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Community Performance Inc.

May 13, 2008

I thought I blogged yesterday, driving back to Franklin County from Colquitt. Must have imagined it.

I didn't imagine that we are in dire need of black participation in this project. No more than five blacks TOTAL have attended rehearsals since the first night's readthrough. Not five people several times each, I mean, African Americans haven't walked through the rehearsal room more than five times since that first readthrough night when there might have been seven.

Tonight we called a teenager who didn't come to rehearsal. He said he'd come down. He didn't. What does that sound like to you? I'll tell you what it sounds like to me: there's more fun stuff to do than rehearsal, I'm not coming.

We thought we recruited Rev. Linda and her youth group. But it has split into individual kids and largely fallen away. I've learned you can't recruit a solo youth or child in any of these projects. They'll see a sunny day or a party and they won't come to rehearsal. I thought I was the kind of kid that if I committed I came through. But I'm not sure the adults around me would have agreed. Still, I remember those school plays and concerts, seemed like I appeared when I was supposed to. It was a different time.

Families and institutions are the only way I know to recruit and hold children and youth. Need an adult reminding the young person of the commitment and helping him/her through the tough times when a birthday party or a sunny day is more appealing than rehearsal.

Rehearsals are coming along swimmingly. People are getting off book without being prodded. The scenes that are attended are going together more quickly than I'd anticipated. And the scenes with blacks aren't going together at all.

Maybe that changed tonight. At nine o'clock I left rehearsal and followed Genny out about five miles to East Lavonia and then we turned down a dirt road and came to New Light Baptist Church, a humble little building with a slide-in-the-letters sign out front proclaiming their Sunday offering of 10:00 Sunday School and 11:30 service. I'm going this Sunday.

Kathy Mitchell, a white woman and Steve Mitchell's wife, arranged with Zadie, a woman in her 70s, that we'd be by tonight to try and recruit the choir. We arrived at 9:20 and walked into the sanctuary where 11 women and two men were singing a call and response song. We listened to the end of that song and then the two choir leaders Mary, and I missed the other woman's name, came and sat down formally in front of Genny and me in two chairs. We were sitting in the second pew. We said hellos and they told us we were welcome anytime, their church doors swung on welcome hinges. We told them what we were doing there. Genny said that we'd been working three years on a play from the stories of Franklin County and that now the play was in rehearsal and that we were inviting their choir to join us in the play. The final scenes depicted the 1972 night protest march in the rain. I spoke up and added some things about community performance as a project in listening and speaking, of teaching and learning, of building relationship across whatever lines separated folks. Genny got out the CD of the March in the Rain and we all sat and listened to it. It's a moving, beautiful piece:

We marched in the rain.
Our souls drenched in pain.
Wondering why? Why? Why had it come to this?
Oh, and why so much strife when we want the same thing?
Just a little respect
Could we ask any less (Our souls drenched in pain)
Why? Why? Why must we ask at all?

Feels like the rain is comin' faster when it races against your pulse
In a race you may not win

A bump in the road, A bump in the road

The weather is in God's hands
But the future's in our own

A bump in the road, A bump in the road

SPOKEN: So we march tonight? Yes, tonight! No turning back! (Random crowd responses) Tonight! Tonight! Tonight!

We march tonight
We feel the wind
We taste the rain
We face our fears
We make our stand
We are not bumps in the road

(I was there, I walked with you)
(We were there)
Our souls drenched in pain (We marched with you)
Just a little respect
We marched in the rain.

The leader and Mary asked us when we needed an answer. Genny said "yesterday." So the two leaders asked to be excused to go talk and pray about the question.

In the interim I learned about that at least one of the choir members had been in that march. Apparently a number of young people had marched. This still-young looking woman must have been little more than a child when she marched. The leaders came back into the room, and the one whose name I don't know came and sat directly in front of us. The choir, she said, had asked to be of service. And when you ask, you never know what will be asked of you in return. Because you asked us, she said, we are going to commit to you, whatever it takes.

We talked over some details, agreed we'd meet for rehearsal on Thursday at 6:30pm. There was a moment looking at each other, and I came up out of my seat and went up to this woman whose name I don't know. We embraced long and hard. We had been talking about getting to know one another through the project. We leaned back in each others arms, not some much staring as opening our eyes, our souls, one to another. "You I know already," she said. I agreed.

Genny and I walked out into the cool night. We embraced. Tomorrow morning we have another meeting with the white youth minister of the big First Baptist in town. He has a youth program that has both whites and blacks in it. We're going recruiting there, too. And the next day in Royston with Rev. Berryman.

We did all we knew to do earlier. I think we had to watch those efforts fail before we could go to each other like this, naked in our need and humbled. Time is short, but perhaps it is only coming ripe now. And ripeness is all.

   

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