Tyler Perry Productions

Tyler Perry is a 34-year-old African-American – new-school playwright, who has, he says, made over $50 million writing and producing plays for the urban theater circuit. It wasn’t always that way for Perry. In 1992, Perry saved $12,000, rented out a theater, wrote, directed, promoted and starred in his own production of I Know I’ve Been Change–and it failed miserably; during its entire weekend run, only 30 people showed up. For six years after that, Perry held a string of odd jobs in order to finance the show, and sporadically lived on the streets when he couldn’t afford to pay the rent. Almost everyone, even his own mother, begged him to quit the theater and find a steady 9-to-5 for good. Perry refused to give up. Finally, in the summer of 1998, Perry financed the production once again. And this time, he vowed, would be the last time, if the production failed. That production of Tyler Perry’s I Know I’ve Been Changed opened at the House of Blues in Atlanta and sold out eight times over. Two weeks later, the play would move to the prestigious Fox Theater and sell out 9,000 more seats. In addition to doing plays, Perry also wrote, funded, acted, and directed his first feature film – Diary of a Mad Woman.

Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married? (Widescreen Edition)

A.P.Gouthey
“If life were measured by accomplishments, most of us would die in infancy.”