Trouble in Mind @ Dallas Theater Center
Photos by Imani Thomas
—Review by Ramona Harper
Trouble in mind, I’m blue
But I won’t be blue always
‘Cause I know the sun’s gonna shine in my back door someday….
Those prescient lyrics from a 1920s jazzy blues tune might have been the inspiration for Trouble in Mind, Alice Childress’ blistering stage play written thirty-five years later.
The Dallas Theater Center is fortunate to be among the first regional houses to present the revival of Trouble in Mind following its Tony-nominated run on Broadway last year.
Alice Childress was a Black actor, author, playwright, and early pioneer in the movement to confront racism on the American stage and screen. Trouble in Mind first premiered Off-Broadway in 1955, and Childress thought it was destined for Broadway in 1957. But Trouble in Mind never transferred to the Great White Way. Producers and Childress clashed when they wanted to make the ending more palatable to white audiences and Childress, as playwright, insisted on keeping its culturally sensitive ending.
Until now.
It would take almost 65 years for the long arc of the universe to bend far and long enough toward social justice to bring Alice Childress’ truth to the Broadway stage in 2021. Trouble in Mind is an important work in the canon of Black theater makers. Its message resonates today as full equity, diversity and inclusion in American theater is still a dream deferred in many ways.
Trouble in Mind is a semi-autobiographical play-within-a-play about a veteran Black stage actor, Willetta Mayer, and an interracial ensemble beginning rehearsals for a so-called progressive Broadway play. The story arc reaches a shattering climax of uncomfortable truth-telling about racial stereotyping and sexist indignities in American theater when Willetta becomes increasingly disillusioned with the play’s demeaning ending and refuses to perform. The show did not go on.
Paradoxically, it’s hilarious to watch Black folks shucking and jiving in Trouble in Mind’s mashup of Darkie maids and mammies, Stepin Fetchit and Uncle Tom characters, and the white stereotypes reminiscent of Gone With the Wind: the fragile Southern belle, the brave male savior. The comedic drama and satiric buffoonery are laugh out loud funny—until they aren’t.
Directed by Tiana Kaye Blair, an artist in residence of the Diane and Hal Brierly Resident Acting Company, Trouble in Mind is considered anti-racist theater today, a concept completely unknown to the theater world when it premiered in the Fifties. The play’s relevance is not only its artistic excellence but its contribution to the case for racial healing in American storytelling. It makes good trouble.
An outstanding ensemble of actors characterizes the white gaze of the day. Perfectly cast, each actor uniquely personifies the spectrum of human responses to outrageous microaggressions, racial stereotyping (Black and white), the threat of lynching, and white fragility. They are: Bradley Atuba (Sheldon Forrester), David Coffee (Henry), Claire Greenberg (Judy Sears), Bill Hess (Bill O’Wray), M. Denise Lee (Willeta Mayer), Jeremy Rishe (Al Manners), Candice Marie Woods (Millie Davis), Mac Welsh (Eddie Fenton), and Zachary J. Willis (John Nevins).
The creative support team’s well-constructed set, lighting, costume, and sound design set the tone, mood, and plausible atmospherics for the bare backstage rehearsal space of a New York theater of the mid-century: scenic design, Melpomene Katakalos; costume, hair, and make-up design, April M. Hickman; lighting design and projections, Driscoll Otto; sound design, Claudia Jenkins Martinez.
Jeremy Rishe gives a slap-dashingly impressive performance as Al Manners, the overly dramatic director/producer. His directorial ideas about how Black people should express their emotions is completely off kilter and his defensive, histrionic monologue is a combination of racial insult with an occasional moment of truth.
M. Denise Lee gives a force of nature performance as the lead character, Willetta Mayer. And she can sing! As Willetta ,Lee is intensely determined to self-actualize greatness as an actor no matter what, and her initial ideas about playing the white man’s game—to survive the game—devolve into open defiance in a struggle to maintain her dignity. In Willetta’s troubled mind, the white gaze is a total distortion of the Black experience.
The momentum speeds up with Willetta’s increasing intolerance for the racial stereotyping and sexist treatment that she and her fellow actors must endure during rehearsals. In an urgent but elegant center stage monologue, Willetta speaks about the importance of integrity and self-respect, and her compelling intention to be a great actor. Willetta closes the play with an emotionally breathtaking finale reciting Psalm 133.
Thematically, Trouble in Mind supports the We See You White American Theatre movement ( https://www.weseeyouwat.com/demands)that began in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. Childress’s work specifically addresses #WeSeeYouWAT’s demands for artistic and curatorial ownership:
“When producing/programming BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) stories, a full commitment to honoring the cultural specificity of those stories is required. Power must be in the rehearsal room and be yielded to those who share a cultural context with the work, especially when the director is white.”
It's troubling when we pause to ponder that it is almost 2023 and we are still struggling with many of the same issues. Trouble in Mind is a necessary experience of (and conversation with) courage, heroism, grace, and greatness that shouldn’t be missed. And you’ll have a chance to get into that conversation with DTC’s Stay Late, a talk with members of the cast following every performance.
WHEN: Through October 30
WHERE: Kalita Humphreys Theatre, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd. Dallas, TX
