Black theater takes on Confederate statue
The renewed controversy over Confederate monuments wasn’t raging when Black Theatre Troupe decided to revive the musical “Caroline, or Change,” which makes the issue a central plot point. But the timing isn’t exactly coincidence, either.
Artistic director David Hemphill says, “There had been the racial unrest around the country” as he was putting together the company’s 2017-18 season. “We thought it would be good to revisit this show because it makes some strong statements on civil rights.”
With a book by “Angels in America” playwright Tony Kushner and a score by “Fun Home” composer Jeanine Tesori, “Caroline, or Change” is one of the best American musicals of the past two decades, although hardly one of the bestknown. Set in 1963 Louisiana, it’s about the complicated relationship between a privileged Jewish boy and his African-American maid.
To teach the 8-year-old Noah a lesson about the value of money, his stepmother tells the maid, Caroline, that she can keep any the spare change she finds left in the boy’s laundry. It’s a quotidian story that brings the historical backdrop of racism down to the most intimate scale, but also swells to mythic proportions with surreal elements: The Washing Machine, the Radio and the Moon are all singing parts in the through-composed musical.
Outside the house, the civil rights movement is building up steam, and at one point Caroline and her friend Dotty
chat about the middle-ofthe-night destruction of a statue of a Confederate soldier at the courthouse – an act of protest or vandalism, however you prefer, that has been repeated in real life in the wake of the white-nationalist rally last month in Charlottesville, Va. (In the play, the mystery of the toppled statue returns in a climactic reveal.)
Hemphill, 69, grew up in the civil rights era and brought an activist sensibility to his early forays into theater.
“That’s what I have a background in, using theater for social change and bringing light to social issues and racial injustice,” he says.
Hemphill moved to Arizona in the late 1970s and has led Black Theatre Troupe since 1995.
The biggest challenge in directing “Caroline,” he says, is bridging the gap between his own generation and today’s.
“The younger actors actually have a hard time believing that it was such a big deal,” he says of the racial issues in the play. “They’re smart kids, and I think the school system has done a fairly adequate job in preparing them, so at least they understood the historical context. But in terms of the emotional threads that I wanted them to explore as actors, it’s taking a bit of work. …
“They live in a very different world. That’s the big risk of new generations, and the big risk is not remembering how it was, not remembering what was sacrificed to get to where we are now.”
Reach the reporter at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896. Follow him at facebook.com/LengelOnTheater and twitter.com/KerryLengel.