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  • Black “Plays”
  • Anna Deavere Smith

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Figure 1.

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Some years ago I was invited to view a documentary film about slave plays. I was very excited to see what these could be. As it turned out, the film chronicled children's clapping games, ring games, and "plays" that were archived by a black woman, Bessie Jones, and a white folklorist, Bess Lomax Hawes. The games and "plays" are also recorded in a book by the two women called Step It Down. As Bessie Jones described the games that had, in fact, descended from slavery, at a certain point in each game she would say, "and that's the play." These ring games (some of which the reader may have played in school or at birthday parties as a child) had narratives. The illumination of the narrative was dependent on each participant playing the game. The games got you clapping and talking and sometimes stomping. These plays and games had apparently brought joy to slave children and occupied any leisure time they may have had. As a child, I played these kinds of games in school and at birthday parties, and I could probably take my interest in theatre back to the many times that I had been given the honored position of organizing and leading such games and "plays" at the birthday parties of my younger siblings and cousins. The "plays" were easy to learn and to teach, even to a child from another city. And a white child who happened to have been invited (a rarity in those days in, for all intents and purposes, segregated Baltimore, but nonetheless) could join in, too. It was the rhythm that made it so easy for us to "play" together.

In the past four years, there are two black "plays" that stand out among all the artistic experiences I have had during that time. I saw one in a housing project in Chicago during the sweltering heat of summer in 2001. I saw the other on a perfectly comfortable Sunday morning in the spring of 2005 in Montecito, California. I'll start with the most recent one.

The most recent "play" really reminded me of a sixties happening, or a play like Maria Irene Fornes's Fefu and Her Friends. In May of 2005, Oprah Winfrey held a weekend to celebrate the black legendary women who had come before. The three-day event was called "A Bridge To Now." To my mind, it was a real life, full-blown version of the "Bridge Across the Chasm" speech in Lorraine Hansberry's To Be Young, Gifted and Black. In fact, the actress who recited that speech in a filmed version of that play, Ruby Dee, was in attendance at Oprah's Weekend.

The three days kicked off with a luncheon for the black "legendary" women and a group designated as "young uns," who Oprah felt had been influenced by the legends. The invitation notified us that garden attire was appropriate for the luncheon. The [End Page 571] centerpiece of the weekend was a white tie dinner. The festivities concluded on Sunday morning with a Gospel Brunch at Praise Valley, a large garden in her home in Montecito that is situated between two roads, each called "Glory," and a third road that crosses them called "Hallelujah."

There were about thirty legends: among them Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee, Naomi Sims (the first black model), Diana Ross, Nancy Wilson, the sculptor Elizabeth Catlett, Chaka Khan, Patti Labelle, Beverly Johnson, Tina Turner, and others.

The designation of "young un" had less to do with age and more to do with generation. Perhaps the legends had tackled the restraints of segregation more than the "young uns." There were approximately thirty young uns and they spanned a few decades going from Judith Jamison, to myself, to Pearl Cleage, to Iman, to Angela Bassett, Alfre Woodard, Natalie Cole, Valerie Simpson, Naomi Campbell, Missy Elliot, Mary J. Blige, and Mariah Carey, with the youngest, probably, being Alisha Keyes.

Now that's a long Dramatis Personae and mise en scene, but a necessary (and significantly abbreviated) one needed to get you to the...

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