LOVE IN THE TIME OF LANGSTON: Theater Review (Because I used to write these once upon a time ago and I came across this one that made me smile)

By the time you read this review, you’ll probably know that The Ways of White People by EgoPo Classic Theater and Theater in the X has been sold out since it opened last Thursday. This show is easily the most buzzworthy piece of art in the city right now. Word of the production wildfired through Philly with reviews in almost every major news outlet, articles from the Inquirer and WHYY have been shared and shared. I mean when is the last time you saw a playwright on the 6 'o'clock news, yet here we are. The love is organic and necessary and deserved. 

I was given this assignment over a month ago by happenstance—or synchronicity. Alaina Johns, editor of the Broad Street Review, sent out an email asking if I’d take it, because no one had picked it up and I thought Langston Hughes—he’ll never disappoint. 

A few days later, I met a sweet smelling man who told me he’d never seen a play in his life and I invited him to come along as my date. I figured this would be very fun or very awkward. 

Even if you haven’t read Hughes’ 1934 book of short stories, you’ve likely read something by Hughes—he promises and he delivers—through  poems, in fiction, non-fiction, children’s books, and now this unconventional experience, with scenes from his first book of short stories reimagined into immersive theater, led by tour guides to different worlds happening in room after room of a the Glen Foerd Estate on the Delaware River, an eclectic victorian mansion overlayed with African masks and mudcloth and drumming and a gong.

My sweet smelling date showed up early. In my anxiousness (or foresightedness), I’d told him 6 pm when the play started at 7, so we had the entire mansion to ourselves for almost an hour. He wore his best turn of the century attire, a three piece suit in muted earth tones, a pocket watch on his large lapel. 

When we think of the Harlem Renaissance (the entire Egpo season is dedicated to this theme, so even if you missed this show, be ready in April for Plum Bun), Langston Hughes is our guy. Alice Walker said in her 1989 essay, Turning Into Love: Some Thoughts on Surviving and Meeting Langston Hughes, that Hughes, who mentored her (and so many of our other literary lighthouses including Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, and Margaret Walker), write as a duty and a devotion. For that she asks, “how do we honor him?” Walker shares that when she first met Hughes, she had never read a single one of his books and ignorantly told him so. Without reprimand or rejection he handed her a stack and said it’s not too late. “There are not many people with that kind of grace,” Walker said of his character. So if you haven’t read any of Hughes’ work, or just not enough, it’s ok. It is not too late.

I knew the show would be Hughes, but I didn’t imagine Hughes like this. The Ways of White Folks brings together two directors, two theater companies, and two distinct racial groups—White Folks and Black Folks. And it doesn’t try to oversimplify the complexity of what it means to live with, work with, and sometimes fall in love with, people who you also somehow don’t like, kind of despise and maybe even hate. The Ways of White Folks turns a sharpened eye onto the social dilemma of forced coexistence—beams a light at it, burns a hole through its soul—and asks what it's like living with, working with, and sometimes falling in love with “the other” today, a hundred years after Hughes’ Harlem. 

I may have loved the show too much. I can’t stop thinking about it and telling people about what it was like to have a monologue performed by three men, 3 Roys, sometimes speaking in chorus, so close you can reach out and touch them. One of the men sickly, coughing, and unkempt lies before us dying in his bed. My sweet smelling date’s eyes swelled in awe or disgust or a bit of both—not at the dying violinist—but at a society willing to kill a classically trained musician because he attempted to shake the wrong woman’s hand. If you do get to see, tell the people who can’t as much about it as you can. 

I can’t stop talking about Ontaria Kim Wilson, who co-directed and co-starred in this production. She delivers, Cora, a piece on motherhood in the Mansion’s makeshift kitchen. After offering us fresh baked cookies, she laments the loss of children and the finding of oneself—under a single light, sometimes breaking the fourth wall and then putting it right back up again. In less than ten minutes I am broken—a cracked egg on her kitchen floor. So close we make eye contact and she must see the tears streaming down my cheeks. My sweet-smelling date puts his arms around my shoulder and squeezes, a gentle and welcome reprieve. 

The Ways of White Folks is alive and stimulating and moving and freeing and challenging in all of the right ways. “This is theater?,” my sweet smelling date asked innocently as we traversed through the Glen Foerd Mansion from library to living room from basement to backyard. “THIS IS IT!” I said smiling and with a whisper. “But broken down, torn apart and sewn back together as it should be from time to time.”

By the end of the evening I was first in line to buy a copy of the book, The Ways of White Folks, but my sweet-smelling date insisted he wanted to buy it for me. I told him to ask Ontaria to sign it for me and she said yes. “Thank you, Jeannine for your support.” No Ontaria, thank you, my friend. 

Without a doubt Philly is having her own renaissance and Ontaria has channeled Hughes to help her lead it. My hope is that funders and patrons take note from the show’s sponsors, Dr. Joel & Bobbie Porter, and build on this momentum. 

But the big question is will there be a date number two? 

Regardless, I found love. 

dear elizabeth

my flight has no wi-fi so it’s a great time to write you a letter processing some of my thoughts and ideas

i realize from the symposium and josephine’s and josephine the importance of starting things and trying things and inventing and failing and trying again

and in many ways this process of having a bookshop which is really just the process of starting and having an institution is so important so one can have a place to design, build, fail, innovate, engineer, share safely—like a science lab

not that individuals don’t have voices of course, but that when i was outside on the corner of broad and cecil b moore selling books or in front of the university of the arts selling books, very few saw that as noteworthy or important. no news articles lol

similarly when i was a school teacher, working daily with youth who were called dropouts, using art and culture as a tool to get them to come to school and work on their GEDs, it went virtually unnoticed

same thing when i was living in an abandoned house trying to finish my degree with a small child

but i believe it was in the process of starting and maintaining an institution, a lab, that i found the confidence to speak in rooms that one i never knew existed or two assumed i had no place in and/or three i wasn’t invited to

when i was selling books on the corner i was innovating—i created a place of beauty and community on a corner and sold books, sometimes more books than i sell at harriett’s or ida’s in a day, but also gave folk an open air place to congregate and chat and connect

when i was helping young people pass their GEDs by sitting with them in the hospital after they’d been drugged, or standing on tables teaching them about ntzoke shange, or hosting community dinners so i knew they ate dinner, or creating a citywide amazing race so they could see their city, or creating an entrepreneurial incubator and giving them seed money to fund their ideas, i was engineering, thinking about what pieces were missing, connecting nontraditional dots, designing and failing and redesigning—but who cared?

when i was writing the human rights curriculum for DC public schools and or conflict resolution curriculum for violence prevention, or racial reckoning curriculum for youth across the globe, i was just engineering —ideating, designing, implementing, failing, redesigning, rebuilding, over and over again…

but my own institution—untethered by the limitations imposed by predominately colonial-minded leadership, not having to beg to realize my ideas, accelerated  my ability to ideate and enact with speed.

i see this also in my other friends and colleagues who’ve had the experience of being able to start and run their own institutions and how much more social impact they’ve had not being under the boot of antiquated practices, antiquated leadership, antiquated belief systems, that tend to dominate many institutions and old regimes—even those who hire a DEI person or host an anti-racist training, change in those spaces is VERY difficult because the issues are built into the system, the design flaw is a part of the actual machine, it’s in the engine and to redesign those institutions would mean having to take them a part completely

without the boot of the old regime on your neck, without the overseer watching, it’s easier to design and build and fail and redesign and rebuild at your own pace. that’s what allows one to follow their gut and play the game of what if… what if there was a bookshop that was also kinda like a monument and kinda like art gallery? what if instead of one brick and mortar we had two?? what if instead of brick and mortars we starting having literary art installations? what if universities made us their school bookstore? what if we set forth legislation to make the first federal holiday named for a woman? what if we all existed locally and globally? what if we took people who never left their neighborhoods out of the country on book trips? what if large institutions “adopted” smaller ones? what if Paris? what if Nairobi? what if we’ve been thinking too small? what if we’ve been living our entire lives in a cage (either self imposed or socially imposed) and what if we just got out?

side note —no one bats an eye that amazon is a global institution, tesla is global, coca cola, kfc, mcdonald’s -global—but it’s like mind blowing when someone who looks like me or someone who comes from where i come from (the projects) creates work that’s global.

like i said to you earlier, i don’t want it to be shocking to see Blk girls from North Philly, Phillying up Paris, or Phillying up Nairobi, or Phillying up Mexico City, nor vice versa. i don’t want us waiting and waiting to see the world (and for the world to have to wait to see us) —that’s what Jo did, she allowed herself to be seen and heard —she opened that door so long ago —i’m sure she’s like just fly already

so i flew—overnight—for 3 days—i’ve never hosted a symposium, i didn’t fully know all that it takes, but what if we designed one and built one and failed and redesigned and rebuilt it until we got it to look like how we wanted it to look and feel how we wanted it to feel and what if there were more spaces for that in the world

because my professor, took that on with me as a project that i believe transformed us both and i don’t know if when i was in his class he could ever imagine all that would unfold from that brief interaction where he pushed me so hard as a writer and took me to gardens and made me read and excavate and analyze and write write write (i wrote an unpublished book in that class) that in a years time we’d be making history together at AUP, a university that has NEVER hosted a symposium dedicated to a woman who looks like you and has NEVER celebrated Blk women scholars, Blk women performers, Blk women media makers, and thinkers in this way—NEVER.

And did we fail at somethings?

definitely, the food (or lack there of was a total failure), but then i met jenea a Blk woman pastry chef who attended and agreed to cook next year, the bookshop lacking in books (which i tried to ship from the U.S. for hundreds of dollars and they still didn’t arrive in time was a failure—books across borders is hard hard hard)—i literally brought books in my carry on and clothes in my book bag—so now i know i need a european distributor and more used and rare more books

tech failures, time failures, financial failures —at one point i couldn’t pay for my taxi cause my card wouldn’t work, me with these stupid fevers that i keep getting—health failure, but who said we can’t fail? what’s this silly insistence on Blk excellence or bust that weighs folk down and makes it hard to invent and innovate because fear of failure keeps folk from beginning or finishing asking or taking risks

tech ventures get to fail all the time with millions of dollars of investment on the table, movies fail with million dollar budgets, governments fail everyday—don’t even get me started on the failures of the child welfare system, the health care system, the prison system, the mental health system, the education system…and they be failing with our money, then turn around and take more

where is that grace for the social engineer? the small business innovator? the activists? the organizers? the educators? the artists?

because after failure, if we do it right, there is the redesign, the  rebuild, the retry

so for our first time, i thought it was an awesome experience, i loved seeing the young folk physically build the shop in paris—40 minutes before the symposium was set to begin—because that’s when everything arrived, that’s who built harriett’s with me outside on the corner during the height of covid, thats who attended the protests with me and gave out books, that’s who sustains the work, it’s glorious to co-create with young minds who are full of energy.

i loved seeing my friends, like Brian, present in an academic setting, though he’s used to giving tours and cabarets

i loved having our matriarch, ms. sylvia come after 40 years of researching and writing and still she’s passing on history to young minds—40 years of dedication to sharing these stories about Blk women and Blk history, how could we ever repay her—all she wants is an english translation of her book

i loved having josephine baker’s daughter, Marianne next to me, saying how much she missed her mother, how loving she was, how many people get her mother wrong, how she’d come back every year if we’d keep hosting—build the bookshop she insisted to me in a heavy french accent

or young folk like Nia James presenting to other young folk like yo here’s an experimental thing i made where i let AI create a convo between Josephine Baker and James Baldwin—what do you think? and having folks question that and congratulate that

and having a dancer in the middle of a symposium, Bakering all over people to live music

or having a lifestyle fashionista say—here’s Baker as a Lifestyle—it’s ok to be Baker-esque—use the good plates, be your full self, enjoy the quality, take your time, connect at the boulangerie

or having a scholar share where she wants to take her Baker research next

having Blk music and Blk tradition take up space in places where we are typically told to keep quiet, be perfect, look but don’t touch, sit still, don’t disrupt, don’t make waves

and then dinner with my french friends and expat friends and american friends and students and graduates

there were many parts of the design that worked and many parts that get to be reworked but in all, i feel the path with no beginning is worth beginning and like i’ve said to the great mothers—i’ll do my part and i trust they will do theirs—and they always do

so glad you get to have paris and all these beautiful connections for your 50th birthday

with love

jeannine

My Sisters Gift Shop

This design for the Rosenbach is dedicated to the sisterhood between Rebecca and Miriam Rosenbach. Using the same 19th century furniture style but in pastel as a stark contrast to the other exhibits, this would be designed to feel feminine and soft with custom William Morris style wallpaper that includes their signatures as design elements. It is said that after the two sisters were both sick unto death, that older sister and caretaker of the younger sister refused to die first. She waited patiently for her sister in life and into death. Ase.

Princess Tam Tam


I walk into Princeton University’s Berlind Theater on Mother’s Day and a painting of Ms. Josephine Baker hangs high above the blue-tinted stage. Ms. Baker never dances out with her long lanky legs and toothy smile, (like one would hope) but her presence is felt through that painting. She is the sun in the sky of the set illuminating the characters (and character flaws) in Pearl Cleage’s, Blues for an Alabama Sky. 

The current production of the story is being directed by Nicole A. Watson with precision and grace. She channels Ms. Baker in her stage direction—creating a dance of methodical movements between actors and audiences.

I am NOT surprised to see the painting of Ms. Josephine Baker. This is the last sign I need. I know folks think I am rude, but I have to do it. I pull out my phone. Turn the light all the way down and search for the contract from Fabienne in my email. I sign it with my finger. Our address will be 5 rue de Médicis if the creek don’t rise. Josephine’s Bookshop in Paris. I’ve done it. I press send. It’s real now, Ms. Josephine. It’s real. I put away my phone and watch the play.

We can almost hear Ms. Josephine, loud and “laughing like a free woman,” throughout this production which takes place in a 1930s Harlem tenement. She seems to know the answer to the question that all Cleage’s characters are asking–how do free women move? Is there a way out of bondage without running? 

Yes. Expansion. 

This story begins with Cotton Club singer Angel played by confident and charismatic, Crystal A. Dickinson, having just been fired from her job at a nightclub. Angel is down on her luck and her finances, like most in the throws of the Great Depression. Through Angel we meet her cast of close friends, Delia (Maya Jackson), an activist social worker, who is working with the church to organize a family-planning clinic; Sam (Stephen Conrad Moore), a doctor, who delivers babies at Harlem Hospital, and Guy (Kevin R. Free), Angel’s costume designing friend and caretaker, who is leading the charge for the group to follow Ms. Josephine Baker’s footsteps straight to Paris. “Ce va?”

Guy is my favorite character, even though Kevin R. Free did some stumbling over lines, I think once he finds his flow, he’s going to spit fire into the role which will increase our emotional connection to him and Angel. Kevin R. Free is going to make audiences laugh more and cry more the longer he plays that role. He and Dickinson have great chemistry.

Guy is the narrative’s creative. He is determined to stitch together a plan that gets him and Angel out of living off the scraps of a divested Harlem. His plan is to take his friend to see the glorious City of Lights on Ms. Josephine Baker’s dime, so Guy sleeplessly designs showstopping costumes for Ms. Josephine Baker. He sews while Angel flits about trying to become a singer. Guy’s plan appears to be working until Angel meets Leland Cunningham (Brandon St. Clair), a grieving Southern suitor from Alabama who just may hold the key to Angel’s financial freedom. 

What did those who became the intellectuals and artists of the Harlem Renaissance gain from migrating away from their lives in the South and heading up North? Folks like my grandfather got freedom from lynch mobs and sharecropping. Yes. But he lost his land rights, right? 

Likewise, what did those intellectuals and artists, like Josephine Baker of the Harlem Renaissance gain from leaving the United States for Paris? But also what did they lose? What is the cost of freedom—especially for women?

Angel and Guy sit at the crux of this story about escaping, with differing approaches to how to free themselves from a spiraling social situation.

The playwright, Pearl Cleage, is many things that I hope to be someday. A novelist, a dramatist, an essayist, and a poet. She was raised in the Black Arts Movement and you can tell. She started telling stories when she was just two years old to her older sister. She’s alive to see her work done and redone time and time again. Blues for an Alabama Sky came into my life at the right moment, Ms. Cleage.

I’m officially off to Paris to build Josephine’s Bookshop this summer and I hope you’ll join me physically or follow along online. 

As you can see, Ms. Josephine Baker is speaking, and continues to remind us to “laugh like free woman.”

Happy Mother’s Day.