Theater review part deux: The Good Negro

by Arnold Wayne Jones of of Dallas Voice

Will the real African-American, community organizing, inspiring orator please stand up?

Maybe election season over-stimulates my political radar, priming all my senses for some Great Symbolic Meaning in each theater piece I see, but I found it impossible to watch The Good Negro without constantly thinking of its cognates in the current presidential race. Certainly on paper, it doesn’t warrant such a close reading. For starters, the play — getting its world premiere this week at the Dallas Theater Center — is set in 1963 Birmingham, before many black men could even manage to cast a vote, much less run for high office in the South.

But there you have it, playing out in front of you right on stage: The lanky, charismatic and big-eared preacher, calling for change, while conservative white men go to great lengths to demonize him by drawing tenuous ties to distant radicals. All that’s missing is Joe the Plumber and a winking “You betcha!” from a smarmy Alaskan and you have the last two weeks of coverage on CNN.

Contemporary allusions notwithstanding, The Good Negro is a dandy piece of theater tracking the inner workings of the civil rights movement. Inspired by Diane McWhorter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the bombing of a church in Alabama, playwright Tracey Scott Wilson fictionalizes events with dramatic flair.

Rev. James Lawrence (Billy Eugene Jones), a stand-in for Martin Luther King Jr., tries to rally support for non-violent resistance to Jim Crow. When an articulate black woman (Joniece Abbott-Pratt) and her small daughter are arrested and brutalized for using a “whites only” bathroom, he organizes protests and boycotts.

But reality interferes with his plans. Infighting among his lieutenants is made public. The woman’s husband, Pelzie (Francois Battiste), is reluctant to get involved, and defensive at being manipulated. A racist brute (Joe Nemmers who, like all good bullies, has a low center of gravity) rallies the KKK against them. And Lawrence’s womanizing, meticulously detailed by two eavesdropping FBI agents (Steven Walters and Brian Wallace) determined to prevent desegregation, could draw focus away from the movement.

Wilson and director Liesl Tommy have crafted a remarkably streamlined story (even at more than two and a half hours) that juggles several plot threads and numerous historical events with a small cast. (Tommy keeps many of the characters onstage even after their scenes have ended — a kind of shadow cast that conjures the paranoia of the time.)

The nine actors are all top-notch, but Battiste’s character is, ironically, the heart of the play. He’s the one black person who seems to believe in going along to get along, if it means protecting his family. He clashes with Lawrence and an uppity black activist from Europe (LeRoy McClain), making a strong case for self-interest even as they see the bigger picture. He embodies the idea that, if we have to be taught to hate, we also have to learn to be hated.

The design starkly evokes the tumult, especially set designer Clint Ramos’ stage: A square platform raked at a severe angle, creating a crucible effect that concentrates the action and the emotions in a tiny space.

Despite a fair amount of humor, The Good Negro — the first world premiere at the DTC in recent memory, in keeping with artistic director Kevin Moriarty‘s mission — isn’t easy theatergoing. Racial violence has always seemed especially heinous when directed against dignified and defenseless people. There were definitely walk-outs at the performance I attended. Indeed, one patron sitting next to me observed at intermission, “This is certainly progress for Dallas.” She paused, then added, “I love it!”

Can I get an “Amen”?