Going The Other Way with Scrap Mettle SOUL

Scrap Mettle SOUL, the distinguished community theatre founded by Richard Owen Geer on Chicago’s north side, celebrated its tenth season in May 2004 with a world premiere called “The Other Way: Stories of Uptown.” For a decade, SMS has been examining its community by choosing themes, collecting stories from the neighborhood, and presenting them using an intergenerational, multiracial, mixed-income cast of residents. This year, perhaps prompted by the 2000 census that confirmed Uptown is one of the most diverse communities in the nation, SMS explored the lives of its immigrants.

“The Other Way” swept nimbly through the global stories of Uptown’s citizens with a poignant script by Jules Corriere, a memorable musical score by June Shellene, and simple, effective staging by creative director Geer and director Stephanie G. Wieland. The result left me marveling at Uptown in the same way that one of its characters did. “The beautiful thing about this neighborhood,” she said, “—it’s like all these people can’t be from the same place, but we are, aren’t we?”

From "The Other Way" by Scrap Mettle SOUL. View slideshow of images from the play.

“The Other Way” opened with the entire cast of almost 50 adults and children emerging onstage to sing "Homeland." It’s a beautiful piece about the natural longing for one’s mother country, and the simple lyrics conveyed the loss that many immigrants endure:

When shall I see my home again?
When shall I see my beautiful land?
I will never forget my home. 

My father is there,
My mother is there,
My brother is there,
My sister is there.

Their journey began, collectively and individually, as the travelers departed from Uptown for Chicago’s O’Hare airport. They boarded the #36 Broadway bus, a fitting symbol of Uptown’s diversity because it runs through the Uptown and connects it to downtown. It was a delight to see SMS celebrate this melting pot of a bus line with a big showy tune that mixed a little of New York’s Broadway in as well. “It’s a wild ride to the other side,” went Shellene’s lyrics, “deep in the valley of the Broadway Bus!”

The cast arrived at O’Hare to board the same plane, but each with differing reasons to depart — a business presentation, a daughter’s wedding, a visit to one’s mother. They headed through security and began sharing their stories.

We met a third-generation European American imagining the challenge of her great-grandmother’s migration, a Thai refugee who waited five years in a camp for sponsorship to come here, and a Japanese American who was interred by the U.S. government and witnessed a fellow American shot for looking Japanese. A Vietnamese immigrant marveled at her new Uptown neighborhood. We watched as orphaned Sudanese boys crossed the unforgiving desert on foot during their harrowing route to America. A mother from Uptown told how she met her destiny by flying to Kazakhstan to pick up her adoptive son, Bo-bo. And this was just the first act.    

In the second we met narrators from Sarajevo, Haiti, Mexico, Palestine and more. Recorded from oral histories of Uptown (and neighboring Edgewater’s) immigrants, and adapted by Corriere, the narratives seemed to have been tempered appropriately. They were unique in voice but not so distinctly that they failed to fit together. They also touched a range of sentiments that went far beyond those most commonly associated with immigration such as hope and hardship.

Corriere’s choice of an airport setting and Geer and Wieland’s staging came together effectively. As characters stepped forward to tell their stories, they went through the security motions that unite us all, for better or worse, in post 9/11 America. They sat on chairs and took their shoes on and off. They held their arms out while being searched. They put luggage through an x-ray machine. A voice-over frequently interrupted with “security alerts” reminding the passengers not to take packages from strangers. These announcements intensified until late in the second act when the voice shouted, “Trust no one!”

The airport setting raised questions about the intentions of the travelers’ new government against the backdrop of the conditions they left behind. We were reminded of our government’s ambivalence toward immigrants and the current national mood. We came to recognize O’Hare, and by extension all airports, as modern-day Ellis Islands.

Geer and Wieland also made strong use of the company’s minimal props to draw the most out of their staging in SMS’ new (and somewhat raw) space. During the piece about the Japanese Americans, an “authority” stood on a chair and held an industrial light above the storyteller, which easily evoked the intimidation she reported feeling. Slammed folding chairs became gunshots. In one light-hearted sketch about the wonders of air travel, the children zoomed on and off stage mimicking motor noises and their arms outstretched like wings.

After years of renting, SMS found this permanent home a few blocks away from their old location. The space used to belong to Columbia College’s dance program, but now SMS shares it with a youth organization called Alternatives. “This place is a new life for us,” said Geer, “We feel like we’re growing something here.” The room has an unfinished feeling, with bleachers and folding chairs for seating and graffiti artwork from the youth program propped up against the walls. Yet, SMS had little problem transforming it into workable performance space.

Act Two opened with the story of a Mexican woman sharing her appreciation for Uptown’s melting pot, but it also highlighted the possibilities inherent in community casting. Our storyteller said that in Mexico, it’s all Mexicans. But in Uptown, “It’s like I’m next door to the whole world!” Although the script suggested an older speaker, both nights that I saw the performance the monologue was performed deftly by 12-year-old Sarah Lloyd.

Geer and Wieland double- or triple-casted most of the other roles, as is SMS’ tradition. “Everyone who comes is guaranteed a role,” said Wieland about their community participants. “It’s very inclusive.” At best, the casting allowed a revelation like Lloyd’s or resulted in two performers enhancing a single role, as in "Invisible," about the challenges of being a 25-year-old black man. The first time I saw it, the actor’s portrayal was quiet and understated while the second actor played the role somewhat defiantly. The two yielded a richer understanding that neither performance, as credible as they were, could have achieved alone.

Unfortunately, the casting was not always so reliable. Some performers displayed a convincing affinity with their parts that had me wondering whether they were professional actors, while others rushed disconnectedly through the same lines. The unevenness seemed to emphasize the providential nature of SMS’ policy of inclusiveness. It sometimes requires a leap of faith and good will from the audience, but it also promises the rich payoff of witnessing one community member giving life to another’ s story.

The natural and most fitting end to the play, I thought, came with "Rita’s Story," about a pianist who emigrated from the Dominican Republic to study music at Juilliard. Prior to her story, the second act had been building in intensity as the musical numbers disappeared, the airport announcements grew harsher, and the emotional toll of the stories mounted. Rita spoke directly and evenly. She said that under Trujillo’s (or El Jefe’s) dictatorship, no one was allowed to talk about the government. “Torture was nothing,” she reported, “and surprised no one.” Rita rejoiced at the freedom she discovered in America and concluded,

Some people still walk around voiceless. Not me. Hey, George Bush! Have a seat. Have I got a list for you. Hey, Dick Cheney! Don’t you want your daughter to get married? Hey, El Jefe! Up yours!

It’s great to be an American.

Her addressing the president directly, after leaving a country where it was impossible to do so, emphasized the collective promise (and challenge) of our current political life in a way that the play had only hinted at until then. It struck the right notes about the nature of the payoff for immigrants’ perseverance, and it implicitly called attention to the voice SMS gave the immigrants. For these reasons, it felt like an appropriate emotional and conceptual end.

Corriere closed the show instead with one more narrative entitled "Ashes" about a miner who moves to Uptown from Kentucky. The story, although solidly performed and full of themes of perseverance and justice, veered from the other stories in structure, tone and content. The narration shifted between two performers, crossed three generations and concluded with a brief musical piece, unlike any of the stories before it. "Ashes" focused on migration, not immigration, which might have fit into the play elsewhere (such as "Invisible" did, which was not about immigration either), but instead the piece was double (perhaps triple) the length of the other stories and given the added prominence of being last in the show.

It was impossible not to think of "Ashes" as the showcase piece, which, I’m afraid, had the unintended effect of overshadowing the immigrants the play sought to celebrate. Why end this show with a story about the history of three generations of Americans, however compelling? Perhaps this piece was intended to foreshadow the challenges that might lie ahead for the other immigrants, but, if so, this point was not made clearly. I remembered after seeing the “The Other Way” that Geer had told me "Ashes" was among the stories they discovered years ago. It seems they may have made a misstep by not waiting for a more appropriate place to use it.

The play’s closing revelation came when the security guards refused to let the miner board the airplane at O’Hare because he was hand-carrying his son’s ashes in a metal container. His fellow travelers told him he can go “the other way” – by trading in his ticket for a bus or train, or he could walk, as the Sudanese boys reminded him. The entire cast abandoned the airport and sought another way to their destinations. The lesson brought the play to a satisfying conclusion and underlined the important themes revealed about Uptown and the immigrant experience.

More important, though, “The Other Way” achieved what an exploration of diversity must in order to be relevant – it transcended it. “We have found that the greatest heroes are walking around our neighborhood,” said Geer just before the show opened. How right, the performances revealed, he is.

Jennifer Roche is a writer and former acquisitions editor for a major publishing company. She lives in Chicago.

Visit the Web to learn more about Scrap Mettle SOUL: http://www.scrapmettlesoul.org/.

Original CAN/API publication: June 2004