Joe turner's Come and Gone - Center Stage

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Staging a “Mistake” August Wilson on the Great Migration by Dr. Sandra G. Shannon, Howard University The Great Migration refers to a period [beginning in the early 20 th Century] when millions of African Americans moved out of the rural South to large industrial cities— such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and Los Angeles—as well as to many smaller ones. Whether traveling by foot, by wagon, or by rail; whether moving in the safety of small groups or entire families; or whether risking the trip alone, streams of men, women, and children left the South in huge numbers on their way to the supposed “Promised Land” of the North. August Wilson regarded this mass exodus of African Americans from the cotton and tobacco fields of the South as a huge mistake. In the wake of the South’s failing economy, deceptive advertising campaigns fueled wild rumors about the North having plentiful and better paying jobs as well as excellent opportunities for an overall improvement in the quality of life. Such lies enticed hordes of skilled and unskilled laborers to join the human highway going North. Unfortunately, many would wind up homeless, poor, hungry, and out of work. Wilson told one journalist, We came to the North, and we’re still victims of discrimination and oppression in the North. The real reason that the people left was a search for jobs, because the agriculture, cotton agriculture in particular, could no longer support us. But the move to the cities has not been a good move. Today… we still don’t have jobs. The last time blacks in America were working was during the Second World War, when there was a need for labor, and it did not matter what color you were. 1 To some extent, each installment of Wilson’s ten-play cycle underscores lingering ramifications of this mistake. Many of his transplanted Southern characters are tormented, restless nomads who desperately try to escape their traumatic past, only to make their way North—where they suffer from a host of psychic and physical wounds, even death. Set in either Pittsburgh or Chicago, each play captures the bluesy impulses of the Southern Negro’s initiation into the Northern way of life. NorthSouth A close examination of these plays reveals that Wilson’s migrants who commit the unforgivable mistake of leaving their Southern homes suffer from an extensive catalogue of physical and psychological maladies: propensities toward self-mutilation and scarring; unexplained convulsions; muted speech; recurring nightmarish visions; kidnapping and prolonged periods of incarceration; insurmountable family strife caused by infidelity, abuse, and abandonment; splintering and dissolution of the nuclear family structure; deferred dreams; and various manifestations of mental trauma, such as schizophrenia, incoherent speech, or dementia. Wilson described the afflicted ones as “foreigners in a strange land,” as “the sons and daughters of newly freed slaves,” and as “marked men and women seeking to scrape from the narrow, crooked cobbles…a way of bludgeoning and shaping the malleable parts of themselves into a new identity as free men of definite and sincere worth.” 2 In Joe Turner’s Come and Gone in particular, the impact of the Great Migration is pervasive. The play demonstrates the profound and lasting negative impact that fragmentation has had on both African American culture in general and on the African American family in particular. For example, Seth and Bertha Holly’s 1911 boarding house serves both as a business establishment for laborers who find work at nearby steel mills and as a way station or halfway house for the seemingly endless flow of tormented, restless, and Above left: Jacob Lawrence, panel 3 of the Migration Series, 1940-1941. Above right: A family just arrived in Chicago from the rural South. Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone | 10
detached transients just up from the South. The traumas of slavery, dislocation, and migration wreak havoc on this errant population. For them, this welcoming business establishment signals much more than a temporary shelter. The Hollys’ residential business becomes an oasis that allows them to heal while gaining sustenance and directions before resuming their separate journeys. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone typifies the debt that Wilson’s characters have to pay for their irreverent decisions to abandon the agrarian South in favor of the North’s concrete jungle. Throughout his entire cycle of plays, Wilson is consistent in revealing the apocalyptic and tragic results of what he deems African Americans’ Original Sin. On rare occasions, his “marked” characters are able to avoid the inevitable doom of their mistake. A few are able to regain their footing and find their songs in time to get on with their lives. Unfortunately, such characters seem to be the exception rather than the norm. Southern migrants in August Wilson’s ten plays, as a rule, either perish in the North or become part of its human refuse.• 1 “August Wilson.” A World of Ideas: Conversations with Thoughtful Men and Women, pp. 167-80. 2 August Wilson, “The Play,” Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Suggestions for Further Reading Pittsburgh’s Hill District (location of the Holly boarding house), ca. 1910. J. Trent Alexander. “The Great Migration in Comparative Perspective: Interpreting the Urban Origins of Southern Black Migrants to Depression-Era Pittsburgh.” Social Science History 22.3 (Autumn 1998): 349-76. Carole Marks. Farewell—We’re Good and Gone: The Great Black Migration. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. Sandra Shannon. “A Transplant that Did Not Take: August Wilson’s Views on the Great Migration.” African American Review 31.4 (Winter 1997): 659-66. Hot Biscuits and Coffee: Bertha Holly as Cultural Worker by Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson, University of Maryland, College Park Excerpted from “Selling More than Biscuits and Hot Coffee: Performing Gender and Food in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” In Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, new migrants to Pittsburgh find their way to the Holly boarding house. There they are greeted by Seth Holly’s declaration that room and board is $2 a week. They are also greeted with the gracious hospitality of his wife, Bertha. Boarders or visitors, guests can be sure that she will offer a cup of coffee and a biscuit. She nurtures her tenants and seems genuinely concerned with their well-being. But more than a caretaker, Bertha is also a cultural worker. As historian Bernice Johnson Reagon has observed, Women were the heads of their communities, the keepers of tradition. The lives of these women were defined by their culture, the needs of their communities, and the people they served[;] they accepted the responsibility when the opportunity was offered—when they were chosen. There is the element of transformation in all of their work…. These women, however, became central to evolving the structure for resolving areas of conflict and maintaining, sometimes creating, an identity that was independent of a society organized to exploit natural resources, people, and land. 1 Often overlooked by critics is the importance of Bertha’s work. Yet in the opening scene of Joe Turner, as in most of the subsequent scenes, Bertha is busy helping her guests to break their morning fast. More than providing a piece of bread and a cup of drink, Bertha is assisting in the transition process of new arrivals from the South. During the periods following slavery, large numbers of Blacks migrated North, bringing their Southern mores. Unable to find or afford their accustomed dietary staples, migrants turned to their fellow African Americans or enlisted the assistance of mutual aid societies to help them adapt. Bertha consistently offers her Northern hospitality in the form of food: some “good biscuits,” along with gravy, grits, and fried chicken—all foods associated with the Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone | 11
Page 1 and 2: Next Stage Resource Guide Joe turne
Page 3 and 4: Set ting the STage Joe Turner’s C
Page 5 and 6: Call and Response: Q&A with Product
Page 7 and 8: “[T]hat’s my workshed. I go out
Page 9: LOOMIS When they sink down they mad
Page 13 and 14: The Blues Story of “Joe Turner”
Page 15 and 16: strategically lured into gambling t

Joe turner's Come and Gone - Center Stage

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