After a performance of his play “Bee-luther-hatchee” in Minneapolis, Thomas Gibbons introduced himself to a black actress as the writer of her play.
“And she just did this marvelous, classic double-take,” said Gibbons. “She just couldn’t believe that I was white.”
Her director had deliberately not told his cast the playwright’s race. The play is about a writer who is assumed to be a 72-year-old black woman but is discovered to be a middle-aged white man, and that deception builds to a jarring act of violence. The play asks the fundamental question of who has the right to tell another person’s story.
In this moment of backstage discombobulation, this black actor stared into her own preconceptions in the white face standing before her.
And they laughed.
“It was really funny,” Gibbons said. “And I took that as a huge compliment.”
Gibbons’ plays have explored the divide between African-American and white experiences in this country for a decade. His plays are populated by black and white characters, but he says once his whiteness is revealed, it can draw intense responses ranging from shock to mystification to outrage.
“A certain amount of time needs to be spent together before people accept that my motives are something they can subscribe to,” he said.
“Really, I think this all has to do with the kind of voluntary apartheid we all place ourselves under,” he added. “This idea that it is somehow illegitimate to write outside our own identities, so that white writers can only write about white characters, and African-American writers can only write about African-American characters, and Asian writers can only write about Asian characters.
“So when I say that people are surprised I’m white, I don’t think it’s because I’m a great writer; it’s because it’s not done very often. That’s a real shame, because I think it’s just one of the many, many repercussions of this country’s racial history.”
Based on a true story
Gibbons’ newest play, “A House With No Walls,” opened Saturday at Denver’s Curious Theatre. It’s based on the real controversy that erupted in his hometown of Philadelphia in 2003 after it was learned that the site where the Liberty Bell was to be moved was the exact spot where George Washington’s slave quarters once stood.
“The irony of it was obvious,” said Gibbons, “and when the local Park Service refused to commemorate the existence of Washington’s nine slaves, as you can imagine, it became a huge public controversy.
“Not smart,” he added with a laugh.
“A House With No Walls” tells parallel tales: one a fictional, present-day conflict between a startlingly conservative black woman and an ultra-liberal, Afro-centric political activist. The other of two of Washington’s actual slaves, Ona Judge and her brother, Austin.
This issue of writing cross-culturally is one of great interest to Denver Center Theatre Company artistic director Kent Thompson, who included Gibbons on a panel addressing the subject at his Colorado New Play Summit last month.
“There is a growing trend among writers to find a way to sneak across cultural, racial, sexual and religious political divides that exist around the world,” said Thompson, “and it is coming at the same time that there is such a radical demonization of ‘the other side,’ whatever ‘the other side’ is. But especially in these worlds that are particularly fractured is a rare opportunity and a rare moment of risk for the contemporary playwright.”
Thompson then asked Gibbons how he approaches writing black characters.
“Well, I start from the assumption that African-Americans are not from another planet,” Gibbons said to applause. “I don’t mean to sound facetious, but there is a certain sense among a lot of white people that African-Americans are a species apart; that we can’t possibly understand them because their experience is so different; and we don’t even have the right to try to understand them. Naturally, being a writer, I find that a peculiar attitude to take.”
Jeffrey Nickelson, artistic director of Colorado’s only black theater company, takes no issue with a white playwright writing black characters.
“If we are to grow as human beings, we have to be open to new ideas from many perspectives, and then discuss them,” he said. “These are the barriers that have to be broken.”
Two caveats: “First, tell a good story,” he said. “Two, just make sure you know what you are talking about, and that you represent people as authentically as you can.”
That means do your homework, which Gibbons has, often taking three years to complete a script. He firmly believes writers should not get bogged down by the axiom “write what you know,” which limits scope.
“There are many ways of knowing things,” Gibbons said. Better to write what you want to know. For example, what Hemingway didn’t know, he went out into the world and learned – then he knew.
Deception opposed
Nickelson does have a problem with the director who kept his actors from knowing that Gibbons is white.
“This is where my battle zone is,” said Nickelson. “It’s not with a white man writing a black play. It’s that they were dishonest with those actors right from the gate. Tell the truth and people don’t have a problem. When you deceive people, that’s where anger comes from.”
Even if that black actor found a truth in the character Gibbons wrote for her, Nickelson said, “the point is moot, because not telling them was a lie. And once a lie has been told, there is never any truth after that.”
Gibbons does not set out to write cross-cultural plays. But sometimes they present themselves to him right outside his window.
“I work for a medical publishing company in Philadelphia,” he said, “and I can actually look right out from my cubicle and see the Liberty Bell.”
In 2003, he saw numerous protests from groups like the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition. The playwright in Gibbons salivated.
“Oh, I was quite selfishly overjoyed,” he said. “It’s not often an idea literally pops up a couple hundred feet from where you are sitting. As soon as the story hit the local papers, I knew I was going to write about it.”
A byproduct of Gibbons’ plays has been the employment he has created for black actors and directors. “A House With No Walls” will have been performed by eight companies by the end of 2007 (It’s part of the National New Play Network’s Continued Life Program, of which Curious is a member).
After a decade, he hopes his days of having to defend the artistic legitimacy of his work are numbered.
“Look at it this way,” he said. “Whenever you see an all-black version of, say, ‘Death of a Salesman,’ there will be an inevitable controversy as to whether that is somehow distorting the play,” he said. “The intentions are certainly noble, but to me there’s a certain amount of gimmickry to it.
“Isn’t the better solution for living playwrights to write more plays that have not only white characters, but African-American, and Asian and Latino characters – all in the same play? Because that’s the society we are living in.
“It just seems to me that’s the more organic, logical – and more interesting – solution.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“A House With No Walls”
DRAMA | Curious Theatre | By Thomas Gibbons | Directed by donnie l. betts | Starring Tyee J. Tilghman and Simone St. John | THROUGH APRIL 21|
At the Acoma Center, 1080 Acoma St. | 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays (2-for-1 Thursdays) | $24-$28|303-623-0524 or
www.curioustheatre.org
