Aside from
the nine hour train trip back from Chicago to Galesburg, our delightful sojourn
with the Delaney sisters at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago Thursday afternoon
was well worth the time spent. Director Chuck Smith proved once again he Is a
master purveyor of the Black Experience.
Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters
First Hundred Years is
a true story and was adapted from an interview and book in the nineties. The
play by Emily Mann appeared on Broadway in 1995. Those inimitable sisters have
now passed away, but their message remains both poignant and pertinent. Their
lives covered the minority experience all the way from their slave born father
to the end of the 20th century. Each maiden sister had a singular personality
and profession. Sadie was a school teacher and Bessie a Dentist. As they share their lives, you cannot help but
admire their intellectual capacity, fortitude, humor, and above all their
essential goodness in the face of two centuries of oppression.
Ella Joyce (Bessie)
and Marie Thomas (Sadie) are just plain superlative as they putter about their
immaculate home preparing dinner (for us the audience). Director Smith has full
control of each minute domestic chore and has devised an efficient way to share
the sister’s family background. A few family photos on the set suggest many
more and they are depicted by a series of golden frames that creep up a wall
behind the household setting. Several of
the frames are used to show projections of African American history as drawn
from a family album that the sisters
look at and refer to. The empty frames
also gave every audience member an
opportunity to fill in photos from their own past.
The set itself
is a tour de force of realism built upon a large turntable that moves the
action smoothly from living room to dining room and kitchen. The overall palette (both the set and the
lighting) emphasizes restful blue and peach tones. This is a calm, spotless, organized, and under
control space that seems somehow isolated from the furor of slavery, lynching, Jim Crow laws, protests, and
all of the manifest horrors of the society’s struggle with racism. It emphasizes that these extraordinary women made lives anchored by civility, kindness, and
gentle humor in spite of what was going on outside of their home. The key turning point for the Delaney sisters
was the securing of the vote for women in the 1920’s. According to director Smith, this was one of his
main reasons for remounting the show today.
He and they point to the ballot as the final arbiter. If you do not use it you are selling out yourself
and the cause.
Having Our Say is not an enduring masterpiece
for the ages though it may be more profound than it appears. As a reminder that
two fellow humans can endure a century of oppression and still retain a sense
of protest, civility, and humor the performance is definitely worth seeing.
