Summary
"I know some history, and it ain't in no books!," exclaims a homeless woman to a trio of schoolchildren in the play's first act. Accompanying the now-curious kids as they walk home, the bag lady reminisces about the Harlem Renaissance, informing her young friends that the legacy of the famous period's singers, dancers, playwrights, and performers influences today's stars.
The curtains close, then open onto the early 1900s. A washerwoman hums as she strolls across the stage, pausing when she spots the audience. "I ain't gonna be a washerwoman forever," she declares, throwing down her laundry bundle and kicking it aside. Tired of clothes-washing her hands raw, the defiant servant spills her plan to get rich by selling to African Americans the hot combs that whites use to straighten their hair. "I don't see nothing wrong with using those white folks ideas," she says, "'cause they don't have no problem using ours."Fed up with racism in the United States, the sassy, headstrong hoofer, a young [Josephine Baker], shows the porter her ticket to Paris. "White folks around here ain't tryin' to share a stage with no colored folks," she says, "and I intend to be a star." Langston Hughes, the porter and future poet with whom Baker shares her scheme, confesses that he too is headed abroad, forced into self-exile by racism: "I may never go back," he says. "The land of my birth is the place of my sorrow."See the full content of this document
Extract
Amateurs Rise to the Task in 'Renaissance'
Billie Holiday, Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker and W.E.B. DuBois returned from the past to inspire the present April 1 through 3 at the Roxbury Community College Media and Performing Arts Center. Through song and a sage word, the legendary figures, characters in Haywood Fennell's Harlem Renaissance: Revisi...
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