San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Groundbreaking Broadway composer
Micki Grant, who in the early 1970s became the first woman to write the book, music and lyrics of a Broadway musical, “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope,” a soulful, spirited exploration of Black life, died Saturday in New York. She was 92.
Her death was announced by Joan Allen, a family spokesperson.
Grant, an actor, composer, playwright and musician, had developed “Don’t Bother Me” for two years with director Vinnette Carroll, taking it to small theaters in New York, Philadelphia and Washington before opening on Broadway in April 1972.
She would also be known for her work on another Broadway musical, “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God,” and for her seven years on the NBC soap opera “Another World.”
Set in New York City, “Don’t Bother Me” explored topics such as ghetto life, Black power, feminism and student protests with an allBlack cast performing songs — all by Grant — that drew from rock, jazz, funk, blues, calypso and other musical genres.
Grant recalled in 2018 that she and Carroll had wanted audiences of the musical to recognize the similarities among races, not the differences.
“And I think that’s expressed when you find out in the end that the audience is willing to reach out and take someone’s hand,” she said in an interview with the New York Amsterdam News. “Some people in the audience never held the hand of a person of a different race before, and all of the sudden, they’re holding another person’s hand.”
The musical got rave reviews, including one from Clive Barnes of the New York Times, who wrote: “It is the unexpected that is the most delightful. Last night at the Playhouse Theater, a new musical came clapping, stomping and stamping in. It is fresh, fun and Black.”
The show received Tony nominations for best musical, best original score, best book (also by Grant) and best direction. It won a Grammy for best musical theater album, making Grant the first female composer to win in that category.
Grant was born Minnie Louise Perkins on June 30, 1929, in Chicago to Oscar and Gussie (Cobbins) Perkins. Her father was a barber and a self-taught pianist, her mother, a saleswoman for Stanley Home Products.
Minnie was smitten by theater and music at a young age. At 8 she played the Spirit of Spring, touching flowers to bring them to life, in a community center production. She began taking piano and double bass lessons at about the same age.
And, she recalled in an interview with the New York Times in 1972: “I was busy writing poetry and walking around the house reciting it. My family always listened and said what nice poetry it was.”
Grant began writing music at 14 or 15 and acting in community theater at 18. She studied at the Chicago School of Music and later attended the University of Illinois Chicago.
But one semester shy of graduating, she left to perform in Los Angeles, where, in 1961, she appeared in a musical revue, “Fly Blackbird,” a social satire about the evils of segregation. She moved with the show to its off-Broadway production in 1962.
By then, she had changed her name to Micki.
Grant made her Broadway debut a year later in a supporting role in “Tambourines to Glory,” a short-lived “gospel singing play” — written by poet Langston Hughes with music by Jobe Huntley — about two female street preachers in Harlem. It also starred Robert Guillaume and Louis Gossett Jr. A year later, she appeared in a revival of Marc Blitzstein’s musical play “The Cradle Will Rock,” set in 1937 during the Great Depression.
She turned to television in 1965, beginning a seven-year run on “Another World” playing a secretary-turned-lawyer, Peggy Nolan. She is believed to have been the first Black contract player in soaps. She later had roles in soap operas “Guiding Light,” “Edge of Night” and “All My Children.”
Casey Childs, founder of the Primary Stages Company in New York, recalled directing her in one soap opera episode. “She was an absolutely lovely actress who understood the need on a soap to move quickly and make fast choices,” he said.
During her long run on “Another World,” Grant was building a theatrical legacy with Carroll, who in 1967 founded the Urban Arts Corps to provide a showcase for Black and Puerto Rican performers.
They put together the first production of “Don’t Bother Me” in 1970 at the company’s theater on West 20th Street in Manhattan. Grant also wrote the music and lyrics for a song and dance version of the Irwin Shaw novel “Bury the Dead” and for a children’s show called “Croesus and the Witch.”
The two women also collaborated on “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God,” an acclaimed gospel-infused musical that opened on Broadway in 1976 and ran for 429 performances. Carroll wrote the book, and music and lyrics were by Alex Bradford, with additional songs by Grant.
Two years later, Grant was one of the five songwriters behind the musical “Working,” which was based on writer Studs Terkel’s book of interviews with everyday people about their jobs. The group was nominated for a Tony for best original score.
In one of Grant’s songs in “Working,” a woman laments: “If I could’ve done what I could’ve done/I could’ve done big things./With some luck to do what I wanted to do/I would’ve done big things./ Swam a few rivers/Climbed a few hills/Paid all my bills.”
She returned to Broadway one last time, with a musical, “It’s So Nice to Be Civilized” (1980), which closed after eight performances. Grant had no immediate survivors. Her marriages to Milton Grant and Ray McCutcheon ended in divorce.
When Encores! revived “Don’t Bother Me,” Grant, reflecting on its creation, said that her and Carroll’s goal had not been to produce an incendiary musical about the difficulties faced by Black people in America.
“There was a lot of angry theater out there at the time, especially in the Black community — Bullins, Jones,” she said, referring to playwrights Ed Bullins and LeRoi Jones, who became known as Amiri Baraka. “I wanted to come at it with a soft fist. I wanted to open eyes but not turn eyes away.”