By Jewell Parker Rhodes

Is anything “lost in translation” when white directors helm black-written and themed theatrical works? Does this mean fewer opportunities for directors of color? And what role do we play in keeping some of our color and culture represented on “The Great White Way?”

I first saw the late August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone during the 1987-1988 season of Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage Theater. The play examined the effects on blacks of the brutal chapter in American history when the promise of Reconstruction was swept away by an unrelenting oppression. Thousands of black men in the South were falsely arrested, imprisoned, and then “rented out” by the prison system to work for southern companies and governments that demanded a cheap labor force that could be starved, brutalized, and, once dead, easily replaced.

Wilson’s tale of Herald Loomis, a free man, unlawfully indentured in 1911, was a revelation for me.  I had had no idea that there really had been a Joe Turner (the brother of the Tennessee Governor) who swept up black men to work on his chain gang for “free,” thus denying them of their basic civil rights.  Wasn’t the end of slavery-well, the end of slavery?

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, the second in Wilson’s ten-series cycle chronicling African-American history, is one of my all-time, favorite plays. I still remember vividly how the drama both moved and educated me. Herald Loomis, a husband and father, after having lost seven years of his life, reclaims his young daughter, Zonia but travels North in search of his wife Martha, who abandoned him and their daughter to spread the gospel.

Herald stops at a Pittsburgh boarding house and the residents are fearful and suspicious of an angry black man trying to reclaim his life and family. At the end of Act 1, Seth, a resident shaman-figure, encourages his housemates to break into a juba, a glorious song-and-dance rooted in African ritual that includes stomping, hand-clapping, and spiritual possession.

I still remember being overwhelmed by the transformative power of sound (the small band of actors seemed like a thousand), and how the sounds they made seemed ancient and eternal. Emotions pierced my soul.

Like the boardinghouse residents, I was startled and shocked when Herald demanded that the juba stop. Herald, a former deacon, begins “speaking in tongues” and has a vision of seeing slaves arriving on the African shore-”bones people” stripped of their songs and their identity by racism.  He realizes that his twentieth-century indentured servitude is direct kin to centuries-old American slavery.

By the end of the play, Herald will denounce Christianity. Dramatically, he’ll mock the residents and his now proselytizing wife by slicing his chest, bleeding, and doubting the righteousness of a world that could enslave him (and, by extension, all black peoples) and steal his “song.”

In 1988, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone won both the New York Drama Critics Circle Best Play award, and Tony (Antoinette Perry) Award nomination for Best Play. Without a doubt, Wilson had explored a little known aspect of African-American history, and questioned an Anglo, governmental, and religious heritage that had allowed de facto slavery to exist despite civil law. Like the best dramatists, Wilson created cathartic scenes, in which the audience could feel, protest and reclaim their own identity.

Sitting in a darkened theater, I identified with Herald and by the end of the play, felt that I, too, could reclaim my song. The fact that August Wilson was a native Pittsburgher, like me, made me undeniably proud.  He used art to bear witness to a profound truth, making it a dramatic rather than didactic experience. (Like Wilson and his protagonist, Herald Loomis, my song was grounded in words and metaphors; in 1993, I published my first novel, Voodoo Dreams, about the blending of Christian and African spirituality in New Orleans during slavery.)

Today, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is on Broadway, produced by New York’s Lincoln Center Theater. Under the direction of Bartlett Sher, who is white, it was nominated for six Tony Awards, including “Best Revival.” (It won two Tony Awards: for Best Performance by a Featured Actor; and Best Lighting Design)

What is the significance of a non-black director putting his imprint on Wilson’s work?

In 1997, Wilson famously debated Robert Brustein, the artistic director of the American Repertory Theater, and argued that black theater should be about, by, for, and near black people. Wilson argued that black theater should thrive without having to depend upon white funding and preferences of white audiences. He also pointed out that, of 64 members in the League of Regional Theaters, only one-Crossroads Theater in New Jersey-was devoted to black theater.

In the context of the first decade of the 21st Century, Wilson wasn’t arguing for “self-segregation” as Brustein challenged, but instead for a context in which to affirm black people, history, and values. Indeed, the debate between Wilson and Brustein followed Wilson’s celebrated 1996 address, titled, “The Ground on Which I Stand,” to the Theatre Communications Group National Conference.

In this address, Wilson argued that American theater privileged a white master narrative and Western tradition, and that black theater was about reclaiming “ground” for African Americans who were disenfranchised by American theater. Wilson claimed all of theater’s history (Euripides, Shakespeare, Shaw, Miller), as well as the social pioneering of civil rights activists (Turner, Vesey, Delaney, Garvey), as being significant to his development.

Ironically, Wilson believed that American theatrical history wasn’t as inclusive of him and his fellow compatriots in the black theater. Economic inequities diminished the scope and vitality of black theater on American life. If public and private institutions did not actively proclaim that they served only white interests and audiences, then why was so little black theater funded?

Throughout his famous career, Wilson wrote about specific people (African Americans) but never doubted that his work appealed to all Americans. Wilson and his directorial partner, Lloyd Richards, the first African American to direct on Broadway (namely, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun) and Dean of the Yale Drama School, worked on ten plays over two decades. Multiple Tony Awards, New York Drama Desk Critic Circle Awards, and the Pulitzer Prize give ample evidence that Wilson was heralded within the American theatrical canon. But, Wilson, I believe, would have argued that acceptance of him didn’t change the economic circumstances of most artists devoted to black theater.

The Barlett Sher-directed version of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone now at the Lincoln Center Theater is a brilliant production not to be missed.  The white director and primarily black cast collaborated well-but it is the brilliance of the work, the play itself, that remains the guiding light.

In the context of 2009, the twenty-first century and an America with a black president, the play reminds Americans of our racial past and how this past informs identity and demonstrates the triumphant survival of a people who stood their ground. President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama recently attended the production, and I suspect they, too, were moved by Wilson’s brilliance and dramatic themes. The acting and setting are first rate and the undeniable poetry of black speech, resonates with power and passion in the theater.

It matters that August Wilson’s plays are still being performed on Broadway. It matters that a Broadway Theater has been renamed the August Wilson Theater in honor of Wilson’s theatrical contributions. It matters that August Wilson’s words are echoing still on “the Great White Way.”

Great writers define and set the limits of interpretation with their words.  I believe black life, black specificity within an artistic context cannot be undermined by white producers, white directors, etc. Nothing is “lost in translation,” if other talented producers and artists approach a play respectful of its context, content, and authorial intent.  Indeed, if he were alive, I believe Wilson would applaud anyone of any color who approaches his work as black theater, representative of black life.

Still, questions remain about opportunities for directors, actors and producers of color. While the door is opening wider on Broadway, at least for Oprah Winfrey’s production of The Color Purple and the possible upcoming Whoopi Goldberg production of Ntozoke Shange’s “For Colored Girls,” the door is not open wide enough.  Black casting of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman at the Yale Repertory Theater or Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Broadway, may offer opportunities for black actors but do not provide funding for developing new black theater works.

I think if Wilson were still alive, he would argue, “Why not hire a black director?” It isn’t that a white director can’t do justice to his work: 1) Wilson’s writing is too brilliant to be so fragile; and 2) Bartlett-Sher has proven he can direct, with excellence and grace, a black classic. Nonetheless, I believe, Wilson would still be advocating for more opportunities for black talent and for more companies to nurture other plays devoted to the African-American experience.

August Wilson, through his chronicles of twentieth-century black life, gave an ever-lasting gift to all Americans and to the worldwide theater. But there are millions of other exceptional black writers, actors, directors, set and lighting designers, producers, etc., who need a supportive environment to emerge and to become, like Wilson, integral parts of the American theatrical canon.

Each of us has a role to play. We must all support black theater, and in doing so, we support a more inclusive America. As Bynum, the shaman-figure in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, says to Herald once he learns to stand as a proud, self-healed man, “You’re shining like new money.”

Now is the time for all of us to promote, as best we can, economic equity for theater that explores and presents all facets and faces of American life.

Jewell Parker Rhodes is the Piper Endowed Chair, Artistic Director for Piper Global Engagement and Founding Artistic Director, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. Yellow Moon, part of her voodoo trilogy, is available from Atria Books.

www.jewellparkerrhodes.com