Greeted by a cascade of beautiful braids, expressive eyes and a warm hug, Jannie Jones makes quite the first impression. The actress and singer, who is a North Carolina native, and I, are bonding already over our mutual familial lineages to NC. Jones is here in Norfolk starring as the lead character of Pearl in the Frank Higgins’ play with music, Black Pearl Sings!, which is being co-produced with the Capital Repertory, as part of the Virginia Stage Company’s current, 33rd season. She is joined in the play by actress Jessica Wortham, who is also making her VSC debut as ethnomusicologist Susannah, in this play.
Now Wortham may appear on the surface to be a study in contrast to Jones, but upon sitting down with me for a lengthy interview in the lobby of the Wells Theatre, along with Jannie and director Patrick Mullins, her similarities to Jones and their apparent sisterhood, are illustrated quite clearly. But then what would one expect, considering that the two worked together in San Jose Rep’s lauded 2010 production of Pearl, playing the same characters as in this local VA premiere, and thus beginning their respective creative journeys portraying these two striking women.
“This play pushes a lot of buttons for me, as somebody who grew up in the South,” Mullins, an Atlanta native, responds, when asked what drew him to directing Pearl, “and somebody who grew up with music as a really important part of their life.”
“I think both of these women are using music to connect to more—whether that’s God or family, or self identity,” he continues. That’s an astute observation that Mullins makes, I would say, considering the play’s plot line and general setting. Not to mention the fact that the playwright, Frank Higgins, based the play around the real life story of legendary blues and folk musician Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter and his long connection to folklorists John and Alan Lomax.
In Higgins play, Susannah Mullally is an ambitious music scholar and song collector who is employed by the Library of Congress. Despite her success as an educated woman in 1935’s America, she believes that she’s faced gender discrimination which has kept her from reaching her career potential during these years of the Great Depression. So she decides to uncover an authentic folk song that was brought over from Africa during the transatlantic slave trade that has survived to then present day America. In search of that rarified musical gem that would elevate her career as a scholar, she eventually meets Alberta Pearl Johnson, an African-American powerhouse singer of bluesy folk songs and spirituals, who is serving time for murder in a Texas women’s prison. Pearl is desperate to get out of prison in order to locate the daughter that she had to abandon upon getting locked up.
Still, at least initially, Pearl is highly distrusting of the lily white academic, but eventually trusts her enough to agree to a recording of Pearl’s renditions of a few songs culled from her personal repertoire. That recording leads to Pearl’s parole and sparks the play’s second Act, where Susannah plots Pearl’s New York concert debut. Along the way, revelations about both women are discovered and the full arc of their real relationship to each other is explored.
Sitting across from the two actresses portraying Pearl and Susannah, it’s hard not to imagine possible parallels between aspects of their clear friendship and that of their characters. I ask how they navigated their relationship as actresses playing these roles, now for the second time together.
“There’s a progression, like with anybody that you meet who is a complete stranger,” explains Jones, referring to their characters. “And not only are we complete strangers, she’s white and I’m black and we’re in that time period…”
“She (Pearl) knows that I can help her and I kind of suspect that she can help me, but there’s this huge divide of figuring out that the other person is not what you expected…” Wortham adds. Those initial expectations are expressed between the characters throughout much of the first half, based largely upon the ignorant views of race and gender during the early twentieth century. And though, as Patrick suggests, Susannah is an educated, worldly woman who doesn’t belittle Pearl the way that other Caucasians in her position might have back then, it still takes an adjustment on the audience’s part to accept without prejudice, the dictates of that time.
There are twenty or so songs, some familiar and others obscure, that Pearl performs a cappella throughout the play. Interestingly enough, what gets the characters past their initial reservations of each other, is that music. “We’ve got this common language that we can always come back to, with the music,” Jessica acknowledges, after Jannie offers that a love for music is the one thing that their characters initially share and indeed express.
That love for music is also clearly shared by the two actresses, both of whom are accomplished musicians and going by their impromptu singing during parts of the interview, have distinctly different yet equally lovely singing voices. And there’s a moment during the interview, when both actresses in character, vocally connect a Gaelic musical piece to a Gullah one. It’s a moment that also expresses an essential truth articulated by the play, that good music knows no prejudice and requires little translation.
|
|
