Read Spunk Program - California Shakespeare Theater

More documents

Recommendations

Info

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, FSA-OWI COLLECTION PICKET LINE AT THE MID-CITY REALTY COMPANY, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, JULY 1941 JOHN VACHON, PHOTOGRAPHER GELATIN-SILVER PRINT FSA-OWI COLLECTION so the Defender encouraged migrants to form groups or “clubs” that could negotiate special package discounts from railroads. The peak years of migration took place during the same decade as World War I. European immigration, a major driver of Northern industrialization, slowed to a trickle when “the Great War” broke out in 1914, and with the United States’ offi cial entry into the fray in 1917 stimulating the national economy, labor agents went to Southern territories in search of workers. Sent by companies to recruit workers, these agents paid migrants’ travel fees in exchange for a month or two of wages. Some were con men who sought to exploit naïve migrants by promising nonexistent employment, and then forcing them into indentured servitude (or, for women, prostitution) upon arrival. As the migration increased, Southern towns and states—growing increasingly concerned about losing black labor to the North—passed laws against labor agents. Some of these laws seemed well-intentioned, requiring agents to pay modest “licensing fees” to dissuade unscrupulous con men. Other laws, however, were clearly designed to keep Northern job recruiters out of the South. A Macon, Georgia license cost $25,000, while Montgomery, Alabama passed an ordinance threatening fi nes and jail time to agents recruiting blacks for out-of-state work. Some Southern areas actually increased their black population during the great migration. Thanks to its coal mining industry, the Appalachian areas of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee drew more than 50,000 black migrants. Southern cities with diverse industries like Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia also increased their black populations. The principal losers were small towns and states with notoriously regressive racial policies like Mississippi and Louisiana. It’s estimated that the rural South lost a total of more than 200,000. The Great Migration was as much about urbanization and job opportunity as it was about a quest to escape the legacy of antebellum Southern slavery. Once resettled, blacks often encountered many of the same problems they had in the South. Cities where the black population increased tenfold—Detroit’s black population, for example, jumped by more than 600 percent—particularly struggled with the infl ux of newcomers. Restrictive housing policies kept black families confi ned to dangerous and unsanitary ghettos. White laborers, then in the midst of building a national union movement, often resented black workers that would do the same jobs for cheaper wages. These interracial tensions occasionally boiled over in acts of mob violence. In the 1917 East St. Louis race riots, an estimated 40 to 150 blacks were shot, bludgeoned, or lynched by angry white mobs. In the 1919 Chicago race riots, 23 blacks were killed (and 15 whites) and hundreds more were injured and/or left homeless. However, it also brought unimagined cultural benefi ts. The Harlem Renaissance, for example, would have been far different if not for writers with Southern roots like Zora Neale Hurston (raised in Eatonville, Florida), and Langston Hughes (born in Joplin, Missouri). Ironically, recent years have witnessed a reverse migration, with African-Americans returning to the “New South.” Beginning in the 1970s and continuing today, African- Americans have left Northern cities and settled in major Southern metropolises and suburbs like Atlanta and Charlotte. As you watch the stories of <strong>Spunk</strong> unfold on our stage, consider how “Sweat,” “Story in Harlem Slang,” and “The Gilded Six-Bits” follow the players as they “git to the git with some pain n’ some spit n’ some spunk,” from the Southern states to the streets of Harlem, and, eventually, to a post-Great Migration life in a Florida town. <strong>Spunk</strong>’s resilient, very human characters—just like this new period of migration and the original one—make clear that African-Americans are not limited to geographical preferences, only by a quest to enjoy a better life. Mosi Reeves is Hip-Hop and Soul Editor for Rhapsody.com, R&B Editor for Google Play, freelance writer, and former Editor-at-Large for Kitchen Sink magazine. 18 california shakespeare theater www.calshakes.org
COMING NEXT AUG 8–SEP 2 HAIL TO THEE, BLITHE SPIRIT BY RESIDENT DRAMATURG PHILIPPA KELLY Next up on our stage is Blithe Spirit, directed by Cal Shakes Associate Artist and A.C.T. Associate Artistic Director Mark Rucker. Appearing in Noël Coward’s romantic comedy are Anthony Fusco (seen as Reverend Morrell in last season’s Candida) as Charles Condomine; René Augesen making her Cal Shakes debut as Ruth; recent A.C.T. MFA grad Jessica Kitchens as the ghostly Elvira; Domenique Lozano (last seen here as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing) as Madame Arcati; Kevin Rolston (Dr. Bradman), Melissa Smith (Mrs. Bradman), and current A.C.T. MFA student Rebekah Brockman (Edith). Coward wrote Blithe Spirit in 1941 as his contribution to the war effort, moving his play skillfully back to the 1930s so that audiences could revel forgetfully in a time that had nothing to do with warfare, even though they lived amidst rationing, the Blitz, and the horrible daily news of death. Coward named his play after Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, To a Skylark, in which Shelley salutes the song of an invisible bird: ”Hail to thee, blithe spirit.“ Coward’s play, too, features characters who are heard and not seen—it is a ghost story, but a comic rather than spooky one. Coward once famously poked fun at the American actor Clifton Webb, who lived for much of his life with his mother until she died: He said of Webb, ”It must be terrible to be orphaned at 71.” Yet Coward himself is rumored to have suffered greatly from the death of his own mother, and to have tried repeatedly to call her up by means of thenfashionable séances. Nonetheless, while Blithe Spirit uses the premise of a ghost who talks to a protagonist but whom no one else can see and hear (as in Slings and Arrows or, in part, Hamlet) the play is less about ghosts than it is about love and marriage. It’s never been easy for a man to have more than one wife, and in Blithe Spirit, it is downright diffi cult. Charles makes contact with his fi rst wife through medium Madame Arcati: but, once called back from the dead, Elvira proves a willful, chatty, and combative disruption to his marriage to Ruth, eventually leaving the stage in irresistibly comic disrepair. Coward described Blithe Spirit as his best work, conceived of and written over a fi veday period after two years away from his typewriter. The play has all of the deftness of his early writings—the clever, clipped diction, the humor and devastating aphorisms— but this play has more of a plot than his earlier comedies about bright young things thumbing their noses at social convention. Set designer Annie Smart (whose Cal Shakes credits include Candida and Private Lives) has said about the play: “I think the farce really only works if these seem like real people in a real place.” Blithe Spirit will enchant you, amuse you, sometimes infuriate you, and, perhaps, send you out of the theater wondering whether—as artifi cers of our own mental worlds—we make our own ghosts. Blithe Spirit plays Aug 8–Sep 2. Click calshakes.org for tickets. Learn more at sfmoma.org This exhibition is organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Major support for the San Francisco presentation is provided by the Fisher family, J.P. Morgan, and The Bernard Osher Foundation. Generous support is provided by Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein and the Bernard and Barbro Osher Exhibition Fund. Media Sponsor: Cindy Sherman, Untitled #415 (detail), 2004; Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York; © 2012 Cindy Sherman encoreartsprograms.com 19
Page 1 and 2: Three Tales by ZOrA NEALE HUrStON a
Page 3 and 4: We’re proud to announce our upcom
Page 5 and 6: PHOTO BY KEVIN BERNE FROM THE ARTIS
Page 7 and 8: Triangle Lab Activities at the Brun
Page 9 and 10: CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7. takes you th
Page 11 and 12: hear their own voices, and about br
Page 13 and 14: CALifOrNiA SHAKESPEArE tHEAtEr eXec
Page 15 and 16: THREE ENCOUNTERS WITH WHEN Zora Nea
Page 17: Spunk takes us from the rural South
Page 21 and 22: © 2011 Starwood Hotels & Resorts W
Page 23 and 24: nature guardians buried with the Fi
Page 25 and 26: ACtiNG COMPANY ALDO BiLLiNGSLEA* (S
Page 27 and 28: YOrK KENNEDY (Lighting Designer) Mr
Page 29 and 30: EBECCA NOViCK (Triangle Lab Directo
Page 31 and 32: lisa & Michael holmes leslie & Geor
Page 33 and 34: All listings current as of June 20,
Page 35 and 36: WHO’S WHO continued from page 29

Read Spunk Program - California Shakespeare Theater

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?