As a writer, an actor, and a student of the theatre, I'm always interested in finding out what exactly it is that makes the little corners of our world tick. This more or less began when I directed a watered down version of Konstanty Galzcynski's "The Little Theatre of the Green Goose" for a one-act festival at the end of my senior year in high school. The piece was given to me after the production I'd been cast in, a watered down production of "Fires in the Mirror", fell through for some reason or another. The play is a collection of scenes, none longer than a page, with no real overarching theme other than a vague rejection of religion that can probably only be seen by a 17-year-old director searching desperately for a concept. I knew that hiding behind the short, bizarre vignettes that make up Green Goose was something powerful - it's very rare that an overtly odd piece of writing is what it appears to be. As it happens, Galzcynski wrote it as a response to the utter destruction Poland found itself in the midst of after World War II. When I read that, it all seemed so obvious: they question God because it seems so impossible that a Creator who loves his children could cause something so unthinkable to happen, and for years, no less. Through the process I fell in love with finding out all the whys, however tiny, that drove a playwright to put their words to paper. This has in no way flagged during the semester I've spent living in the world of African-American theatre; in fact, it has only deepened my desire to know more.
Admittedly, I found the subject a little scary - no matter how hard she tries, a little redheaded girl probably won't be finding her truth in Amiri Baraka. So early on, I decided that I'd bide my time with that old friend of mine, the whys. What makes Black theatre what it is? What makes it tick? How is it so much its own animal while still being inseparable from theatre at large? I certainly didn't know, and to be completely honest, I can't say that I'd consider myself as well-versed as I'd like to be now. For that very reason, Suzan-Lori Parks' essay, "New black math", stood out to me as though there were countless streetlights shining me toward it. It's thorough, it's definitive, it's contradictory, it's perfect.
(to be continued)
