How do you balance the play’s humor and its politics?
ODOM It’s madness. It’s really funny. We have fun. As joyful and bright as this experience was, he realized that it was too painful to ask an audience to assist him. It is already an act of great generosity and grace that he decided to put it together like this. He wanted us to be able to see these people he grew up with, this country he grew up in, this farm he knew so well, but he wanted you to be able to endure and tolerate him.
LEON We tell it in a light-hearted way and deal with real things.
YOUNG There are so many gems about the violence of our simple existence. There’s a phrase I said the other day that reminds me of gentrification. Lutiebelle says: “It was all a trip to get you out of the house. » I’m a Harlemite and I’ve felt the violence of gentrification for years. I know it’s not what the play is about, but these things are left out of the story, and because it’s so dramaturgical, they get to live on their own.
LEON It’s so beautiful because, to me, that’s what artists are supposed to do. We are meant to revisit the work of the previous generation and ask ourselves, “What does this have to do with me now?” » I treat covers as if they were new pieces. Everything about being American, and certainly about being black in America, is reflected in his play.
Is that why you changed the structure from three to two acts, without intermission?
LEON I read plays five times to inform myself what I will do with them. After the fifth reading, I came away with the idea that it was all about getting to that last page and scene. And getting to that last scene meant that it was about the rhythm of what was happening on stage and people in the audience weren’t thinking about time. I don’t want the outside world to come in. I just want them to get lost in this world.
Kara and Leslie, what’s it like to summon the spirits of Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis on stage?
YOUNG I’m a big fan of Ruby, oddly enough as a Harlemite too. Ruby and Ossie are great examples of what it means to be organizers and activists and a force for change. But what it means to take on a role created by Ruby Dee, I can’t put into language. But it’s also a role about a young woman and her journey, about discovering herself for the first time and her importance in the world and where she stands. This feels like a very universal story for a black girl.
