The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Embracing Black History Month
Playhouse House Square presentation of one-man show just one opportunity for virtual growth
The ongoing national conversation about racial inequality requires all sides seeking a better future to maintain vigilance through edification, empathy and understanding.
Considering it’s Black History Month, there are numerous suggestions that speak to the Civil Rights message nationally and around the globe.
Available on Amazon’s Prime Video platform, director Steve McQueen’s critically acclaimed new anthology series “Small Axe” features five films telling the story of West Indian immigrants in London between the 1960s and 1980s.
There’s also American author and historian Ibram X. Kendi’s 2019 book “How to Be an Antiracist,” which discusses concepts of racism and proposals for anti-racist individual actions and systemic changes,
For theatergoers, the Playhouse Square at Home series is providing a free on-demand viewing from Feb. 22 to 28 of LeLand Gantt’s one-man show “Rhapsody in Black.” In addition, Gantt will host a live virtual Q&A with audiences at 7 p.m. Feb. 28.
“The first pages came out of me like someone turned on the water faucet,” said Gantt, calling from New York City. “It’s an autobiographical solo show. The discussion brought forth in the play is the psycho-emotional effects of racism on a Black man growing up in America.
“It’s a strange alchemy of knowing what it is I wanted to talk about, having done all of this research, feeling the passion and stories I was trying to put in other’s people’s mouths that I ingested in whole. That’s the marvel that became ‘Rhapsody.’”
Inspired by similar one-man shows such as Hal Holbrook’s “Mark Twain Tonight!” and John Leguizamo’s “Freak,” Gantt in the production tells his story of growing up as an underprivileged childhood in the ghettos of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, to teenage experiments with crime and drugs, scholastic achievement and an acting career that often found him as the only African-American in the room.
Due to its adult language and situations, the 90-minute virtual performance is recommended for audiences age 15 and up. In 2016, Gantt actually presented an edited version of the production to middle school and high school students at Playhouse Square.
A working actor for decades, including appearing in an early ‘90s Great Lake Theater Festival production of “Othello,” Gantt nearly a decade ago found himself at a crossroads.
Tired of the road and coupled with the reality his phone wasn’t ringing as often as it once had with job offers, Gantt took a deep dive inside himself. What came out ended up being “Rhapsody in Black”
“I wrote these nine monologues to display my breadth of talent and character ability,” Gantt said. “Everybody I showed them to told me they all sounded like me. So I maybe cannibalized the story and put them on a timeline. That’s where it started. I hadn’t found out what I wanted to talk about until I was speaking with my nephew.
“We were discussing why so many Black men are with white women — as paramours, partners, wives. We didn’t come to a conclusion, but it did start something in my brain. I realized every major decision in my life had been made with racism’s finger heavily on the scale.”
While Gantt acknowledged his initial intention was for white audiences to experience “Rhapsody in Black,” over the last half decade that proved shortsighted on his part.
“Everybody enjoys it because it covers the gamut of humanity and human experience,” Gantt said. “It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you cry. You go through a very human journey with a young man who happens to be Black. You see what he’s dealing with in his life when he goes out into the world.
“You see how racism affects him as he goes through life. How he tries to deal with that and the paradigm of existence of Black people in this country right now. It’s very topical. It shows how people’s perceptions create the divisions within our society. So far it’s struck a chord of humanity everywhere it’s gone,”