Actress Adella Gautier, a star of the New Orleans theater scene, died of complications of cancer at Ochsner Health Center on Aug. 10. She was 73.
During a career that spanned a half-century, Gautier had leading roles in dozens of local stage productions. She also appeared in several major television shows and films. But she may be best remembered for a persona she created called “Adella Adella the Storyteller,” who performed West African folk tales for innumerable enthralled kids in Crescent City schools and at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
Director Anthony Bean said Gautier threw herself into everything from Shakespeare to adventuresome experimental roles. For instance, she cross-dressed to play the male chauffeur in a pre-pandemic production of “Driving Miss Daisy.” Bean said that during plays Gautier was prone to flights of improvisation. “You never knew what she was going to do,” he said, “She kept you on your toes. She was hoot.”
According to her daughter Amber Zu-Johnson, Gautier grew up in the Lafitte housing development and attended McDonogh 35 high school and Dillard University, where she studied English and discovered her love of theater.
After college, Gautier headed off to Boston, ostensibly to study law, but instead pursued her nascent acting career with the City Stage Company. She returned to New Orleans in the 1970s, where she took a job as a city planner during the Moon Landrieu administration and immersed herself in the burgeoning Black theater movement.
Martin 'Bats' Bradford and Adella Gautier are two of the stars of the Anthony Bean Community Theater's production of William Shakespeare's 'Measure for Measure.' (Courtesy of the Anthony Bean Community Theater)
According to lifelong friend Karen Kaia Livers, Gautier was a “trailblazer” who appeared in plays at the Dashiki Project Theatre, Free Southern Theater, Junebug Productions, Anthony Bean Community Theater and other companies. In the late 1980s, she and her husband Ahmos Zu-Bolton, a writer and poet, opened the Copacetic Book Store in the St. Roch neighborhood, where they produced intimate plays for small audiences. Livers said she and Gautier co-produced the Black Theater Festival for 13 years.
During that period, Gautier wowed audiences with a one-woman show in which she portrayed singer and actress Eartha Kitt, Livers said.
In the 1980s, Gautier took a position as a visiting artist in the New Orleans public school system, traveling from classroom to classroom entertaining and instructing students in the art of storytelling, the bedrock of all theater. It was more than a side job. "Adella Adella the Storyteller" became her alter ego for decades.
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Professor Andrew Horton, who taught English and film studies at the University of New Orleans and Loyola University, teamed up with Gautier during some of her school storytelling sessions. She performed everything from traditional tales to purely invented yarns, and he led follow-up discussions. Later, when Horton got the opportunity to lead student tours of Greece, he invited Gautier to travel with the group, sharing her storytelling strategies.
“It was great to have Adella sitting near a Greek ruin saying, ‘Well, let me tell you about Zeus. Boy, was he messing around.’”
In 2015 Gautier learned that she had a form of cancer similar to leukemia that eventually took her life. Her last appearance was in June at the NOLA Voice Theatre, in “Michael Martin: A Life in Theater,” in which she reprised passages from some of her favorite past roles.
Gautier will live on in episodes of the television shows “Law and Order,” “Treme” and “Queen Sugar,” and the film “Runaway Jury” and others. “We’re feeling a great loss,” said daughter Amber, “but, man, did she live.”
Gautier is survived by daughters Amber Zu-Johnson and Louisiana 4th Circuit Court of Appeal judge Tiffany Gautier Chase.
A public viewing will take place from 5 to 8 p.m. on Thurs., at Gallier Hall, 545 St. Charles Ave. The “Final Curtain Call for Adella Adella the Storyteller” will take place on Fri at Dillard University, Lawless Chapel, with a visitation will be held from 9 to 10:45 a.m. and service at 11 a.m. A private interment at Greenwood Cemetery will follow.
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