Words are power. That is one of my basic beliefs as a writer and it was the root of a germ of an idea seven years ago.
We had no budget for my plays. We did them on a bare stage, without curtains or lights, in costumes bought at the Goodwill and adapted by myself the week before the play (for most of the plays- I had help for the last few). Someone decided we needed mics once and paid for 4 body mics and 4 hanging mics but that was as extravagant as it got. The magic had to be created by actors saying my scripts. In some schools, they buy a script, but with money so tight, I always took a classic and adapted it for my kids. But this time, I was drawing a blank. It had to be something unique, something more mature, something different. The end of summer was creeping up on me and I didn't have a glimmer of a plan, much less a 45 page script to hand out two weeks after school started to demanding actors.
The children that left us in 5th grade were returning to us as 8th graders that fall and among that group were my actors- the kids that did the first 40 minute play when they were second-graders. Not all of them were happy about returning to our small, safe school after experiencing the big bad world of inner-city middle school, but my actors asked me what play we were doing that Fall when they registered. The last play we had done together was when they were in 5th grade, and it was Peter Pan, and while they'd been in the audience for the rest, this group of kids had missed performing with me. It was the main reason a few of them consented to return to us. Up until now, I'd stuck with the children's classics- stories they weren't familiar with but should have been.They were ready for something a little more avant garde, or maybe I was, I'm not sure, but I did know that I wanted to do something challenging, something that would stick with them for life... something that empowered them. Waiting for my Principal to get off the phone, I flipped open an unused desk calendar buried under a couple reports on her desk.
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Booker T. Washington
365 days of quotes by African Americans...
I skimmed the calendar quickly. "Can I borrow this?" I mimed. She nodded, and I swiped a pack of pink post-its shaped like a hand that I knew CP had left her before heading home.
I researched and wrote for nearly fifty hours straight- grabbing a few hours of sleep on the day bed in the office before returning to the script. It was almost finished: a montage of old African stories, early African-American stories, biography monologues, a few appropriately placed Gospel songs, and the quotes in between each scene. But it wasn't hanging together. It didn't work. And then, I realized what it was missing... quickly I added a choral reading of the Declaration of Independence, and it was finished: the most unique script I'd ever written, and one of the most powerful works as well.
The kids hated it. They hated the box on stage where they pulled out costumes bits to add over their black pants and black tees. They hated the gospel songs. They refused to memorize the quotes. They hated the simple staging and the basic set design. And they didn't know who any of these people were. But I was sure it was the best thing I'd ever written for them and that it would have lasting value.
We talked about each quote and what it meant and who said it at troupe meetings, and they still hated them. We retold the stories and they still hated them. I took stuff out, changed stuff, and even got rid of the hay bales, and they still hated it. But most of all, they hated the Choral reading of the Declaration of Independence. They wanted to dance real dances in slightly wrinkled frilly ballgown dresses I bought at the Goodwill on half-price days and prayed someone would fit into. They wanted real props and a real set. They wanted the love story and they hated the play with a passion.
"Can't we do Cinderella," one begged, throwing down a lion mask.
"This play sucks," muttered another, stomping off stage.
And then... one day, about when I ready to give up and throw the script away, Cierra came into rehearsal all excited. The informal leader of the cast, the rest took their cues from her.
"You know dat woman?" Cierra demanded, shaking her script at me.
"That woman," I corrected absentmindedly. "Which woman?"
"The one with that ass-long, Sorry ma'am, monothingy," she explained all in one breath- including the apology for using a cuss word at practice.
"Which one, Cierra? There are a couple and each one has a name with it."
"I don't 'member her name," she said exasperated, and then she launched into the monologue I'd written about Madam C.J Walker. The room fell silent as Cierra became Miz' Walker reflecting back on her life. She talked about how tough life had been after her parents died and she and her sister took in laundry, about how no one believed in her products at first, and about how hard it was to learn to say "isn't" instead of "ain't". The longer she talked, the more we believed Miz' Walker was in the room with us. When she finished, the room erupted in hoots and howls and cafeteria table banging.
"Madam CJ Walker," I said when the noise died down.
"Did you know she was famous? Did you know she was the first BLACK woman Millionaire and she did it selling hair products?" Cierra proclaimed, like I was completely ignorant and hadn't told her this before.
I leaned against the stage, my arms crossed. "Go on, Cierra. You have the stage. Tell us."
She shook the script. "My grandma says every word in this is real. My grandma says that every single word in this script is important."
The room fell silent again as Cierra walked around the lunchroom and shook open the script. "Pick a page, any page..." She stopped in front of Vivian, a new eighth grader who'd been giving not just me, but the whole school, hell since the first day she arrived. Not her, I thought. She's on her last strike with me.
Vivian flipped back a few pages to the monologue by Fannie Lou Hamer. Cierra nodded. "My grandma said that when blacks weren't allowed to vote, Fannie Lou Hamer said she was voting because they were already killing her. They beat her up and threw her in jail too." Vivian grabbed at the script, but Cierra wasn't letting go of hers. "Read your own, fool!" She said disdainfully.
There was no interrupting the girl when she was on a roll. She worked the troupe like a pro. I had told them this countless times, but I had left out one important fact. Every part of the montage was real words said at one time or another by another African American voice who had beaten the odds; who had succeed when others thought failure was the only option, and who had suffered for their dreams. This wasn't the watered-down Black History Month Stories with matching crudely drawn figures to color- these were real people. Cierra's grandma had helped her see the truth at supper when Cierra complained about the script.
"Read me part of it," the wise woman said, and Cierra read, and she talked, and Cierra read, and she talked, and when they were finished, Cierra finally knew the truth she couldn't hear from me.
"I'm doin' Fannie Lou Hamer," the obnoxious Vivian claimed fiercely. "I know all about bein' treated injustly." I wasn't fighting her. If she finally wanted a part and would take it seriously, I was happy. I'd been slightly worried about her getting out of control and beating me up a couple times as it was.
We started the play with the troupe in black, with flash lights, surrounding the metal folding chairs filled with proud family members and crying babies in the pitch black. The smallest kindergartner girl in the whole school flicked on her flash light. It wobbled slightly until an older troupe member held it steady. She recited loudly, proudly. "WE the PEOPLE", she shouted. "That means me and you," she ab-libbed, in case her little sister on the front row didn't know.
We ended the play with the troupe still in black, with their flashlights, surrounding the metal folding chairs filled with proud family members and sleeping babies in the pitch dark. Cierra closed the chant.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
When it was over, the room was silent. I was stunned. The audience hated it, I thought. They resented me, the white teacher, tackling this subject. I looked at Cierra and our face fell. And then, the room erupted: chairs banging, people jumping around, screaming and crying, clapping and praising the Lord for the words of wisdom from the mouth of babes, and I cried.
Driving home tonight, I could hear Cierra's voice echoing in the old cafeteria that housed our small stage. I could hear that little one reciting the preamble and knowing what the words meant. I could hear Vivian's defiant voice retelling the story of woman who wasn't afraid to die so that others could be truly free.
Cierra's a senior in college this year, on a soccer scholarship. She wants to be a successful businesswoman the last I heard, maybe even work in Washington, she said. Words are power, I remember. Words are dreams spoken- even when it's dark and hope is a rare thing.
Happy 4th of July!
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