Following righteous ripples

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/02/2023 (935 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Cherissa Richards arrives early for her interview, and after getting acquainted with a boardroom on the second floor of the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, the director sits down at the conference table, staring at a wall filled with faces from the past.

Directly across from her are photographs of the centre’s six decades of history: artistic directors, board chairs. Many of the pictures are rendered in black and — especially — white; very few are of women or of people of colour.

“I’ve never had a Black female director before, and I have only ever had one Black director,” says Richards, the director of the upcoming production of Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind, on from Feb. 15 to March 11 at the John Hirsch Mainstage.

It isn’t as though Richards is new to the theatre game: a 20-year acting veteran, she graduated from the University of Winnipeg’s theatre program, the National Theatre School, and York University. She’s acted in the Shaw Festival, and participated in the Stratford Festival’s directors’ program.

“I know my way through the rules and the mores of the classical theatre industry, and I’m also of a certain age that I have seen the world before, when directors were abusive and rooms were a lot more oppressive compared to where we are today, where rooms are taking care of each other and a bit more open to people of colour being invited in to create art,” she says. “When I first started out, no matter which company I was in, I was usually the only Black artist.”

That old world is where Alice Childress lived. Born in 1916 in South Carolina, Childress was a pioneering creative artist. She wrote six novels, produced 13 plays, including adaptations of the writing of Langston Hughes, and was a social commentator, writing a recurring column in the activist-artist Paul Robeson’s publication, Freedom. A member of the groundbreaking American Negro Theatre company, Childress was a luminary of Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Lorraine Hansberry, whose A Raisin in the Sun became in 1959 the first play written by a Black woman to debut on Broadway.

That historical tidbit likely should have been affixed to Trouble in Mind, a show which Richards says is, at its core, “about a Black woman’s struggle to navigate her way through the theatre industry and discover her own autonomy.”

But censorship said otherwise: after a successful run off-Broadway, producers asked Childress to change her ending to placate white audiences on the Great White Way. Childress refused to compromise her art. Instead, she put her head down and continued to work on whatever came next. The Red Scare was aswirl, and Childress faced the dangling pen of the black list.

Now, many decades later, Trouble in Mind, an incisive behind-the-curtain look at a theatre troupe in Harlem, is experiencing a long-awaited renaissance.

The show premiered on Broadway in November 2021 and closed last January. It was nominated for four Tony Awards, with productions by the National Theatre in London, England, and at the Shaw Festival following that stateside success. The New York Times hailed it as “a masterpiece of astonishing power.”

When it plays at the MTC, it will represent for most local audience members their first brush with Childress, whose work influenced Pulitzer winners August Wilson and Lynn Nottage.

One of the show’s stars was already well aware of Childress’ work.

“I’m very passionate about knowing Black playwrights, and especially Black women playwrights,” says Reena Jolly, a Winnipeg-raised actor and National Theatre School graduate who plays Millie, a complex, frivolous and feisty actor.

Prior to Trouble in Mind, Jolly, 26, could count on one fingerless hand the amount of times she’d worked with a Black woman as director.

“I’ve always wanted to do a play written by a Black woman, and to be directed by a Black woman, and here, that’s the case. Our assistant director (Melissa Langdon) is also a Black woman,” Jolly says. “I just feel so seen and so understood. There are certain things I don’t even need to say out loud. I’ve been wishing and praying for this for so long.”

The majority of the show’s crew are people of colour and women: Sarah Uwadiae is costume designer, Tré Cotten is dialect coach, Ashley Au is sound designer, Lisa Russell, Paige Lewis and Devon Helm are stage manager, assistant stage manager, and apprentice, respectively. Kate George is the apprentice costume designer.

To Richards, the on- and off-stage stories of Trouble in Mind reflect both how far society has come and how little progress has been made when Childress, who died in 1994, was producing her work.

“It’s so rare that we have Black stories told in our theatres and in our media,” says Richards. “We stand on the shoulders of great Black artists who have come before us. And it is a pressure to carry on that legacy. But ultimately it’s about making sure that we’re doing Alice Childress’ words justice, doing her characters justice, and making sure the Black artists in the room connect to the piece and have the support they need.”

“It’s beautiful to be able to create art as a Black person,” she adds. “I stole this from (theatre director) Philip Akin: all the shows I direct are Black, by the inherent nature that I am a Black woman.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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