Success Stories
Liberty-Eylau graduate garners her second Off-Broadway award
TEXARKANA NATIVE APRIL
MATTHIS recently landed her second Obie Award, this time for portraying the first woman to play professional baseball.
The American Theatre Wing and The Village Voice honored April recently during the 65th annual Obie Awards for her turn as Toni Stone.
The Obie Awards were announced online on July 14. April won praise on several levels for a performance deemed a “tour de force,” and an “intellectual investment, and for unearthing history with a mastery of the craft …”
“Toni Stone” was an Off-Broadway show presented by Roundabout Theatre from May to August last year, and April is appreciative to receive the recognition when so many theater stages remain silent because of the coronavirus pandemic. Obies are considered Off-Broadway’s highest honor.
Toni Stone was the first woman to play professional baseball for the Negro League in an era filled with harsh sexism, racism and Jim Crow laws.
April was the only woman actor in the play. “What was really compelling to me was not just the historical facts of she was the first woman to play professional baseball in the Negro Leagues, but I have to say really how she was brought to life by Lydia Diamond, the playwright,” April said.
April, who won her first Obie five years ago, feels an affinity with the writer and her characterization of Toni. They share a quirky, nerdy sense of humor, she said — and Lydia “put that into Toni.”
This is in contrast to the tendency to write historical figures, even underrepresented characters, as “noble, perfect people,” the
actress said.
“It’s nice to be a flawed human being, too,” April said, noting Toni would play farm teams and pickup games as a teen, but when she played in semi-pro teams her age would suddenly be younger.
“That tidbit is fascinating to me,” April said. In the off-season, Toni would fabricate her experience to get jobs.
“That just made her that much more interesting to me and also enterprising.”
Though a skilled baseball player, Toni wasn’t academically successful.
“Toni struggled academically and so she was put in some kind of remedial school for learning, but she excelled in every sport and was reported to have an encyclopedic knowledge about baseball,” April said. “That was something that we highlighted in the play.”
The play is based on the book “Curveball, The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone” by Martha Ackmann.
“It was great, of course, to have any kind of award, given where we are now in this COVID age, to be reminded that my theater community is still out there and remembers what I did a year ago and cares and values that work,” April said. “Because right now my acting is limited to what I can do on Zoom.”