Jacobs describes as one of his mentors, the festival was designed to showcase the best of African-American theater and ensure the survival of professional Black theaters.
The last time WBTT traveled to the festival in 2024, it dodged a hurricane on the way back home. Most of the company made it as far as Atlanta before Hurricane Debby resulted in their flights to Sarasota being canceled. WBTT Executive Director Julie Leach decided the best course of action would be to rent vans and drive. By the time the WBTT troupers arrived back home, the worst of the storm had passed.
WBTT had to negotiate some logistical challenges again during its latest trip to North Carolina. The troupe’s first tech rehearsal on Wednesday, July 29, was cut short when a water main break closed down the campus of Wake Forest University, where they were rehearsing.
By the next day, the power was back on, but WBTT members faced a grueling schedule as they finished rehearsing during the day and premiered their revue that night.
The extra push was worth it because of the enthusiastic reaction of festival audiences at the sold-out performances of “Marvin: A Marvin Gaye Revue.” Says Jacobs: “It was as if we were The Jackson Five. We got ovation after ovation. We couldn’t have been more successful.”
The WBTT show kicks off with a theme song written by Jacobs that introduces the audience to Gaye, a charismatic entertainer who lived a truncated, tumultuous life. His duet partner, Tammi Terrell, died of brain cancer at age 24. He was dogged by rumors about his private life. He was killed by his father at the age of 45 in 1984.
WBTT’s earlier Marvin Gaye shows didn’t shy away from the trouble between the performer and his father. However, the latest production ends on a happier note, with his 1980s comeback. Gaye’s 1982 hit single, “Sexual Healing,” is the penultimate song in the show, which ends with “Got To Give It Up,” a rousing 1977 anthem that gets any crowd on its feet.
Before WBTT took its Marvin Gaye revue to Winston-Salem, it held a “sneak peek” in Sarasota from July 15-24. That show sold out nearly as soon as it was announced. It drew tour buses from Tampa, where Jacobs’ father was a minister and part of a gospel group called The Jacobs Brothers in the 1960s.
Rhoden, an auto repair shop owner by day, was as mesmerizing as ever in his latest turn as Gaye. He convincingly portrays the singer’s evolution from beloved pop star whose image was shaped by Motown founder Gordy to a man who spoke (and sang) against the Vietnam War, discrimination against Black Americans and poverty in a land of plenty.
WBTT’s new show opens with rousing medleys of songs recorded by Gaye and his duet partner Kim Weston as well as hits by the Supremes, the Four Tops and the Temptations.
WBTT company member Jazzmin Carson plays Weston and later delivers a joyful rendition of “Dancing in the Streets” that reminds everyone how Motown was once the soundtrack for every dance, party and wedding.
The medleys featuring male groups take us back to the days when it wasn’t just the sounds of Motown that wowed crowds; it was the fancy footwork of the label’s artists. Henry Washington, Michael Mendez, Raleigh Moseley II and Leon Pitts II masterfully execute Donald Frison’s thrilling choreography.
After an intermission, the show segues to a showcase of Gaye’s hit songs and the fracturing of ties and expansion of egos that occurred when Gordy moved Motown from Detroit to Hollywood. Jacobs helps make the transition with an original ditty, “Whatever Happened to Motown?”
Even for those familiar with Gaye’s music, the show contains surprises. Jimi Hendrix’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is surely one of the most distinctive versions of our national anthem, but Gaye’s soulful rendition deserves a listen.
With the many collaborations between Motown artists, it’s easy to forget about the album that Gaye recorded with Diana Ross in 1973. WBTT references that musical coupling with “I’m Going To Make You Love Me.” Originally a duet between the Supremes and the Temptations, WBTT’s version features Gaye (Rhoden) and Ross (Riki Stevens).
If you didn’t catch the sneak peek of WBTT’s Marvin Gaye revue or the triumphant performances at the IBTT, don’t fret. WBTT plans to reprise the show in 2027, most likely during the summer. But as Barbara Lewis once sang (on Atlantic Records, not Motown), that “seems like a mighty long time” to wait.
