Questions Linger about Fences Project

AugustWilson.net

Questions Linger About "Fences" Project
(Minneapolis Star Tribune)

It was all goodwill and mutual admiration this week when Joe Dowling and Lou Bellamy announced a joint production of August Wilson's "Fences," to be staged at Dowling's Guthrie Theater in May by Bellamy's Penumbra Theatre.

Finally, Wilson's words would grace the Guthrie stage. Artistic control would rest in the hands of the Penumbra Theatre, which nurtured Wilson during the decade he lived in St. Paul, and rose to national prominence largely because of its skilled productions of his plays. Behind the smiling faces and good wishes, however, questions and concerns were simmering. Should the Guthrie be presenting black-written plays? If so, what should be its relationship with Penumbra? Should Penumbra have a role in any Guthrie production of a black-written play?

"Fences" at the Guthrie is a breakthrough. The nationally renowned theater had been criticized for years for not doing a Wilson play in the very community where he developed his craft and wrote most of his six Broadway successes, including both of his Pulitzer Prize winners.

The Guthrie, during Garland Wright's 11 years as artistic director, parried criticism by pointing out that presenting a play in which most of the characters would be played by blacks ran counter to its goal of developing a permanent acting company, few of whom were black.

Another, more generous assertion was that Penumbra was already doing a great job of bringing Wilson to the Twin Cities and that the Guthrie would be invading Penumbra's turf if it started producing his plays.

There is plenty of truth in the latter argument. Penumbra's own rise to prominence dates roughly from the time it began to present Wilson's plays. One of the best barometers of growing command of Wilson's plays.

What if the Guthrie had chosen to champion Wilson, thus preventing Penumbra from premiering his plays here? Even Bellamy has admitted that, if Wilson's plays hadn't been accessible to Penumbra, the St. Paul theater probably wouldn't be around today. Instead, it is a nationally recognized theater that drew 41,000 people to its last season, including 22,500 to "Black Nativity," its holiday show. It began its current season with an acclaimed staging of Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom."

Bellamy has been a ferocious protector of black theatrical expression in the Twin Cities. He has jousted with the Mixed Blood Theatre for its practice of colorblind casting (assigning roles without regard to race), questioned why the white-directed Illusion Theater produced black-written plays and excoriated the Guthrie for its 1991 staging of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," the story of a Jewish shoe salesman, as a black family drama. Under Bellamy' s stewardship, Penumbra not only mined Wilson's cross-cultural appeal, but also nurtured a new generation of black writers, including Carlisle Brown, Rebecca Rice, Laurie Carlos, Marion McClinton, Robbie McCauley and Charles Fuller.

In the Twin Cities, Bellamy claimed black-written plays as his theater's lifeblood and protected that claim against all comers.

Inherent its steady march to excellence was its argument was the suggestion that if the Guthrie chose to enter the field, it could legitimately do so only by recognizing Penumbra's hegemony and making the St. Paul theater a player in the production. That was what happened in 1995 when the Guthrie, under Wright's guidance, decided to mount Theodore Ward's "The Big White Fog," in which a 1920s black family struggles to join the American dream. Bellamy was asked to direct, and he made it a virtual Penumbra production by casting most of the parts with his own actors.

The link between the two theaters appears to have strengthened with the staging of "Fences," which will be a Penumbra production assisted by the Guthrie's marketing, box-office and production clout.

But even as Dowling and Bellamy were linking hands over "Fences," behind the scenes they were sorting out differences over another play in the Guthrie's 1997-98 season, Keith Glover's "Thunder Knocking on the Door." Dowling included it in the season after seeing a production at Baltimore's Center Stage, directed by Marion McClinton, a longtime Penumbra member.

The first that Bellamy learned of the Guthrie scheduling it was last week, only days before Dowling's news conference announcing the Guthrie's season and the "Fences" co-production. Bellamy called Dowling, seeking reasons for the choice and what it might mean to the future relationship between the two theaters. Ironically,

Bellamy had planned a trip to Baltimore this week to see the play, which he was considering including in Penumbra's next season. Both men downplayed the disagreement and focused on "Fences" as an example of how the two theaters might work together in the future. Dowling said that he had no desire "to colonize black literature" and that his inclusion of Glover's play "was not related to its black content but to its poetic content" and its similarities to J.M. Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World," which will precede it in the season. He noted that

both plays were written by playwrights in their 20s and explored cultural myths in poetic language.

For his part, Bellamy said, "I feel it is preposterous of me to expect him {Dowling} to check with me before doing a play. But there are a lot of issues here. How do institutions like the Guthrie open up to culturally specific artists and art while respecting the amount of blood and struggle these artists and organizations have put into surviving?

"I'm willing to trust him, and together we have an opportunity to show the rest of the country a way to do that. I don't want to say anything to cast anything bad on his season. I don't want this cooperation with `Fences' to get blown out of the water, because it is just in its infancy.

"What this guy has done in a year," said Bellamy, acknowledging Dowling's recognition of Penumbra and the larger Twin Cities theater community, "Garland Wright didn't do in a lifetime."

Peter Vaughan; Staff Writer, Questions linger about `Fences' project., Minneapolis Star Tribune, 01-25-1997

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