Lynn Nottage plays are uncluttered and make an immediate point; they are funny but also point to race and the way it plays out for actors and their audience. This one has a big surprise at the end and overall leaves an impression of light-heartedness and humor...as much as one can be when one is dead serious about painful truths. The roles for black actresses in Hollywood in the 1930s were ridiculously few: one had be a slave or a maid, there was nothing else. White directors wanted the black roles to be filled with "real" country folk descended from slaves, as though acting weren't the point after all. Actors would scheme for these parts nonetheless.
This two-act play addresses three time periods, all set in Hollywood: 1933, 1973, and 2003. At least half the cast is black, and half is white.
Act One opens in 1933 on the bedroom of a white actress who is having some trouble learning her lines. Her black maid Vera is prompting her, not without a little throw-away sarcasm. The two seem especially intimate in conversation but there is no love lost, particularly. One gathers that the white woman relies on the black maid to keep her organized and producing, and the black maid is a tiny bit resentful that her assistance is not rewarded with bit parts in the actress' films. That is why they are all in Hollywood, after all.
It's a terrific short play, packed with great language and situational pranks. At the same time, it conveys a real truth that has everything to do with what is being discussed, finally, in Hollywood under the aegis #OscarsSoWhite. The black actress Gabrielle Union wrote in her recently published memoir, We're Going to Need More Wine, that black actresses need to be given more and better roles in order to be recognized. The talent is there, it just needs to be showcased. Same story, nearly a century later.
In Act Two the time has jumped to 2003 when a group of people are discussing Vera's brilliant acting in an underwritten bit part that raises the movie to the level "Art." They reference Vera's last known TV interview in 1973, forty years after the film was made, when she met again with the lead of the film, the white woman of Act One, Scene One.
So enamored am I of Nottage's plays, I hesitate to chose a favorite from among them, but this one, with it's layered time, great comic roles, and deliberate pointing to the lack of substantive change across a century, is among my favorites. Vera's personality changes in the forty years since the film was made, but she remains a consummate actress to the end.
This play satirizes the Hollywood and all the well-intentioned but unmistakably dull audience that takes what it is fed by delusional directors and does not demand more and better writing, casting, acting, directing. I love it.
Other Nottage plays recently reviewed:
※ Sweat
※ Ruined
※ Intimate Apparel
A special treat for Nottage fans: a short play, "Poof," by Nottage posted as a Playing on Air podcast. At the very end is an interview with the author. Enjoy!
You can buy this book here:
Tweet
No comments:
Post a Comment