cover art by Meighan Depke, Depke Design, compliments of The Victory Gardens Theater
"WOW! …a comic-book
exclamation may be the only word left in the wake of the grand torrent of
language, movement and sublime imagination on display in this world premiere....
What a sense of awe and astonishment is generated by this
ninety-minute fantasia on the life and legacy of Phillis Wheatley, the
African-American poet who became a literary celebrity in the era of the American
Revolution--and the first of her race to be published in this country. And what
a profound and intriguing story it tells about race and art in America, and
about the singular nature of creative genius….
Never heard of Wheatley? Neither had I. So here's the one-minute
version of her life: She was born in Senegal in 1753, brought to the Boston
slave market at age seven and purchased by the well-to-do businessman John
Wheatley at the urging of his wife, Susannah, who took a fancy to her beauty and
spirit.
From the start she “was a slave, and wasn't a
slave”--a girl set apart, who was taught to read and write, was exposed to Greek
and Latin and the Bible, and easily fell under the spell of a preacher's
orations.
Wheatley's first poem was published in 1767. A collection of her
work was issued six years later in London. And for a brief time she became all
the rage there, meeting the swells of society and, not incidentally, making the
acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin.
But society ultimately grew bored with and skeptical of her, and
the poet made her “second passage” to America, falling in love, having children
and worrying that her poetic gift might be lost. By the age of thirty-one she
was dead, though, as Carter suggests, something of her voice echoes down through
the centuries, informing everything from the blues and jazz to the scratchin' of
a hip-hop D J.
Lonnie Carter is the polymorphous Victory Gardens wordsmith who
last season gave us THE ROMANCE OF MAGNO RUBIO. Part James Joyce, part John
Coltrane, part Diddy, he often is mistaken for African American, but is a white
writer fascinated with the way English has been reshaped by black culture.
Carter's WHEATLEY is no docudrama; it is in fact spun into pure
invention that comes out in the form of a richer truth. (The play's riff on
globalization should be performed at the next World Bank get-together.) The same
is true of Scruggs' superb direction, which employs a slew of deft theatrical
tricks and taps the talent of a quartet of actors who must have had nightmares
while learning Carter's dense, tongue-twisting, mind-bending text…
Hedy Weiss, The Chicago Sun-Times
Originally produced by The Victory Gardens Theater
2 M, 2 F
I S B N: 0-88145-279-3, $12.95