‘Elm Thicket’ @ Soul Rep Theatre Company (The Elevator Project)
—Ramona Harper
Dallas history is wrapped around an engrossing story of friendship, love, and challenging social transitions in Soul Rep Theatre Company’s world premiere production of Elm Thicket, a serio-comedy from playwright and actor Anyika McMillan-Herod, Soul Rep’s co-founder and executive director.
In emotionally touching and funny repartee between a middle-aged widower and his single, longtime next-door neighbor, their personal relationship amplifies what happens when strong bonds from the past begin to fray, under stress from an unsettling present and an uncertain future. Together, the neighbors confront the fallout from gentrification in the beloved neighborhood where they both grew up—Dallas’ historic Black community of Elm Thicket.
Whether you are a newcomer to Dallas or a longtime resident familiar with the demographic shifts happening in the Emerald City, in Elm Thicket the neighborhood’s doors are left wide open as we encounter the precarious predicament of new beginnings. with gentrification forever altering the inner and outer landscapes of time and place.
McMillan-Herod, also an acclaimed poet and novelist, grew up in Elm Thicket (her first Dallas home) and has entrusted this new play to her artistic home, Soul Rep—Dallas’ oldest professional Black theater company, now nearing its 30th year of operation.
Elm Thicket is the opening production of the 2023/2024 season of The Elevator Project, a competitive arts program celebrating local dance, theatre, and other performing arts endeavors from small and historically marginalized organizations and artists. This is the third time Soul Rep Theatre Company has been awarded an Elevator Project slot, making it the most frequent participant in the history of the series, which is supported by the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture in partnership with ATTPAC.
Directed by Natalie King, McMillan-Herod plays a starring role in her own two-person play as Mira Butler, an independent-minded single woman and child cancer survivor who’s learned to go it alone, while still yearning to hold on to family and friends who have passed away.
Her longtime neighbor and friend Ronald James (Keith Price), now a widower, returns to the family home next door after living in Denver for decades, and finds that the neighborhood has changed as much as he has. (Elm Thicket was founded soon after the Civil War, and is located east of Love Field in central Dallas.)
Historic days of celebration mark the beginning and ending of the story line, unfolding from MLK Day through Valentine’s Day, Earth Day, and Juneteenth of the year 2020. Youthful friendship changes into the romantic feelings both Mira and Ron hid growing up. Mira makes the first move and the romance begins—but not before the two of them poignantly reminisce about favorite foods and family recipes as well as death, trauma, social unrest, and family grief they intimately shared.
The pandemic was at its scariest during 2020, yet love still happens in Elm Thicket, even through face masks and hand sanitizers that Mira and Ronald use as sexy foreplay. Talk about creativity in a crisis!
One of the funniest scenes, and there are quite a few, finds Mira and Ron coping with pandemic fears by sitting on the porch with a couple of joints. It’s hilarious to hear romantic conversation devolve into slurred sweet nothings.
Music has a way of anchoring us emotionally to a moment in time. And the playlist for Elm Thicket that grooves through the story adds entertainment as well a romantic emotional tone that only music can provide. Sound designer Nash Farmer pumps in some of the best-loved R&B and jazz numbers, with sign-of-the-times tributes to greats such as Sam Cooke, Bill Withers, Prince, Earth, Wind & Fire, Rufus with Chaka Khan, DinahWashington, and hip hop’s Tye Tribbett.
The audience hummed and swayed to the beats, so much so that Elm Thicket might almost be dubbed a play with music—it has such an impact on the show’s success.
When a play only has two characters, likeability matters. Mira and Ronald’s unabashed vulnerability draws us to them like fireflies to lights on a warm summer night. Funny and sassy dialogue (with a slew of uttered F-words, mostly by Mira) keeps things real. There’s palpable chemistry and believable empathy despite the personality conflicts between the couple. McMillan-Herod’s and Price’s strong acting chops punch through the conflict and the fourth wall with humor and sensitivity. There’s loads of dialogue in the play, but both actors catch every emotional beat, never dropping a line.
Scenic design by Ashley Oliver and Rebecca Jeffery and costume design by Oliver are simple, attractively modern fare you might see in any middle-class living room or closet in 2020.
Though the play definitely highlights the dilemma of preserving a long-established Black neighborhood being swallowed up by developers and gentrification, including more direct references and facts might have made for a better balance between the love story and the social “issues” of the story. Ronald shouts, “Where am I?” when he comes back to his childhood home in Elm Thicket after thirty years, and Mira laments, “This is modern-day colonization!” when she looks out and sees how the old Black family units of Elm Thicket are practically gone. Whites moving back to the cities (after having fled to the suburbs in a previous generation), are having a devastating impact on traditionally Black communities, not just in Dallas but across the country.
Among the facts at a writer’s disposal: Elm Thicket changed dramatically both socially and physically from 2000 to 2023. The Black population decreased from 62% in 2000 to 29% in 2023, while the white population increased from 11% to almost 62% in the same time period….Housing cost increases have priced lower-middle class and poor families out of the homebuying market in Elm Thicket. Rising home values mean higher property taxes, a burden that’s led to displacement of many current Black residents who can’t pay the bill.
In a passing paraphrase, Mira says: “All that we are culturally as a people and a community is being lost with newcomers who are not contributing to that sense of community.”
Mira and Ronald must make choices—one about whether to sell out or remain in the neighborhood, both about how (and if) they can resolve their differences over gentrification. But they’re just two people. Can the huge social and economic problems inherent in this painful transition be resolved equitably for whole communities? That remains to be seen.
Elm Thicket is a timely piece that manages to add humor and humanity to the Black community’s hopes to hold onto “the village.” It’s not to be missed during its short run at the Wyly Studio Theatre.
WHEN: January 11-20, 2024
WHERE: Wyly Studio Theatre (6th floor), 2400 Flora Street, Dallas
WEB: attpac.org
