Conventionalwisdom in late 20th-century America holds that white directors need to treadcarefully, if they dare to tread at all, on material that deals with the livesof African-Americans.
Emily Mann, thewriter-director who adapted the 1991 book, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters'First 100 Years for the stage, is familiar with the issue. The play is based onthe memoir of Sarah L. (Sadie) and A. Elizabeth (Bessie) Delany, twocentenarian sisters whose father was born into slavery - a situation skepticsmight say can be fully appreciated only by a black writer-director.
"I know allabout it, believe me," says the 44-year-old Mann with a wry laugh. "Iknow what I'm up against - that white people are exploiting black people'sstories. And at a certain point I thought, `I could not do this, or I will doit - and if other people have a problem with it, they have a problem withit.'"
Not many peoplehave a problem with Having Our Say. The play is a charming portrait of twofascinating women who, in the face of early 20th-century racism, become ahigh-school teacher and a dentist. The Delanys' story also is a journey acrossa large, rocky patch of American history.
As adapted anddirected by Mann and performed by Mary Alice and Gloria Foster, Having Our Saybecame one of the surprise hits of the 1994-95 Broadway season. The nationaltouring company, starring Lizan Mitchell and Micki Grant, has taken the show onthe road, and the single-set, two-character drama will be the fifthmost-produced play in the country's regional theaters this year.
Stylistically,Having Our Say is right up Mann's alley. Her method is to bring dramatic shapeand theatrical energy to real-life material she pulls from archives or gathersin interviews. Her first play was Annulla, An Autobiography, based on aninterview she conducted with a friends aunt, a Jewish woman who survived WorldWar II. Still Life, also culled from interviews, features straightforwardtestimony from a frighteningly violent Vietnam War veteran, his terrorized wifeand his lover, who seems to view the vet's dark side with an assassin's calm.Execution of Justice deals with the murder of George Moscone (then mayor of SanFrancisco) and Harvey Milk (a city supervisor) at the hands of former CityCouncilman Dan White. And Mann's most recent work, Greensboro: A Requiem,revisits the 1979 incident in which members of the Ku Klux Klan and theAmerican Nazis shot 13 people at an anti-Klan rally, killing five.
"I learnedabout the Holocaust in my grandmother's kitchen," recalls Mann. "Andhow most of is learn about great wisdom in the world and what happens to peopleis literally in our aunts' or our mothers' or our grandmothers' kitchens.That's a very secure, safe, warm, familiar place." All of which explainswhy Emily Mann can say of Having Our Say, a kind of landscape of America toldin intimate terms, "Its totally what I do. Its documentary. Its in theirown words."
Mann grew up witha solid understanding of the civil-rights movement. Her father, a historian,was good friends with John Hope Franklin. They make a cameo appearance inHaving Our Say, which uses a photograph of the two men, a white man and a blackman, marching side by side through Alabama from Selma to Montgomery.
Her father'soccupation helped push Mann's theatrical career in its unique direction. As aliterature major at Harvard, she was interested in writing fiction anddirecting plays. Home on break from school, she came across an interview thather father had gathered in which a daughter talked with her mother about herexperience in the Treblinka camp. The poignancy of the survivor's tale, coupledwith the mother-daughter dynamic of the conversation, fired Mann's imagination.That encounter, she believed, would be powerful stuff in the theater.
After Harvard,Mann was the first female director accepted into a training program run by theUniversity of Minnesota and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. It was therethat she turned the Annulla Allen transcript into a play. Since then, hercareer has taken her to theaters across the country as she has earned Obies andeven an award from the National Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople. Mann is beginning her seventh season at the helm of the KennedyCenter's McCarter Theater in Washington, which won a Tony Award as thecountry's outstanding regional theater two years ago.
Mann talks aboutthe Delany sisters, whom she met in their home in Mount Vernon, N.Y., withbubbly fondness. She recalls that at the end of their session together, Sadietold her, "Child, I feel like I've known you all my life" - a linethat worked itself into the play. The warmth and charisma of the Delanys has alot to do with their story's popularity. But the social angle matters, too;Mann calls the play "covertly political."
According to Mann,there is more political writing in the theater than many people realize, butshe dislikes agitprop and tries to avoid it in her own work: "I think I'mtalking about plays that have something to say. Is there enough of that?There's never enough of that, you know? In any society."
Says Mann,"Of course Having Our Say deals with the history of the African-Americanstruggle in this country and of women's struggle in this country," Mannsays. "But at base it talks about survival through family and love andeducation, and for them, faith in God and spirituality."
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