Joe turner's Come and Gone - Center Stage

Set ting the STage
Joe Turner’s Come and gone
by Shannon M. Davis, New Media Manager
Characters:
Seth Holly, a boarding house owner
Bertha Holly, his wife
Bynum Walker, a conjure man and rootworker
Jeremy Furlow, a young musician recently arrived from North Carolina
Herald Loomis, a former prisoner on a chain gang
Zonia Loomis, his eleven-year-old daughter
Mattie Campbell, a young woman recently arrived from Texas
Molly Cunningham, a young woman on her way to Cincinnati
Rutherford Selig, a traveling tinker and People Finder
Reuben Mercer, a young neighbor boy
Martha Pentecost, a friend of the Hollys
Setting:
The Hollys’ boarding house in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, August 1911.
Herald Loomis has lost something. Not only his wife, though he’s looking for her when he turns up
at Seth Holly’s boarding house with his young daughter in tow. It’s obvious to everyone who meets
Loomis that he’s a man diminished, but only conjure man Bynum Walker can name it: “Now I can look
at you, Mr. Loomis, and see you a man who done forgot his song. Forgot how to sing it. A fellow forget that
and he forget who he is.” That should come as no surprise after seven years unjustly imprisoned on a chain
gang; but since his release, Loomis has been working doggedly to care for his daughter, Zonia, and track down
Martha, the wife left behind when he was kidnapped.
Loomis’ search goes deeper than the desire to rebuild his family: he’s a man without purpose, struggling to
readjust to a world he was stolen from and to his uncertain place within it. His literal and figurative odysseys
are the driving force behind Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, chronologically the second installment of August
Wilson’s epic cycle. Loomis isn’t alone, however—the Hollys’ rooming house is bustling with the wayfarers
of the Great Migration, as the children of new-found freedom travel North to opportunity. Their journeys
intersect with Loomis’ as they form their own impromptu family. Guitar-playing country boy Jeremy romances
heartbroken Mattie as well as cosmopolitan Molly. Bynum the rootworker uses his Binding Song to help bring
lost people back together. Bertha Holly mothers them all from the kitchen, while her husband, Seth, keeps an
eye on their comings and goings, supplementing his income by working metal for Rutherford Selig, a White
peddler dabbling as a People Finder.
But when Loomis—at his darkest and struggling to find his way—suffers a terrifying vision of the Middle
Passage, it is only Bynum who is able to help guide him through. Bynum’s conviction that loss can be a
gain—that Loomis’ search for his wife may lead him back to himself and his missing “song” of purpose—is the
catalyst for Loomis’ transformation from a lost wanderer to someone who just may have the Secret of Life.
Join our continuing engagement with August Wilson and the journey of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. This
was the first Wilson play produced at CENTERSTAGE, illuminating our 1988–89 Season and featuring then-
Baltimore School for the Arts student Jada Pinkett Smith. As with many of Wilson’s plays, Joe Turner has fast
become a modern classic, and its central questions of identity, healing, and the meaning of family resonate as
strongly as ever.•
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