Three important plays are exploring black experiences right now, and that doesn’t even include our only black theater company. That’s unheard-of bounty for this town.
But none is written by a black writer.
Issue or anomaly? Does a playwright’s race matter?
The question not only informs Thomas Gibbons’ thought-provoking “Bee-Luther-Hatchee,” being staged by Modern Muse; it’s one that has defined this white playwright’s career looking at black issues and history.
Does it matter that a 27-year-old white woman wrote “Gee’s Bend” (Denver Center) about a family of Alabama quilt-makers? Or that Eugene O’Neill wrote “The Emperor Jones” (Aurora Fox) about a rousted black American dictator on a Haiti-like island?
If you are black and these stories entertain you, move you or even change you, have you been the victim of some kind of a cultural hoax?
The knee-jerk answer is, of course not. The talent to move human beings with words is not color-coded. And not everyone can be Ernest Hemingway, living the adventures they write about. But the issue is more complicated and sensitive when it involves a white person trying (with no small measure of privileged arrogance) to create honest, fully dimensional characters whose very DNA is informed by centuries of slavery, oppression and constantly having to overcome.
“Bee-Luther-Hatchee” isn’t a great play. But it asks a great question: Who has the right to tell another person’s story?
And Gibbons all but writes himself into the debate, making this one black play by a white writer that couldn’t have more first-hand credulity.
Shelita Burns (Jada Roberts) is a successful black book editor who has shepherded the autobiography of a 72-year- old black woman into a best seller. When it wins a prestigious prize, Shelita is determined to deliver the award in person to the reclusive writer whose book has given her a greater sense of her own cultural empowerment and identity. In Libby Price, Shelita has found a mother figure.
But they’ve never met.
The first half covers the rather pedantic and inevitable chase. The play doesn’t really begin until Shelita comes face to face with Sean Leonard (Mark Rubald), the middle-aged white man who actually wrote these memoirs, loosely based on a black woman he knew growing up.
First problem: We have a fiction that’s been sold as fact. Can there be truth in imagination? Of course. But just how prickly does it get when you throw in the issue of race?
Look no further than Margaret B. Jones, who last month published her critically acclaimed memoirs as a half- white, half-American-Indian foster child who grew up in South-Central Los Angeles among gang-bangers and running drugs for the Bloods.
Problem is, Margaret B. Jones is actually Margaret Seltzer, a white woman who graduated from a private Episcopal school in North Hollywood.
Leonard claims there’s a kind of narrative detachment when going from first person to third. Seltzer claimed she gave voice to people others don’t usually listen to (even if they are made-up people).
In a rare display of honesty, Seltzer admitted, “Maybe it’s an ego thing.” You think?
As a defense, that’s all hogwash. These writers are liars. Gibbons doesn’t present himself as black. But Leonard and Seltzer and Misha Defonseca and James Frey and oily reporter Scott Templeton on “The Wire” and dozens like them have committed calculated acts of mendacity. Period.
But what are we to say when Leonard confronts Shelita with the true argument that his words moved her? That she believed in the authenticity of his voice? There is a visceral honesty there, and that’s where this unsolvable debate becomes endlessly interesting.
But the play has problems: There’s nothing in Libby’s story that makes her life (or book) seem worth all this fuss. Bigger, there’s a stilted artifice in the script’s conversational dialogue that carries over into the acting, particularly in Shelita’s scenes with a New York Times reporter and her best friend.
Ironically, the most real-sounding character is the one who’s all but made up. Gibbons’ finest device is letting us see Libby herself (great newcomer Denielle Fisher), an odd amalgam of fact and fiction.
And one whose tall tale could stand just a little more height.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Bee-Luther-Hatchee” **1/2 (out of four stars)
Matters of race. Presented by Modern Muse Theatre Company at the Bug Theatre, 3654 Navajo St. Written by Thomas Gibbons. Directed by Stephen J. Lavezza. Starring Jada Roberts, Denielle Fisher and Mark Rubald. 2 hours, 10 minutes. Through May 4. 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. $15-$20. 303-780-7836 or .
Online bonus
We’ve reposted John Moore’s 2007 interview with “Bee-Luther-Hatchee” playwright Thomas Gibbons about whether a playwright’s race matters. It was conducted before Curious Theatre staged Gibbons’ “A House with No Walls,” also starring Jada Roberts. .
Listen to our interview with Mark Rubald
John Moore speaks with the star of “Bee-Luther- Hatchee about who has the right to tell another person’s story. Rubald, also a former member of the Denver Center Theatre Company, also pays tribute to late actor Tony Church. Running time: 17 minutes. . You will be taken to a miniplayer, where you have two options: Click on the small triangular “play” button, and the podcast will begin playing without your having to download. Or right-click on the “download MP3” option to save a copy to your own desktop .
