Unheralded American sculptor gets her due
Maria Crooks and Caroline Russell-king are determined not to allow Black American sculptor Selma Burke to remain an unheralded enigma.
The Calgary playwrights have spent almost four years working on their play, Selma Burke, which will receive its world premiere in the Arts Commons' Martha Cohen Theatre April 2 through 27, as a joint presentation of Theatre Calgary and Alberta Theatre Projects.
“Selma was born in 1900 in North Carolina, poor, Black and female. She was not destined to meet two U.S. presidents, be revered by international artists like Henri Matisse, play an important role in the Harlem Renaissance, and sculpt such seminal Black luminaries as Booker T. Washington, Duke Ellington and Martin Luther King Jr. She was an extraordinary talent who deserves to occupy a much greater space in the art world than she does,” says Crooks, who was born in Cuba but has been living, working and writing in Calgary for more than 30 years.
Russell-king explains the initial intent of this collaboration was “to explore the theme of who gets to make art, and who gets to destroy it. Throughout recorded history, great art has been destroyed from the Romans burning Egypt's Alexandria Library to cultural purges in China and Nazi Germany. Selma's art was maligned, vandalized, stolen and even destroyed in her lifetime. Nobody destroys benign art. Selma's art became a celebration of the Harlem Renaissance and that made it dangerous.”
One of the great controversies surrounding Burke centres around the portrait she did of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944. Her portrait has long been argued to be the source of Roosevelt's image on the American dime though credit was given to artist John R. Sinnock.
Burke felt she was a victim of racism and sexism, claiming “all these -isms would not allow a Black person, especially a woman, to be credited with such an accomplishment.”
Burke's story demands a large canvas but Russell-king knew that “these days no one is going to produce a new work with a very large cast, and we had a story that involved as many as 100 characters, so we had to find a way to tell it using just four actors.”
Norma Lewis plays Selma, but Christopher Hunt plays 70 characters, Heather Pattengale plays 14, and Christopher Clare acts as six. Hunt, Pattengale and Clare also play Selma's art pieces, which come alive in her imagination.
“It's all part of the visual fun for the audience,” says Russell-king, who is quick to emphasize Selma Burke “is not a biography or a tragedy. It's a drama with laughs and it's highly theatrical.”
Burke's private life adds additional colour to the play as Crooks explains.
“Selma was married four times. Her first husband was a mortician who died from an injection of formaldehyde. It was never determined whether it was self-inflicted or administered. Selma then married the Harlem writer Claude Mckay, whom she divorced, remarried, and divorced a second time. Her last husband was the architect Herman Kobbe, who was completely enamoured of her and even built her a private studio. Until the end of her life, at age 94, she was always as vital as her art.”
During their initial research on Burke, Crooks and Russell-king discovered her archives are housed at Spelman College in Atlanta.
“We got in touch with the chief archivist who gave us access to 47 boxes of material from which we selected what we felt we needed to read. Ideally, we wanted to go down to Atlanta but the pandemic and lack of funds stopped us,” says Russell-king.
When they were reading transcripts of Burke's correspondence, Crooke and Russell-king stumbled on love letters she received from Kobbe when he was wooing her.
“They are so beautiful and so passionate we just had to turn them into dialogue for the play,” says Crooks. “This is true of much of the dialogue which is inspired by what we read and discovered.”
Theatre Calgary workshopped Selma Burke as part of Black History Month last year, and it was during this workshop that TC'S artistic director Stafford Arima saw the play and immediately scheduled it for this current season.
“The workshop reading was captivating. I had seen one of Selma's pieces in a museum but I didn't know anything about her. Maria and Caroline's play takes us on an incredible journey. We see how Selma used art to make a difference, not only in her life but in the lives of countless others. In the play, we see Selma's awakening as an artist, a student, a woman, a wife, and a participant in the Civil Rights Movement. It's a most human play about a historical character, and that's as exciting as it is rare,” says Arima.
The playwrights are grateful Arima asked highly awarded American director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg to stage this world premiere.
“Delicia is known for her work with new plays. She has a fantastic vision for Selma Burke and is so supportive of our work, and this doesn't always happen, as I've learned in the past. As playwrights, we are very much a part of what she is doing,” says Russell-king, who has written 32 plays.
Arima also hired local director and movement specialist Javier Vilalta to work on the choreography of Burke's living art pieces.
“Art should be global, and that's what we're trying to do with this world premiere of Selma Burke,” says Arima. “The play was written by two local playwrights, will feature four Calgary actors, and has a Calgary design team, but also a director from the U.S. You can just feel the international energy in the rehearsal room. Selma Burke is exhilarating, gripping and enlightening, but it is also powerful, moving, and, above all, entertaining.”
Russell-king says Burke, her art and her life, are still relevant today, because “she shows how universally difficult it is to create art, no matter the time period.”