« Iega and Joe Arrive | Main | "This Is Hard" »

Community Performance Inc.

May 28, 2008

5/27/2008
With the abysmal infernet connection--that's "infernal net"--I'm days behind publishing because I don't have time to park out front of the hippie tea place and steal the wi-fi. I got the lights mostly hung, thanks to Jules help, Brackley comes tomorrow.

We've been battling poor attendance from many people, all along. The first time one of these projects open in a community, people join it because their arms are twisted, their backs pushed up against a wall. Powerful people force them into it--mom, preacher, teacher, best friend. They aren't, most of them, actors at all. They're plain folks. And they don't come with the ready-made commitment to do this.

Black cast members have been even more absent. All along we've been affirming the need for black participation at the highest levels inside the organization. And the leaders here have tried. And they haven't been successful. When we auditioned we had a good turn out of blacks, and half that group has disappeared, down to four. We recruited a choir, and they've been coming. Some of them. Sometimes. Barbara Clark, who gave us this story of the March in the Rain, was very hesitant at first. Now she is pushing with all her might. It's been really rough.

Two days ago Steve told us that the rest of the cast members are getting extremely nervous, not knowing if we can field enough blacks to make a believable ending to the show. He urged us to have an alternative ending and be ready to use it. That would gut the play. But his words, and a conversation with Judy in which she expressed her concern that we had not finalized the cast, made me ask for a meeting in the afternoon.

Barbara Clark came, so did all the people from the CPI team but Brackley (he arrives Wednesday), that's Joe, Iega, Jules, Gayle and me. Also present were Vivian, Judy and Genny. The subject was how to insure black participation, foremost, and all participation, additionally. Iega reminded us of the near impossibility of keeping any people in a project where they were not represented at the leadership and governance level. So along with the plans for the immediate emergency, we revisited the issue of bring black leadership into the project. I asked Barbara point blank if after this she would become a project leader and she gave me an equivocal answer, "I'll do what I can," or something like that. More work to be done, there.

The toehold among blacks is this story of the march. It is their story. It speaks of their courage. But the murder of one of their community people that precipitated the march is still so painful that many blacks cannot yet speak the story. The resentment still burns. For some the march, though it achieved its purpose, left more pain than it lifted. Thomas, an alder cast member, hated all whites for years after. Whites killed his coach.

And then there is the representation of the piano. It may be keeping people away. The piano, shot full of holes, is a fact. It is in the play. The man shot full of holes is, upon reading the script, not present. This fact may be keeping some away. It wasn't just a piano being shot up, a man died. So some blacks stayed away because the truth is too much. Others stayed away because the truth isn't enough. A piano is nothing compared to a man.

Our afternoon meeting closed with agreement for each cast member to sign a pledge for his/her attendance through the rest of the rehearsals. All cast members to do this.

Tonight by 7:45 when we began the meeting we had maybe 14 blacks in the room. I hadn't thought what I was going to say, exactly, but I found myself in the middle of everyone speaking.

Most of you, I said, have been drafted. You didn't volunteer for this. Heads nodding. You didn't know what you were getting into. Some of us know. Jules, Joe, Iega, Gayle, we've done this before. We know that when you open this play many of you will fall in love with Land of Spirit and stay with it for years. Gayle, here, our performance coach, has been with us for 17 years. But you are draftees.

And you have behaved liked draftees, many of you. We've had lots of absence from rehearsal. Lots of AWOL. But we are now in the last moments of preparation and, like it or not we are in this together. Now we must know who will be with us in battle. Who will have our backs. Ours is a suicide mission, otherwise. So we need each of you to look at this slip of paper and say yes to every date on it. If there is a day you cannot come, put an X through it. But come, every day you are in anyway able.

We took questions. There were very few, just details. The room felt willing. They could sense the promise peeping over the horizon. We passed out the sheets and when we got them back we realized that only June 6 would be in question. That night of high school graduation our black cast would be cut in half. Down to, perhaps, six.

Then we took a break and began to rehearse March in the rain. Iega asked them to sing it once. Twice. This will not be fancy movement, this will be about being. Being with the conviction of what you are doing, marching for your rights, for an increase in the humanity of everyone, black and white.

It is a black march joined by some whites. But what about all the other white cast members? We decided to keep them in the rehearsal before we knew exactly how they would be used. Spontaneously Iega had an image. The blacks were herded into the curve of the crescent in the previous scene as they were displaced from Jones St. to Goose Hollow. The whites, where can I put them, Iega asked? Beyond the crescent, I said, in the corner. With the road of the crescent, and its bump, between them.

The whites were packed together looking at the blacks, up on the stage sat the white men at the table of power, the blacks between. Jane, the narrator sings,

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.

On "why? Why? Why," Jane turns from her black community and addresses the whites below her in the corner. Iega asked them to turn their backs. They did it immediately because he had asked it. We went on, a few young whites joined the blacks as they started up the steps to the crescent top before walking down. Heather came to Iega, her eyes were red. I never intended the whites to turn their backs. But this was the sixties under Jim Crow, whites did turn their backs. The conversation went back and forth between them quietly while the cast waited. At my urging we turned to the cast with the question. It was quarter to ten, our time was almost over.

I never intended when I wrote the music for the whites to stand against the blacks, Heather was visibly in pain. White voices spoke up that they didn't turn their backs, or didn't want to turn their backs. Iega talked about steps in an artistic process. We begin, he said, with turned backs, but as we rehearse the image develops and changes. Robert Willbanks said, when we turn back it will be all the more powerful. It is an act of courage and sacrifice to turn away now, just as then it was an act of courage and sacrifice to face the issue. Linda Barnes, preacher Barnes stepped forward. I know at least half of you as my friends. You know me, I know you. We know what is between us. Who you are didn't turn your backs during this time. But we are doing something here to show what was.

It was the richest most deeply textured moment. The power of the moment as drama, obvious. The pain real. For both sides. A woman said to me, there are whites in this room who did turn their backs.

From that day 36 years ago marchers and back turners found themselves in the same place. I hope with a difference. T.S. Eliot:

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

The rehearsal left us uplifted, bleeding, frightened, committed.

Today, May 27, 2008, I'll remember all my life. In 1972 a group of frightened, angry, and very brave people marched for rights denied, and rights defiled. They changed history in this place. Thirty-six years later, the marchers still meet, in honor of that day. Tonight we marched again. Not just in rehearsal for a play, but indeed.

   

« Iega and Joe Arrive | Main | "This Is Hard" »