#107, October 10, 2006

Not Living for the City

The Performing Arts Program needs to be congratulated once again for an excellent production in the Stockton Experimental Theatre (October 4-7). “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” is an extremely compelling play about African American migrants living in Brooklyn. Having worked on the topic of this play for my first book, Sparks from the Anvil of Oppression, and my ebook, Histrionyx (http://loki.stockton.edu/~greggr/front_cover.htm), I found the play especially interesting.

One of the problems in writing a play about African American migration to the city, I imagine, is that most of the narrative devices have been used already, many times over, and it is very easy to fall back on cliché. There are some great novels about migration, and it is hard to create characters that seem new or at least not derivative. When you follow in the footsteps of great writers like James Baldwin, Paule Marshall, Toni Morison, and Gloria Naylor, not to mention those who have dealt with other migrations besides African American and African-Caribbean ones, like Sandra Cisneros, Thomas Bell, and Anzia Yezierska, it is difficult not to be or seem derivative.

But Lynn Nottage’s 1995 play, “Crumbs from the Table of Joy,” manages to avoid this trap very well indeed, actually pulling it off by flirting with the clichés and then taking them away from you as soon as you begin to think that you have everything understood. Thus you will recognize in this play characters and even exchanges from Go Tell it on the Mountain (the assertive aunt/sister challenging social norms), Brown Girl, Brownstones (the emasculated father, Godfrey, turning to a “prophet” like Father Divine), and The Bread Givers (the daughter of (im)migrants aspiring to a better life through education), but then the familiarity will be confounded. I think there are two significant ways that Nottage manages to achieve this feat. The first is in the central character Ernestine Crump’s continual reference to and depiction of a world that she wishes had existed instead of the world that did. This provides an alternate narrative, which because it might exist in fact does so – at least as potential. In a way, these alternative stories place this play most closely in the realm of Morison’s Jazz which endeavors to undermine the reader’s assumptions about the novel’s main characters, even going so far as to suggest that the narrator herself had gotten the story all wrong. Ernestine’s imaginary world becomes a powerful device that keeps the play moving forward without getting stuck in the dismal rut of “ghetto” existence – played to the accompaniment of Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City.”

The second unique aspect to this play is the character of the German woman, Gerte Schulte. Once she enters the play, “they white” having been firmly established in the consciousness of the audience, everything is up for grabs. Gerte is white, it is true, but she is also German, so she is at once more white and less so (if that’s possible) – an enemy of the people in her own right (to borrow from Ibsen). She is the Aryan who might be implicated at least implicitly in the Holocaust, but also an impoverished immigrant in her own right with her own cultural baggage. Once her character is mixed with Ernestine’s propensity to imagine an alternate existence the results can be startling, as in a scene towards the end of the play when Gerte (played by Mary Anne Vitello) and Lily, the outspoken aunt (played by Vivian Lynn) dance to the same mambo number but in their own distinctive and not so essential styles (excellent choreography by Henry van Kuiken).

But if you are going to make a play like this work, you need very good performances from your actors – actors who are confident enough in their roles to take you to the edge of a character and then pull back very sharply and proceed down and alternative path. You also need good, confident directing to encourage the players to do so. Fortunately, good acting and directing are to be found in abundance in this performance of “Crumbs.” Christopher Banks is as striking in his role as Godfrey as he has always been in our ARTP productions. I was very much reminded of the character of Deighton from Brown Girl in his portrayal of this somewhat lost soul, who nonetheless seems to find his way through this Brooklyn maze (far better than Deighton does). The narrator/lead, Ernestine, played with growing confidence by Conchetta Benjamin, is also a very well drawn character (akin to Marshall’s Selina). At first glance, seemingly very grown up and mature, she grew into the part as the play progressed by, ironically, becoming increasingly vulnerable. Ernestine’s sister, Errmena, played by Teyonna Stanley, is vibrant and joyful in a detached way that a younger sister in a crisis might be (at least seen from the perspective of the older sibling). The two parts on which the play hinged, and which may have caused the most anguish for the director, were the parts of the children’s aunt, Lily, and the German Gerte. If I am not mistaken, this was Vivian Lynn’s first role on stage, and she was excellent. She had the nuances of the character down, even when at times it seemed that the playwright, owing to another of her twists, appeared to have under-drawn her character (her communism seemed a little sketchy and one-dimensional, but it turned out there was a reason for this). Marianne Vitello as Gerte was equally good. A lot relies on whether she can represent whiteness both as the observer from without (akin to a member of the audience) and the out-of-place participant within this household, and then confound these too. Suffice it to say that the dance, mentioned previously, is a confounding moment that sticks with you. It does not happen “in reality”, but the fact that it is represented as having been a possibility in the child’s imagination gives it a resonance that makes the narrator’s final description of her later life (one of possibility and achievement) seem altogether plausible. For, if everything is truly dismal, how would such an outcome have been possible? How, even, would a play such as this have ended up being put on at Stockton! Indeed, the representation itself is a confounding instrument – and that is all for the best.

Kudos, or shouts out, then, to one and all: to Pam Hendrick for her usual superb directing; to all the actors, of course; to the rest of the performing arts program faculty – Mark Mallett for producing, and John Hobbie for technical direction and crisis management; to Patrick McMullen (lighting design and last-minute crisis management); to Justin Maciejewski for crisp stage management; to Julie Jackson for once again providing perfect costumes; and to the students on the production staff, Stephanie Kingsbury, Elizabeth Wentz, Rebeccah Long, Jon Porubsky, Kerrie Husband, Lauren Finlay, Norjae Alston, and Jennifer Rankel.

If you get a chance, you should see the play; with Luck, heaven can wait.