Maryanna Clarke: Bringing 'Warriors Don't Cry' to the stage for TWTP's season opener

 

It's been almost 20 years since I first met Maryanna Clarke. Back then she was playing Miss Adelaide in the Mansker's Players production of Guys and Dolls at the Goodlettsville Civic Center and over the years, she's appeared in a number of productions throughout the Nashville area, winning a First Night Award as outstanding suppporting actress for her role in ACT I's Blithe Spirit.

Since that time, Maryanna's artistic focus has changed somewhat, and now she is artistic director for the Nashville-based Tennessee Women's Theatre Project, which is dedicated to "presenting theatricial productions of the highest quality to Middle Tennessee audiences, to producing plays that express the human condition in the female voice; to providing acting, directing, design and management opportunities for women in professional theater; and to bringing live theater to new, underserved audiences."

The bestselling memoir of Melba Patillo Beals, one of nine African American students chosen in 1957 to integrate Little Rock's Central High School, provides the basis for Warriors Don't Cry, TWTP's season-opening production.

Adapted by Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Eisa Davis, Warriors Don't Cry is based on Beals' account of her junior year at Little Rock Central, a year in which she endured telephone threats, shouting mobs, military escorts, rogue police, firebombing, acid-throwing attacks, economic blackmail and, ultimately, a price on her own head. With the help of her English teacher mother, the other members of the "Little Rock Nine" and her gun-toting, Shakespeare-quoting grandmother, Beals persevered.

Vilia Steele stars in TWTP's one-woman show, to be staged September 11-27 at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre, 2301 Rosa L. Parks Boulevard in Nashville. Z. Alexander Looby, the man for whom the theatre and community center are named, was a Nashville lawyer who was instrumental in the city's civil rights struggle, making the setting even more appropriate and historic in its own right.

Tickets are $15; $12 for students and seniors. Thursday performances are $10 for all. For information, individual and group sales, visit www.twtp.org, or email tickets@twtp.org, or call (615) 681-7220.

On Labor Day, Maryanna took time off from her labors of loading the show into the Looby Theatre and handling chores during technical rehearsal to discuss the almost 18-month journey that has resulted in Warriors Don't Cry opening TWTP's 2009-2010 season.

JEF: How did Warriors Don't Cry come about for TWTP? MARYANNA: I was online--don't remember what website I was looking at (but I was probably in search of a play!)--when I saw an ad for Warriors Don't Cry. The title intrigued me, so I clicked through to Cornerstone Theater's website, where it was being produced. The description of the play further piqued my interest. I tracked down the author, Eisa Davis, and asked if I could read the play. She emailed me a copy. I read it, and fell in love. That was nearly a year and a half ago. Getting it to our stage was a long process. For most plays, you simply contact the licensing agency to get the rights to perform the work. The play was very new when I first contacted the author; it had been commissioned by Cornerstone, and was not published. The licensing information in the script said that the play could not be produced without the express permission of Melba Pattillo Beals. There was no codified licensing procedure for producing the play! We had to track down Ms. Beals. Eisa Davis, having been contracted to write the play by Cornerstone, had never met her. I contacted Cornerstone, only to find that the person who had worked on this project was no longer with the company, but information about an agent--who seemed no longer to represent Ms. Beals--was in the file. Calls to that agency were a dead end. We finally tracked down Ms. Beals where she now teaches, playing telephone tag for months. It was a little harrowing, and took many months, but it has all worked out nicely. Ms. Beals now has a new literary agent, partly as a result of this; Eisa Davis's management firm put together a performance rights contract, circulated you come upon the script of them among all the interested parties and their representatives, and Eisa was grateful that we'd pursued our plan to produce the play--now there is a process in place, and other companies seeking to produce Warriors will have an easier time securing the rights.

How does the story relate to people today, given the current political climate? I had a couple of reasons for wanting to do the play. First, it moved me. Also, my daughter Kate is approaching her 20^th birthday. She went to high school with, and is friends with, kids of so many different backgrounds and ethnicities--she doesn't give it a second thought. Those people are her friends and, for her, that's all there is to it. I thought it was important that she, and other people her age, recognize that they can have the friends they have, and date the people they date because of the sacrifices of people who came before them. They need to understand that they owe a great debt to people they'll never meet for these opportunities and relationships that they take so much for granted.

We also wanted to tie Nashville in to the program--put a local spin on it. To that end, we will be screening a 20-minute documentary short about the first days of Nashville's school integration. Opening night will feature welcoming remarks by former [Tennessee Supreme Court] Chief Justice A.A. Birch, and then a panel discussion, moderated by John Egerton (one of the writers/producers of the film), and featuring Lajuanda Street Harley and Erroll Groves--both among the first students to integrate Nashville schools--and Iridell Groves, Erroll's mother.

It was not my original intention that this particular show be political; but, as it turns out the topic of this production is very timely: Nashville is once again discussing integration. In the time since I found this play, Metro has proposed, accepted and put into place a new school zoning plan. The focus is on neighborhood schools, which some feel is a step back in the city's effort to integrate its schools and provide its children with a quality education in an atmosphere that promotes and applauds diversity. I heard on the news on Friday that the lawsuits are already being filed.

 

 

How is the show coming along? Are you pleased with the production thus far?

As a director, I love the process--it's all I have! Once the show opens, my job is over (well, my director's job is over--being so small, I jump in and fill other production gaps, once I'm not tied to the director's chair). So, when we hit snags, that's my fun: figuring out ways to overcome the challenges that arise. This show has seen its challenges--and everyone involved has risen to meet them. The play is a challenge for the actor, who must be not only Melba, but Grandmother, Mother, various friends, angry white people--and those transitions must be smooth, effortless and seemless if the the audience is to keep up. The actor I cast, Vilia Steele, has met these challenges with courage and grace.

 

 

One of the challenges we face is to make this show portable--we'vegot a performance away from the Looby on the 20th, and we plan to take this this show to schools. We had to figure out how to better execute the projections that are integral to this production--we found a very neat computer program to help with that--and how to make flats that were attractive, lightweight and sturdy. We intend for this show to have a life beyond our run. Our intention is to get it into the schools. We've applied for a grant from the Target Foundation to take it to Nashville's public schools, at no charge to some of Nashville's Title I schools. We're looking for other grant money to extend our reach into all the Title I schools, and into any public school that would like to see it.

Another challenge is one faced by many Nashville companies because of the lack of theater space. Because we don't have a space of our own, and rent the Looby from Metro Parks, we have very little time in the theater, before we open, for the actor to adjust to the space and all the technical elements that we can't bring in to the rehearsal space. We move into the theater on a Sunday and do our dry tech that day, on Monday we have a cue-to-cue, Tuesday through Thursday are technical and dress rehearsals, then we open on Friday. It makes Hell Week particularly hellish.

I'm very pleased with where we are, and look forward to seeing the whole thing come together and grow during the next few days, as we add all the technical elements now that we're finally in the theater!

Are audiences supporting your efforts? We've had so much interest and wonderful response! The Scarritt-Bennett Center has asked us to bring a performance there, and we look forward to that outreach opportunity. We'll be packing up the show and moving it there for one performance on the 22nd. The International Black Film Festival in Nashville (IBFFN) has offered to tape some of the after-show discussions, and we will donate them to the Nashville library for inclusion in its oral history collection. Davis-Kidd Booksellers came on as a sponsor--distributing bookmarks about the show to all their customers, and putting a display about the show in the store. Energized volunteers are helping with outreach. Every time we open our mouths to tell people about Warriors, faces light up. Tickets are selling online. It's all pretty exciting to see people light up about this show.

What separates TWTP from all The Other Theatre companies out there? If theater holds a mirror up to nature, why are there not as many women's faces in that reflection as I see around me? Women make up 51% of the population. We are the majority gender --yet in movies, on TV and on the stage we are rarely seen in the numbers in which we exist in the "real world." A while back, the New York State Council on the Arts held a conference on women in theater. Their white paper report of that conference gave real evidence to what I'd seen, anecdotally: men are perceived as universal--they are perceived as having authority to speak to "the human condition"; women are perceived as specific--they are perceived as being able to speak with authority only on "women's issues." At 51% of the population, we are the human condition.

When I started TWTP, I wanted to make a difference. I knew that there were many theater companies out there producing fine work--so work of the highest professional quality was a given (if you're not going to do it right--don't do it). Simply producing high quality, professional work would not set us apart.

We are the only company that has, at its core, a primary, over-arching dedication to gender equity in all aspects of theater. We work to give paying jobs to women in professional theater--I do my best to find female designers, and our stage manager, Laura Skaug (who starred in our very first production and has been SM for every show after that!) has been with us since our our beginning. You simply will never see a show on our stage where the men outnumber the women, or where the story revolves around the man and the women are sidekicks or supporting characters. With every show we produce, we strive to tell the story of the human condition in the female voice. There is no other theater company in Nashville doing that. Also, because I believe that theater should give back to the community that supports it, TWTP makes free tickets to all our performances available to organizations that serve at-risk women, for use by the women they serve.

I think the level at which our tiny company pays its actors also sets us apart. TWTP is a professional company--we pay our actors and designers. I've been an actor, and know what it's like to work for next to nothing. I knew I couldn't do that to actors who gave their time and talents to my company. I couldn't call TWTP a professional company if our actors would make more working at McDonald's. I'm proud of the fact that we are the highest paying, non-Equity company in Nashville--and look forward to the day when we can pay even more. We've developed a reputation among actors in Nashville as being a great place to work. That's important to me!

I took a leadership workshop a while back and discovered that my "leadership style" is that of "servant leader." TWTP has never been about me--it's been about what theater can accomplish in service of its mission. Our website says it well: "Tennessee Women's Theater Project... giving voIce To women through theater arts."

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