James Baldwin’s ‘The Amen Nook’ Sings the Blues at Cincinnati Shakespeare Firm | Cincinnati
Photograph: Ben Marcum Pictures for Cincinnati Playhouse within the Park
Candice Helpful shall be staging The Amen Nook
This story is featured in CityBeat’s Jan. 24 print version.
James Baldwin, the highly effective Black author and civil rights activist, is finest identified for his novel Go Inform It on the Mountain (1953). However, from an early age, he was fascinated by the theater and yearned for achievement as a playwright. A yr after publishing that novel, residing in Paris, Baldwin accomplished a play, The Amen Nook. It features a younger man who leaves his residence and his mom’s church to turn out to be a musician. It’s a little bit of an extension of Go Inform It on the Mountain — and accommodates parts from Baldwin’s personal life, together with a mom who inspired his artistic endeavors and a stern stepfather who condemned any exercise outdoors of the church.
From the ages of 14 to 17, Baldwin was a preacher. However his stepfather queried him, “You’d reasonably write than preach, wouldn’t you?” That was the trail Baldwin adopted, however he usually acknowledged that he “by no means left the pulpit.” He used his expertise as a author and a public speaker to convey messages that stay highly effective.
The Amen Nook, on stage quickly at Cincinnati Shakespeare Firm, is rooted in lots of the identical points in Baldwin’s novel. Within the play, set in a Nineteen Fifties storefront church in Harlem, Pastor Margaret strives to regulate her congregation and her teenage son, David. Her struggles are framed by a gospel choir, whereas her son and his longabsent father, Luke, bond over their love of jazz.
For this story, wealthy with music, humanity and Baldwin’s evocative vernacular prose, Cincy Shakes has chosen actor and director Candice Helpful to stage the present; musician Yemi Oyediran will give authenticity to its musical tapestry. Each have backgrounds within the Black church: Helpful’s father was pastor at Montgomery, Alabama’s Dexter Baptist King Memorial Church, a church as soon as led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Oyediran grew up within the Pentecostal church and, like Baldwin, educated to turn out to be a pastor from his midteens to his early 20s.
“I watched my father wrestle with the accountability of being a pastor,” Helpful says in a latest cellphone dialog with CityBeat. “There’s battle across the accountability of being a pastor…the flock usually need the pastor to be an administrative chief. It could really feel just like the Black church is being run like a social membership…whereas biblically the pastor’s job is a extra religious chief. There generally is a battle of curiosity with loads of the paperwork of a corporation and a calling from a better energy.”
She provides that Margaret’s place as a feminine pastor is much more difficult. “Love is on the middle of the play, a wrestle with romantic love, with sensual love and the way can a lady be comfortable and in addition lead with respect {that a} man simply has from being a person? There’s a lot within the play that I hook up with from my childhood background and who I’m as a Black lady.”
Helpful has a transparent sense of Baldwin’s message in The Amen Nook. “The play is concerning the oppression of Black ladies and the difficult relationship between Black women and men that could be a results of white oppression.” She asserts that the hierarchical construction of society shaped by white supremacy is synonymous with faith, particularly Western Christianity. “Subsequently, Sister Margaret’s position as pastor who known as by God permits her to be revered by the opposite characters. However her gender doesn’t enable her to be revered, as a result of stereotypical racist notions about Black ladies codified by white society and infiltrating the consciousness of Black males.”
Oyediran, additionally a part of the CityBeat cellphone interview, has hung out digging into the music in Baldwin’s play, relating again to his personal expertise within the Pentecostal church from an African custom. He particularly cites gospel blues, a practice that Baldwin realized from singer Bessie Smith. “Quite a lot of these tunes Baldwin makes use of symbolize discourse within the church on the time that’s additionally being mirrored within the music — starting to make use of parts of the secular within the church and liturgical music.” Luke, Margaret’s estranged husband, represents jazz “and all the things that’s secular that’s coming into the play,” Oyediran suggests. Their son David desires to pursue jazz. “Baldwin makes use of gospel blues to point out this interaction of the liturgical and secular current in a single musician who not solely has to work this out, musically and throughout the play, however as this battle between Pastor Margaret and Luke.”
Helpful has an achieved forged of actors. Native veteran Torie Wiggins performs Pastor Margaret, and “ranney,” the singularly named visitor actor from Texas, is Luke. Each are veterans of Cincy Shakes’ productions of August Wilson performs: Wiggins was the title character in Ma Rainey’s Black Backside in 2022 and carried out with “ranney” in Fences in 2019. The massive forged consists of Adrian DeVaughn Summers as Margaret’s son David.
Wilson’s Century Cycle of performs about African American life throughout the a long time of the twentieth century makes use of colloquial language that’s additionally a function of Baldwin’s script. “There’s a density to Baldwin’s writing,” Helpful says. “It seems like a novelist is writing a play — in his stage instructions and the quantity of monologuing. It’s wealthy, muscular language.”
Helpful is keen for audiences to expertise The Amen Nook. Baldwin, she says, “is aware of that the extra cultural element you convey, the extra common it turns into.
“This being such a particularly Black expertise, the play will actually deal with its humanness. There’s some villainous conduct, however actually no precise villain within the present. That actually goes to Baldwin’s good writing,” she says. She plans to “make it an immersive expertise. The viewers shall be very a lot part of it — not simply watching a day within the life however experiencing the Black church service.”
The Amen Nook, introduced by Cincinnati Shakespeare Firm, opens on Jan. 26 and continues via Feb. 11. Information: cincyshakes.com.
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Photograph: Ben Marcum Pictures for Cincinnati Playhouse within the Park
Candice Helpful shall be staging The Amen Nook
This story is featured in CityBeat’s Jan. 24 print version.
James Baldwin, the highly effective Black author and civil rights activist, is finest identified for his novel Go Inform It on the Mountain (1953). However, from an early age, he was fascinated by the theater and yearned for achievement as a playwright. A yr after publishing that novel, residing in Paris, Baldwin accomplished a play, The Amen Nook. It features a younger man who leaves his residence and his mom’s church to turn out to be a musician. It’s a little bit of an extension of Go Inform It on the Mountain — and accommodates parts from Baldwin’s personal life, together with a mom who inspired his artistic endeavors and a stern stepfather who condemned any exercise outdoors of the church.
From the ages of 14 to 17, Baldwin was a preacher. However his stepfather queried him, “You’d reasonably write than preach, wouldn’t you?” That was the trail Baldwin adopted, however he usually acknowledged that he “by no means left the pulpit.” He used his expertise as a author and a public speaker to convey messages that stay highly effective.
The Amen Nook, on stage quickly at Cincinnati Shakespeare Firm, is rooted in lots of the identical points in Baldwin’s novel. Within the play, set in a Nineteen Fifties storefront church in Harlem, Pastor Margaret strives to regulate her congregation and her teenage son, David. Her struggles are framed by a gospel choir, whereas her son and his longabsent father, Luke, bond over their love of jazz.
For this story, wealthy with music, humanity and Baldwin’s evocative vernacular prose, Cincy Shakes has chosen actor and director Candice Helpful to stage the present; musician Yemi Oyediran will give authenticity to its musical tapestry. Each have backgrounds within the Black church: Helpful’s father was pastor at Montgomery, Alabama’s Dexter Baptist King Memorial Church, a church as soon as led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Oyediran grew up within the Pentecostal church and, like Baldwin, educated to turn out to be a pastor from his midteens to his early 20s.
“I watched my father wrestle with the accountability of being a pastor,” Helpful says in a latest cellphone dialog with CityBeat. “There’s battle across the accountability of being a pastor…the flock usually need the pastor to be an administrative chief. It could really feel just like the Black church is being run like a social membership…whereas biblically the pastor’s job is a extra religious chief. There generally is a battle of curiosity with loads of the paperwork of a corporation and a calling from a better energy.”
She provides that Margaret’s place as a feminine pastor is much more difficult. “Love is on the middle of the play, a wrestle with romantic love, with sensual love and the way can a lady be comfortable and in addition lead with respect {that a} man simply has from being a person? There’s a lot within the play that I hook up with from my childhood background and who I’m as a Black lady.”
Helpful has a transparent sense of Baldwin’s message in The Amen Nook. “The play is concerning the oppression of Black ladies and the difficult relationship between Black women and men that could be a results of white oppression.” She asserts that the hierarchical construction of society shaped by white supremacy is synonymous with faith, particularly Western Christianity. “Subsequently, Sister Margaret’s position as pastor who known as by God permits her to be revered by the opposite characters. However her gender doesn’t enable her to be revered, as a result of stereotypical racist notions about Black ladies codified by white society and infiltrating the consciousness of Black males.”
Oyediran, additionally a part of the CityBeat cellphone interview, has hung out digging into the music in Baldwin’s play, relating again to his personal expertise within the Pentecostal church from an African custom. He particularly cites gospel blues, a practice that Baldwin realized from singer Bessie Smith. “Quite a lot of these tunes Baldwin makes use of symbolize discourse within the church on the time that’s additionally being mirrored within the music — starting to make use of parts of the secular within the church and liturgical music.” Luke, Margaret’s estranged husband, represents jazz “and all the things that’s secular that’s coming into the play,” Oyediran suggests. Their son David desires to pursue jazz. “Baldwin makes use of gospel blues to point out this interaction of the liturgical and secular current in a single musician who not solely has to work this out, musically and throughout the play, however as this battle between Pastor Margaret and Luke.”
Helpful has an achieved forged of actors. Native veteran Torie Wiggins performs Pastor Margaret, and “ranney,” the singularly named visitor actor from Texas, is Luke. Each are veterans of Cincy Shakes’ productions of August Wilson performs: Wiggins was the title character in Ma Rainey’s Black Backside in 2022 and carried out with “ranney” in Fences in 2019. The massive forged consists of Adrian DeVaughn Summers as Margaret’s son David.
Wilson’s Century Cycle of performs about African American life throughout the a long time of the twentieth century makes use of colloquial language that’s additionally a function of Baldwin’s script. “There’s a density to Baldwin’s writing,” Helpful says. “It seems like a novelist is writing a play — in his stage instructions and the quantity of monologuing. It’s wealthy, muscular language.”
Helpful is keen for audiences to expertise The Amen Nook. Baldwin, she says, “is aware of that the extra cultural element you convey, the extra common it turns into.
“This being such a particularly Black expertise, the play will actually deal with its humanness. There’s some villainous conduct, however actually no precise villain within the present. That actually goes to Baldwin’s good writing,” she says. She plans to “make it an immersive expertise. The viewers shall be very a lot part of it — not simply watching a day within the life however experiencing the Black church service.”
The Amen Nook, introduced by Cincinnati Shakespeare Firm, opens on Jan. 26 and continues via Feb. 11. Information: cincyshakes.com.
Subscribe to CityBeat newsletters.
Observe us: Apple Information | Google Information | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Fb | Twitter | Or join our RSS Feed