Wednesday, January 28, 1998
Hearing voices
THEATER Motifs of freedom and self-expression inspire the
creators of "Harriet’s Return"
By Cheryl Klein
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The stage is buffed and country clean. Tufts of yellow grass
adorn its borders, whispering stories from a long ago plantation.
The theater is silent save the low, suggestive hum of three actors
billed only as "The Voices."
Debbie Allen leans into her muscular love interest, their limbs
melting together as they ease to the floor in quiet passion. They
roll, skin on skin on wood, until Allen erupts into giggles. Soon
the cast and crew join in, with the humor of the moment interrupted
by their laughs ricocheting off the stone walls of the empty Geffen
Playhouse.
They are free to joke and spar as Allen rethinks the
choreography and director Kent Gash advises the Voices, "It should
be a courting-you, getting-to-know-you sound, not a having-you
sound."
"Harriet’s Return," which began previews last night, is both a
historical and fictional account of the Underground Railroad’s most
championed activist. Originally a one-woman show, Allen, writer
Karen Jones Meadows and playhouse-producing director Gilbert Cates
reconfigured the piece to include an entourage of ethereal beings
constantly advising and inspiring Harriet Tubman.
As the characters sway and vocalize together on stage, the
off-stage story unfolds as an equally collaborative journey. Gash
continues the parallel, likening the actor-director relationship
to, well, what was about to happen when the laughter broke out.
"When it’s good, it’s like having a great lover or something.
Because they will take over and guide you when you need to be
guided or when you just come home and you’re like, ‘Ooh, honey,
please don’t make me make any decisions.’ And so the other person
will buoy you up. And then you buoy them up and support them too,"
says Gash, who graduated from UCLA with a master’s degree in
directing just three years ago.
Tubman herself had a little help, explains Jones Meadows. In
researching the play, the writer discovered fact after fact that
made her question the way history is presented.
"I think when I first heard of the Underground Railroad, I
thought Harriet Tubman started it, that she conducted everything.
But it was a lot of people," Jones Meadows says, crediting Tubman’s
parents for instilling the belief that slavery was an institution,
not an identity. "People who were of African descent who had been
captured and enslaved were called slaves, like that’s what we were.
It just crosses out the whole humanity … She never saw herself as
a slave. She saw herself as someone who was free who did what she
could to make that a tangible reality."
Today, slavery may be as difficult for many to conceptualize as
freedom once was. Yet, its legacy resonates in Voices everywhere.
It is a wound, a void, and at times, Gash says, an inspiration.
"Whatever I’m going through now in 1998, I come from people who
survived that. That’s what I’m made of," Gash says. "That’s my
trump card as a human being. I come from people who survived the
insurmountable."
This is something he tries to project onstage, enshrouding Jones
Meadows’ script with sparse props that are reminiscent of resources
Tubman might have had available.
"If Harriet was going to tell this story to her peers, what
would they use to tell the story? Because nobody had anything,"
Gash says.
Some of the characters, especially those who would have looked
foreign to someone new to America, like the slave owner and the
Quaker Railroad accomplice, wear African-style masks. As a storm
brews onstage, three Voices swirl cloud-colored ribbon in graceful
representation. The sound director experiments with a variety of
gourds and gentle percussion instruments to create the sound of
rain.
From her seat halfway back in the theater, Jones Meadows murmurs
approval.
With an easy laugh and smooth voice, the playwright professes
comfort in the theater. She knew where her home was long before
anyone else embraced her writing career.
"I stuttered a lot when I was young, and I hated people to hear
me talk. I think writing helps me. It helped me create people I
liked more than the people I was meeting," Jones Meadows recalls.
Though she went on to be an actress, her parents initially said,
"You can minor in all the drama you think about, but you will not
major in it."
So she taught everything from kindergarten to college but
eventually grew frustrated with the bureaucracy and paperwork
inherent to the educational system. Jones Meadows sought the
self-expression that Tubman refined, as the pioneering woman’s
voice beckoned her toward a theatrical destiny.
"Harriet was pretty determined to get this play done. I tried
very hard not to do it, but she just kept peeking through.
Literally. I got a call saying ‘Listen, would you like to do a
project on Harriet Tubman?’ from a person who never knew I did
anything on Harriet Tubman," Jones Meadows says.
And if anyone had the ability to come back from the dead and
play muse to a playwright, Tubman might not be an unlikely
possibility. She was a Renaissance woman in a culture that did its
best to ignore her.
"She was a business woman; she had people in the military who
helped her out," Jones Meadows says. "She was a scout. She was a
warrior – actually – straight-out soldier. She was also a nurse.
They wouldn’t pay her so she had to earn money elsewhere. She had
to bake pies and make root beer so she’s like shooting off people
and cooking up a little cake here on the side."
Tubman’s legendary experiences made her prime subject matter for
Jones Meadows’ effort to recreate a strong African-American
mythology in the spirit of stories she heard about her grandparents
as a child.
"The whole mythology that a lot of cultures have, we lost when
we were all sort of crammed together," Jones Meadows observes.
And if all goes well in "Harriet’s" run, she and the rest of the
creative team can take credit for making not just a narrative but a
visual account of one of history’s most fascinating icons.
This is where Allen comes in, moving lithely across the stage,
leaping onto the backs of other performers. Even as the cast breaks
for dinner, she pauses in a doorway, stretching, rolling her ankle
in hopes of easing a strained foot.
Gash, who attributes much of the play’s fluidity to Allen’s
dance background, smiles at her and says, "Working that foot – see?
I’m telling you, she’s the most disciplined actress I’ve worked
with."
Work and faith, after all, are perhaps the most prominent
messages of "Harriet’s Return."
"Sticking to your cause is probably the most fulfilling thing
that you could do," Jones Meadows advises. "And it doesn’t have to
be huge. Some people raise great children, and they put passion
into that. And it’s a good thing because they become the people who
lead us."
THEATER: "Harriet’s Return" is currently in previews. It opens
Feb. 1 and runs through March 1 at the Geffen Playhouse. Tickets
range from $23 to $37.50. For more information, call (310) 208-5454
or (800) 678-5440.
(Left) Debbie Allen plays Harriet Tubman in "Harriet Returns" at
Geffen Playhouse.
Photos by AARON TOUT/Daily Bruin
Debbie Allen rehearses with cast members (background, from left)
Kyme, Thomas Corey Robinson, Seraiah Carol and Stephen Smith.
Debbie Allen and Seraiah Carol tell Harriet Tubman’s story in
the Geffen Playhouse’s newest production.