Mosaic Theater of Washington, DC has already seized the momentum with #narrativeengagement. Yes, the play’s the thing again. The anticipated inaugural season of Washington, D.C.’s newest addition to the region’s vibrant theater scene has started the conversation with its first two productions:
“Unexplored Interior,” a new work by Jay O. Sanders about an NYU film student returning to his native Rwanda to see bloody violence that transformed a nation, and obliterated his family;
“The Gospel of Lovingkindess”, a play by Marcus Gardley about gun violence in Southside Chicago through the story of one mother’s grief for her son whom after shining in the spotlight singing for President Obama and the First Lady, is shot and killed by another youth for his Air Jordan sneakers.
I’ll be talking about the real-life anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells in the after show Q&A for “The Gospel of Lovingkindess”Tuesday, December 29. My first full-length play, “Iola’s Letter” is about the catalyst that compelled Ida B. Wells, a 29-year-old newspaper woman, to launch an anti-lynching crusade. Ida B. Wells appears as a 153 year-old-ghost in Gardley’s play. (clip is from a 1999 production of “Iola’s Letter” at Howard University with Bakesta King as Ida, Glenn Gordon (NSangou) as Mr. Fleming, Art Brooks as Rev. Nightingale, and Chadwick Boseman as Thomas Moss.
What would Ida say about genocide and gun violence?
These are two heavy and pertinent topics. It’s even difficult for me to write this post because the weightiness of daily posts on social media – another shooting death, another police shooting, refugee crisis, ethnic and religious genocide – even I go numb at this keyboard. It’s an ambitious lift for a new theater’s inaugural season. But Mosaic is built on the premise that no conversation of importance can be excluded from the stage.
MISSION STATEMENT Mosaic Theater Company of DC is committed to making powerful, transformational, socially-relevant art, producing plays by authors on the front lines of conflict zones and providing audiences with a dynamic new venue for the dramatizing and debating of ideas…
In other words, Mosaic does not pander.
Mosaic Theater didn’t just pop-up as so many new enterprises are doing in the city, to test their product’s chops. The theater was founded a year ago this month by Ari Roth. Depending on who you ask about the catalyst for the theater, Mosaic evolved after Roth’s firingcalling departure from Theater J where he served as artistic director for 18 years. Theater J is a major player in Washington, D.C.’s theater community. Roth was instrumental in making theater engaging, encouraging a conversation between the plays and the audience. The Theater J series included public readings, workshop conversations and dialogues, and “Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival”. Housed in the Washington, DC Jewish Community Center, Theater J has a dedicated subscriber base of JCC members and others.
Not everyone vibed with Roth’s vision to expand the dialogue to reflect all views around conflicts in the Middle East. “Voices From a Changing Middle East” and the Peace Café discussion group co-founded by Roth and Andy Shallal (Busboys and Poets, Eatonville) were casualties of JCC and Theater J’s leadership conflicts according to the Washington Post’s Nelson Pressley.
One year later, both theaters have moved on. Theater J has a new artistic director, Adam Immerwarh, and another season of plays for the theatergoing public. Mosaic Theater has taken residency in the Atlas Theater on H Street, NE. Theater with sponsorships and grants to bring in some of the area’s best dramatic talent. Jennifer L. Nelson is its resident director who transforms “The Gospel of Lovingkindess” into a theatrical canvas of sight and sound. And Serge Seiden has moved east of the city from Studio Theatre.
All plays include extensive engagement events and community dialogues. You can also eat dinner before the show at one of the many new restaurants, pubs etc. Feed your curiosity, heart, mind, and soul after.
The nation’s capital can use a theater that may better inform and engage the deciders and the undecided. Mosaic is connecting between community, place, policy, practice.
This holiday, I couldn’t avoid the tragic news of violence and death posted on social media every day depending on who your friends are. Neither was I anticipating a gleeful night at the theater to see “The Gospel of Lovingkindess”. Had it not been in preparation for the after0-show discussion December 29, I may have avoided this conversation. The drama occurs near Christmas, a time I’m either haunted by the ghosts of Christmas past, overwhelmed by winter’s darkness, or overjoyed by the promise of possibilities. I didn’t want this play to bring that last party down. Yet to my surprise, the play had a message of hope for me.
So I decided to skip seeing “Chi-raq” instead and avoid conversations on the artistic merits and choices of a film sealed and delivered. Though the topic is all part of the same conversation.
When Ida B. Wells was investigating lynching, she called it a “heinous crime.” In “The Gospel of Lovingkindess” the evil that men do calls women to activism, to organize. It called Ida B. Wells. Who else will be called?
Charles Dickens wanted to change hearts and minds about the plight of the poor in Victorian London. But it wasn’t originally a narrative message he was planning to write. Even Dickens changed course on this message himself. He wrote to a friend…
I’m not going to do the political pamphlet. I’m going to put out something at Christmas time. And that’s going to have 20 times the force.
Blog posts, Atlantic monthly essays, Tweets, NYTimes features just can’t make the same impact as a powerful story like A Christmas Carol now the 2nd most popular and recognized Christmas story — following the biblical nativity. To back up these stories, the author lived the life of many of his famous characters — Oliver Twist, David Copperfield. He saw the world of debtors prisons, misers, work houses, charity. We talk about being a “Scrooge” even “Scroogicizing” with a “Bah Humbug” around seasonal celebrations.
We can read or watch the real life contemporary versions of Dickens’ narratives. But what can we do with so much information? I sometimes feel numb after an hour of clicking, scrolling, reading. Another shooting. Another disaster. Another attack. Another post. An analysis — intelligent and less than 1000 words. Would a Scrooge be transformed and take action by reading Tiny Tim’s obituary from a social media link, and its subsequent analysis on poverty in London in a monthly magazine? Or shake his head and expect Tim’s father to show up for work after the burial?
As much as I’ve seen or read passages from A Christmas Carol it’s one of those stories worth the time it takes to pause and revisit again and again — until we get it right. The story makes all that information intended for the head, make its connection to the heart.
Below is a story about Charles Dickens and a visit to the Charles Dickens Museum in London (decked for the holidays) that broadcast on CBS Sunday Morning December 19, 2015.
Richard Williams is one of those men I would never call by his first name. He is “Mr. Williams”. He’s earned my respect that way.
But I may be one of the few. To my surprise, I discovered the father of the top women tennis players in the world – Serena and Venus Williams – is the author of a memoir: BLACK AND WHITE: THE WAY I SEE IT written with Bart Davis.
In the early years of Venus and Serena Williams‘s tennis careers, Richard Williams was an ever-present figure. He was profiled and hammered by the press as a loose canon control freak father. No humility. No shame. No style. No front teeth. “Crazy like a fox” some people would say with admiration. “Just plain crazy,” others would say dismissively watching him nervously pace back and forth, or exiting the stands for a smoke while his daughters competed on clay or grass.
Mr. Williams’s battle hasn’t only been with the traditions and rituals of the near exclusively white tennis establishment, but with the familiar narrative that Black fathers are incapable of raising worldwide tennis champions. It goes like this: Black men are absent from their homes, strangers to their children, and if they are present and their daughters succeed, it was through an abusive regiment. Think Joseph Jackson, father of Michael Joseph Jackson.
We’ve also been programmed into falling in love with the romantic Black “ghetto” narrative pumped up by the rise of hip hop culture. FADE UP: public courts/drug markets of Compton. See Venus and Serena avoid broken glass, dodge bullets while hitting balls across the net. (You mean there was a net?)
In BLACK AND WHITE, Mr. Williams slams all that:
“…when my daughters burst on the scene, people thought of us as the poor black family from the ghetto rising up against the white tide of tennis and America. The truth was I had created a company before they were born called Richard Williams Tennis Associates, which I still own, and had saved $810,000 which was all in the bank. I paid my own kids’ way through tennis. I didn’t want anyone to help me. I could have gotten sponsors, but Venus and Serena were my children, so it was my responsibility to pay for them. I never had to take one penny from anyone.”
Nothing or no one White or Black was going to stop Mr. Williams. That included the gangs who kicked out Mr. Williams’s teeth (the first time was in the deep South) when he fought for control of their open air drug market located on the Compton tennis courts.
Fighting it out in Compton was part of the plan. Mr. Williams moved his family from Long Beach to Compton where Venus and Serena would have to be courageous, tough under pressure, all under the protection and guidance of their parents and Mr. Williams directly. If Venus and Serena want to be champions also had to demonstrate commitment to tennis, to school, personal improvement, to family. A lack of commitment was a deal breaker.
Nothing can be realized without a plan. That’s Rule #1 in Richard Williams’s “Top Ten Rules for Success”: Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Initially Mr. Williams had no real interest in tennis, but after watching a tennis player on television receive a $40,000 cash prize for winning a match, his interest in tennis ballooned. Mr. Williams’ plan would start with himself. He found a teacher by chance named Mr. Oliver (who answered to “Old Whiskey” because he started the morning with a drink and didn’t stop until the end of the day). Mr. Oliver was sober enough to teach tennis to Compton youth and Mr. Williams. This was also a man who had worked with Arthur Ashe and Jimmy Connors. Ever defiant, even as a beginner, Mr. Williams challenged the age old tennis rule that you serve with the closed stance. He aimed to prove that theory wrong. That became Rule #7: Create theories and test them out.
Mr. Williams was committed to giving his dream team daughters something few young tennis pros had: a childhood. He observes other young tennis players full of potential and talent pushed beyond their commitment to succeed by anxious affluent parents. He notices these young athletes burning out early in their careers because they were told to compete with players beyond their levels. He pointed out to Venus and Serena examples of superstars who were broke because parents or handlers mismanaged their finances. (Venus Williams would eventually fight for and win equal prize money for women in competitive tennis.) And then there were the ones who adopted self-destructive behaviors to rebel, resist, or escape. Mr. Williams observes and shares the lessons with his daughters. Rule #5: When you fail, you fail alone. Rule #6: You learn by looking, seeing, and listening.
Mr. Williams anticipates the cruel world his daughters would inhabit as Black women committed to excellence. “Cruel” may be too gentle a word to describe the life of poverty, racial terror and violence Mr. Williams experienced growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana in the 1950s. These chapters make up the first half of the memoir and making the most traumatic part of his story.
Mr. Williams’s father better fits the narrative he’s fought against his entire life. R. D. Williams was a smooth talker when it came to the women. “R.D. was Mama’s greatest weakness, the invisible man who impregnated her by night and disappeared from our lives by day.” R.D. Williams didn’t have it in him to be a husband or a father. Mr. Williams abandons the notion of having any relationship or connection with his father when he sees R.D. run from the scene as his son is being beaten by a gang of white men.
Mr. Williams lifts up the women in his life like the answer to a prayer. He dedicates the book to his mother Julia Metcalf Williams who is still his “greatest hero”. Though she would never share the grand dreams of her son, she made him a believer in the power of faith and demonstrated it by practically praying the near dead back to life. He calls her a “prayer warrior.” Rule #4: Faith is essential to confidence. It pairs well with Rule #3: Confidence is essential to success.
Flip the order either way.
Confidence is something few people can fake successfully. When it’s real, it’s powerful. I’m sure Mr. Williams’s confidence is interpreted as arrogance by a lot of people he comes into contact with. But without confidence, he would have perished long ago.
Mr. Williams believes education is a game changer. But that couldn’t be achieved in Shreveport, not for a Black man or woman. Raced-based rules limited rights for Shreveport’s Black residents to own land, work for living wages, vote, and learn. The wood-framed tin-roofed school Mr. Williams attended as a boy was called “Little Hope” – “The name was absolutely correct. Negroes had little hope”. There was no flagpole according to Williams. The stars and stripes was nailed to a long stick “bolted on the tin roof.” The single outhouse had maggots. The teacher was dedicated to the forty children in the one room structure, but too fragile and elderly to turn things around. The principal was a “stumbling drunk.” Mr. Williams had spirit or grit, courage, and anger.
In the memoir Mr. Williams describes how one of his best friends was killed by the Klan for stealing a pig. Lil’ Man was found hanging from a tree; his hands cut off and stuck on a fence. But it’s not just the Klan. Another childhood friend is struck by a car driven by a white woman who doesn’t stop. The boy is left to die like fresh road kill. A third is found hands tied, naked floating facedown in the water.
If anyone thinks these horrors happened a long time ago, talk to a living witness.
After the death of his friends Richard Williams turns up the heat on his childhood fascination with stealing.
“I grew from a heated boy into an angry young man, filled with rage. When I couldn’t get the white man’s respect, I dishonored him by stealing from him. I had no sense of guilt or remorse. I was the injured party. I “confiscated” because it made me feel powerful and in control.”
He even substitutes the word “stealing” with “confiscating.” There is no passive resistance in his being. Mr. Williams justifies the badassedness of his youth in the deep South as a way of evening up the score in a brutally racist world.
His escapades go so far as to disguise himself in a KKK hood and robe stolen via the daughter of its original owner. Mr. Williams puts white flesh colored makeup on his arms and hands, jumps on his bike and launches a private war on Shreveport’s white citizens and fellow KKK members. There’s one incident during this hooded rampage that the young Mr. Williams finds himself holding the gun at a lynching. Quentin Tarantino or Dave Chappelle couldn’t make this up.
And yet, Mr. Williams still believed he could achieve the American dream. Fate was in his hands, and a plan to leave Shreveport.
Follow the north star. That’s the place to go for a young Black man who rode the rails in search of a place to breath, to feel free. Destination Chicago turned out not to be that place.
“Black-on-black crime in the inner city was on a rampage. Murders, stabbings, rapes, robberies, muggings, and beatings were an everyday occurrence. Like new enemies in an old war, blacks turned on each other with a vengeance…We were a hopeless people divided not only by racism, but by the contempt we had for each other.”
In BLACK AND WHITE everyone is on notice as Mr. Williams sees it from his experience. In his thirst for knowledge and finding it, Mr. Williams also acquires maturity. His anger and hatred are transformed into committed determination to succeed on his own terms.
As Mr. Williams fights the gang members in Compton over the tennis courts, one wonders why this battle didn’t end fatally for him. Why didn’t the gang members just pop the old man right there, leaving Mr. Williams and his plan to die on the spot where all his dreams began. It didn’t happen because I believe even these young men felt some respect for him based on the unwritten rules of the street. Who couldn’t respect a man willing to fight one or more (usually more) young men half his age for his daughters and for his dreams.
[Unfortunately that tragedy would come to the family later in 2003 — after the championships, money and fame and a move to Florida—the oldest daughter Yetunde Price, who chose to stay in Compton, was shot in the head by a member of the Crips gang who was gunning for her boyfriend driving the car.]
BLACK AND WHITE cuts straight to the chase on what the author/subject has designated as the teaching moments in his life. This is not a book for the reader looking for repentance from the author. There’s only room for gratitude.
In some ways you wonder if the journey has been more important to Mr. Williams’s understanding of the world than the destination. Personally, I’ve always been a strong believer in Rule #8: Always have a Plan B. There was a time Serena Williams wanted to be a veterinarian. Her father would’ve said, “Why not? Go for it.” Both Serena and Venus are designers for interiors, ready-to-wear, tennis fashion. Plan B, C, and probably the whole alphabet plan are in play.
The first pages of BLACK AND WHITE open on the green grass of Wimbeldon – tennis nirvana. The grass descends into the place where fathers and mothers never want to be. When your child is ill and there’s nothing you can do. This opening chapter is what kept me turning the pages. Nothing can describe a parent’s pain when he/she feels helpless. It’s a struggle to apply Rule #2: Always be positive.
For me, this chapter expresses Mr. Williams’ love for his daughters more than any page in the book. And most, if not all, parents can relate. As harsh as the world may be, The Rules have kept Venus and especially Serena on their “A game” despite the smacks and jibes from the forces around them.
The Williams are masters and champions of the 10th and final Rule: Let no one define you but you.
From David Simon (HBO’s “Treme” and “The Wire”) and Paul Haggis (“Crash”), the HBO Miniseries presentation SHOW ME A HERO debuts its first two parts back-to-back SUNDAY, AUG. 16 (8:00-10:00 p.m. ET/PT), followed by two parts on both of the subsequent Sundays – Aug. 23 and 30 – at the same time. In addition to Simon and Haggis (who directs all six parts), the miniseries is executive produced by Nina K. Noble, Gail Mutrux and William F. Zorzi.
Based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Lisa Belkin, the miniseries explores notions of home, race and community through the lives of elected officials, bureaucrats, activists and ordinary citizens in Yonkers, NY.
That’s the HBO blurb. Look out for my next post on eclectique916.com. HBO granted me a preview of the miniseries. Lisa Belkin’s book has been rereleased in paperback by Hacchette Book Group with the miniseries tie in that includes actor Oscar Isaac as Nick Wasicko (youngest Mayor in the U.S.) on the bookcover.
Everything can be taken from a man but . . .
the last of the human freedoms–to choose
one’s attitude in any given set of circum-
stances, to choose one’s own way.
I wonder what kind of day Texas State Trooper Brian Encinio was having before he spotted Sandra Bland’s Hyundai and pulled her over for not signaling a lane change. Did he wake up angry that morning after an argument the night before? Did someone leave a note, or send a text that rattled his nerves? Or just “ghosted” him? Was this Encino’s first arrest of the day? Or was it a rough ride all the way up to this point? Is he being hounded by creditors for student loans? Is someone he cares about sick? It was after 3 PM July 10. What was the temperature in Houston (93 degrees) Did he eat a good breakfast and/or lunch that day? Does he hate cigarette smoke?
I stopped the video right after he opened the car door.