In the Life

It's a long, perhaps unending, journey to self-identification.  Writer and AIDS activist, Joseph Beam  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_F._Beam   used the title "In the Life" for the first anthology of writing by Black Gay Men in 1986.  Lesbians (for once in our lives) were somewhat ahead of that game.  Having been closed out of mainstream publishing so thoroughly women created the Women in Print Movement which gave birth to magazines and publishers such as "Ache`" and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.

With the urgency of the AIDS crisis Joe understood the importance of getting the lives of Black gay men into print.   That legacy was key both to the cultural survival of next generations but also an important building block for political activism.  As was true with any movement (If I can paraphrase myself from my play "Waiting for Giovanni,") finding one's own name is the first step toward liberation.

Unfortunately historically-speaking all the words have been wrong.  'Homosexuality' is a medical term, really, and puts the emphasis on 'sex' obscuring the many elements that make up a gay life.  Although I've always favoured it 'gay' sometimes sounds too 'lite' as if we're always at a party.  (Would that were true!)  And because of media bias gay quickly came to be identified only with white males.  More recently 'queer' has been rescued from its negative past to be used as the umbrella term for all the initials: LGBTQIA, etc.  I like it but it does contribute to the tendency for women/lesbians to be minimized

So Joe turned to a historical term, "in the life," which has been around in the African American community for generations.  In my neighborhood it could mean you were a lady of the evening or gay.  I liked it because it suggested that being in the life was an active experience.  It was something you were doing, not a passive or victim experience.

I'm bumping up against the same issue as I work on LEAVING THE BLUES.  How do I describe Alberta and her lover, Lettie? (who's a composite character)   The language is problematic because people worked so hard to not say it out loud.  Staying hidden was how individuals stayed safe from persecution.

I've recently been working on how two characters can come out to Alberta and it's a challenge.  The two characters are from two different generations--one gay man born in the early 1900s; the other a lesbian born in the 1940s. 

The male/female experience is definitely different and the generations make a difference in the language they'd use.  I'm still researching and exploring what I might create; but it reminds me how crucial language is to our personal and our social liberation.  Each of us has to find the names that suit us.  I think one reason Alberta was never happy to say out loud who she was grew out of a problem with the words available to her.  Whether it's our multiple ethnicities, our class origins, our sexual orientation or gender identity...finding the specific words to express all of who we are is the first stop on the train that takes us to freedom.

  

 

 

I lost several weeks of work on Leaving the Blues because of some minor health issues.  I finally decided to clean out my basement and in the hauling and bending I forgot I was not a teenager any more!  The habits of a life time have to be re-evaluated.  Once with a friend I carried a trunk full of my all of my belongings for ten Manhattan blocks...back in the '70s.  When I finished this current house cleaning I could barely walk up my basement steps.  After some tentative walking and no bending I had X-rays and don't have any serious damage but a course of physical torture...I mean physical therapy...is on order.

 

As I was trying to heal from this mishap I couldn't write but I thought a lot about Alberta Hunter.  When she returned to the stage to begin the second phase of her career she was already in her 80s! At the Cookery, where I saw her perform several time, she was effervescent, sharp and energetic.  As I remember her she seemed to burst from the stage in her huge hoop earrings and elegant gowns.   When she sang "Handy Man" and declared he "shakes my ashes, greases my griddle, churns my butter and he strokes my fiddle..." her double entendre made old and young scream with joy.  See for yourself:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLoPKQZRjOQ

 

Still she was an old woman, someone who never thought she was beautiful.  She'd made up for the poverty of her upbringing by working hard and giving herself the luxuries she never had as a child.  Still she lived in a Jim Crow country where the memory of the Underground Railroad and lynching were not distant.  So it was more than simply overcoming economic deprivation. The Cookery, where her career found it's renaissance, was opened by Barney Josephson, the first white entrepreneur to operate an integrated New York club in the early days; not an accident I think.  He saw artists before he saw color or age. 

 

When Alberta stepped on to the tiny Cookery stage she stepped carefully, as an old woman does.  Looking back I now remember she didn't move around that much once she was in the spotlight...except for her flashing eyes and beautifully manicured hands.

 

Later as her health became more frail the Cookery rigged a small dressing space on the same floor as the restaurant so she wouldn't have to climb the stairs from the lower level.  Still Alberta performed with all the life energy she had.  I recently attended the gathering of OLOC--Old Lesbians Organizing for Change and thought Alberta would have been a headliner there!  The room was full of sparkling, white-haired lesbians, Baby Boomers and older, who were still determined (despite bad eyesight and creaky bones) to make the world more habitable for us.

 

In writing this play I want to see who this fiery old woman might have been.  What propelled her onto that stage when her joints must have been aching?  To be old and Black and female and lesbian in the US is to be the least valuable asset in the eyes of some.  With this exploration of the inner resolve that kept Alberta Hunter climbing onto the stage I think we'll see one of the most valuable gems this culture could ever have. 

 

Join us at the New Conservatory Theatre Center in spring of 2016!  http://www.nctcsf.org/



It begins

When Alberta Hunter was born in 1895 there was little to suggest the amazing musical career that was to follow.  Named for the doctor who pulled up in his buggy to attend her mother, Laura, for the birth in Memphis.  Her father, Charles was a sleeping car porter a not lowly job for African Americans at the time.

Alberta was a frail child who suffered several illnesses, which was not uncommon in the dusty working class and poor Black neighborhoods of many cities across the country.  However her meager beginnings belied the extraordinary will contained within that petite frame.  Alberta was a fascinating combination of often contradictory traits.  She was a 'striver' that is always moving upward, away from poverty and conscious of projecting ladylike behavior.  Yet she always remembered to support those less fortunate than herself and  loved the risqué lyrics of the blues songs of her youth.

She had barely any education yet wrote an admirable number of blues songs including the first big hit recorded by Bessie Smith: "Downhearted Blues."  She scrubbed other people's clothes, sang in dives, performed with Paul Robeson in London and on the Broadway stage.  She was a nurse for 20 years, had female lovers most of her life and sang in clubs and concert halls around the world.

I saw her perform many times at the Cookery, in the West Village of Manhattan toward the end of her life and became fascinated by her sparky energy, her control of her image and her set and the things she did NOT say in the banter with her audience.  My play about the inner life of Alberta Hunter...the things she did not say...will premiere at the New Conservatory Theatre   http://www.nctcsf.org/ in 2016.  Stay tuned here for the inside story of the process of the development of the work which is part of my cycle of plays: WORDS & MUSIC.