Friday, March 22, 2019
Christina Ham Talks The Blues And Black Women With Dominic-Madori Davis
The Theatre Times: They were pronounced dead on the scene.
Sunday morning, September 15th, 1968, 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins pampered herself in the bathroom of her church. Her and three other young girls, 11-year old Denise McNair, and 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson stared at their black faces in the mirror. They played with their kinky wooly hair, unassuming and unsuspecting of the 19 sticks of dynamite which rested underneath their feet.
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This is the kind of work I get excited about. From the article, it seems like it tells these poignant, important historical stories with a deep awareness of the canon of black women playwrights. There is a longstanding tradition of telling the untold stories (I, for one, did certainly not learn about women in the civil rights movement while I was in school) and breaking storytelling molds. Of course the first playwright who comes to mind is the recently deceased Ntozake Shange, inventor of the choreopoem and author of for colored girls. And yet, as much as I admire Shange’s work, I am well aware that it was not written for me as a white man, and I will never fully understand it. Ham’s work seems more educational, more about showing people what was and is happening, rather than moving through experiences and feelings as a community. I was particularly interested to read that Four Women is being produced globally, with local directors adjusting the content to suit local issues.
Reading this article after hearing the not guilty verdict of the Antwon Rose Jr. shooting case only serves to enhance the importance of this art being created and consumed in America to try and overtake the toxic environment that remains prevalent in this country. It was really fascinating for me to be able to read about the path that this playwright, Christina Ham, has taken through her career thus far in theatre. This beautiful evolution from her early work Four Little Girls to Four Women demonstrated her own growth as a writer. I do think that her core goals have remained strong in her writing, she aims to reclaim lost voices to articulate the issues imbedded within our society. As with anyone Christina had to continue to search to find the real truth she wanted to present within her art, and I think the personification of these four architype black women really struck a cord of breaking down some complex issues and perceptions that are held even today. I can't say I'm surprised that she is moving toward television since it seems as though she is motivated by sharing her message as broadly as possible and that is a more accessible source for a greater majority of the population.
Like most other people in Pittsburgh, and a lot of the people watching, are devastated by the Antwon Rose verdict. Shooting after shooting, it feels like the smallest step black people take is set a whole stride back by injustice like this. After reading this article, it made me feel like this is one of the truest and most uncensored forms of representation in theatre because of the topic and the unending amounts of research the author went through to make sure this story was being told correctly. “after seeing Four Women, as black women, especially, were finally able to see themselves represented on stage.” Along with the representation and research, I appreciate that Christina Ham’s effort is mostly to educate her audiences of events like this and make sure their stories are being retold as accurately and true as possible. I would love to see this play performed, I can’t wait to see more work she puts out.
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