Read Spunk Program - California Shakespeare Theater

article in Ms. magazine entitled “In Search of Zora Neale
Hurston.” Several years before, Walker had published a
short story in a volume where she sat just pages from
Hurston; but she didn’t encounter her work until a neighbor
loaned her the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. This
sparked a deep fascination with the life and work of the
woman who, like Walker, came from the South, and whose
gritty, complex writings had fallen into obscurity. Posing
as Hurston’s niece, Walker went in search of her grave.
Finding it unmarked in a segregated cemetery, she bought
a headstone for it, and began a mission to bring Hurston
back to public view.
Walker was deeply infl uenced by Hurston’s work on
voodoo, particularly by her tale, “Of Mules and Men,”
which fuelled Walker’s own story, “The Revenge of Hannah
Kemhuff.” According to Walker, white anthropological
views of blacks were “inferior, peculiar, comic… [which]
undermined, no, destroyed, the relevance of their books.”
From Hurston’s work she found what she called “cultural
nourishment” and “spiritual food.” “Without a foundation
in our own reality… people don’t know what to do,”
Walker said. Hurston’s expression of the reality of life as
she knew and experienced it deeply stirred Walker, and,
seven years later, she created the iconic The Color
Purple. Portraying domestic violence, incest, and
homosexuality in the rural black community,
The Color Purple depicts a black
woman struggling to fi nd an inner
self that can survive abuses
by both her white and
black masters.
GEORGE C.
WOLFE GIVES ZORA
THEATRICAL LIFE
After Walker brought Hurston back
“from the dead,” there emerged a steady
stream of her books and stories, as well as essays,
plays, and television programs about her life and art.
In 1989, African-American actor, playwright, and director
George C. Wolfe adapted three of Hurston’s stories into
an off-Broadway, blues-inspired musical play. At the
time of making Spunk (a play which does not actually
contain Hurston’s short story of the same name), Wolfe
was 35 years old—about the same age that Hurston
had been when she fi rst published Spunk more than 60
years before—and he earned an Obie for his production.
16 california shakespeare theater www.calshakes.org
Hurston had often been accused of creating “minstreltype”
black fi gures, but Wolfe’s adaptation revealed to
New York audiences the dignity and complexity with which
her characters actually spoke in the predominantly oral
culture she had been trying to evoke and honor. The fi rst
part of Wolfe’s Spunk triptych, “Sweat,” is about a drained
washerwoman (excuse my pun here, but Hurston would
have liked it), abused and betrayed by her husband. The
second is “Story in Harlem Slang,” in which two poor but
fl ashy city men hustle a meal from a domestic worker on
her day off. The third, “The Gilded Six-Bits,” is about an
adoring husband who is betrayed by his wife. Spunk, as
dramatically realized by Wolfe, isn’t just a story—it is a
musical, a play mixing visual and auditory treats just as he
mixes poignancy and satire.
PATRICIA MCGREGOR BRINGS
ZORA TO CAL SHAKES
ZORA NEALE HURSTON, BEATING
THE HOUNTAR, OR MAMA DRUM;
PHOTO COURTESY U.S. LIBRARY OF
CONGRESS.
And where does the brilliant young director Patricia
McGregor take this play for Cal Shakes in 2012? One of the
reasons McGregor says she was attracted to Hurston was
that “she listened to people I care about.” The emergence
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