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"You Are Taxed to Show Them As You Are" Alice Childress as Writer and Director of Wedding Band
ALICE CHILDRESS AS WRITER AND DIRECTOR OF WEDDING BAND
From “A Woman Playwright Speaks Her Mind,” by Alice Childress. Freedomways, Vol. 6, Issue 1, Winter 1966.1
After the Emancipation, the white South was faced with a dilemma. How could it protect itself against the legal claims of slaveowners' half-black children? Some of them were the only offspring of a white master. Many black women had been purchased to fulfill the role of wives, but most were used as sexual outlets under degrading circumstances and none had the privileges of consent or refusal concerning the use of her body. She was forced to bear children and her offspring belonged legally not to her but to her ownermaster.
There were many black men who were resentful of being named father to the white slaveowners' children and eager to escape the additional bondage of an enforced family set-up. There were also some cases of whites who wished to acknowledge their colored children and leave
1 This essay was adapted by Childress from her remarks at the "Negro
Writer's Vision of America" conference held April 23-25, 1965 at
New York's New School. An audio recording of those remarks can be streamed via the Pacifica Radio Archives, beginning at ~05:25.. property to them. Laws were passed, declaring what percentage of "black blood" made human beings allblack and thus no responsibility to their white parents.
To spare white men the responsibility of support claims, and to avoid black men challenging in court the paternity of some faircomplexioned child, the white South took action against the Negro woman.
State after state passed legislation declaring that all children born to black women during slavery shall be known as the legitimate children of their mothers only.
In the first generation of "freedom," the black woman was abandoned, not only by the white father-owner, but by any black man faced with acknowledging children bred by the slave-master, or by other black men, since women were mated by the owners with various men to bring forth various kinds of offspring—mated for strength, endurance, size, color, and even docility.
With one stroke of the pen, she was told that no man, black or white, owed her anything, and her children
Rebecca Haden (Annabelle), Thomas Sadoski (Herman), Veanne Cox (Herman's Mother) and Brittany Bradford (Julia Augistine). Photo by Hollis King.
were disinherited of all property rights. Her brothers, her father, male cousins, all family ties had been sold, resold, scattered, and so lost that she was, in the majority of cases, without family of any kind.
In so-called freedom, she could now seek a Negro husband. A man who, like herself, was jobless, without education, and doomed to petition for basic human rights and needs for the next century, and God knows how many more years past that century mark of 1963.
From “Why Talk About That?” by Alice Childress. Originally published in Negro Digest, April 1967.
Wedding Band examines woman's position in society, her situation at this very moment. The story is set in 1918 and reveals, through the people of that time, how few of the wrongs which threaten family unity have been righted. In order to deal with the subject, a writer must find his way through a maze of confusion, and clear away the warped thinking caused by slavery and its after effects… the acid poisons of self-hatred and contempt caused by the mis-education of the people.
In order to deal effectively with the problems created by marriage laws, it was necessary to make sure that the play not be interpreted as one which advocates the inter-marriage of races. That kind of treatment would place the work almost in the same camp as the anti-people legislation. Therefore, no character could plead the cause of inter-marriage and none suggest the changing of law.
The other hurdle to overcome was the shadow cast by all the stories that have been told about the mint-julep Colonel and his almost-white sweetheart. For my leads I selected a black seamstress and a white baker and projected them into a situation in which there was no premeditated intention of exploitation on either side; and only the events that take place in their lives during the crisis of an influenza epidemic were used in shaping the progress of the play. Also, because some of us hope to be assimilated, absorbed and digested into the "mainstream" of American life, thus proving that we, in and of ourselves, are not American life, it was necessary, for my story, to have a black woman who did not seek this kind of solution in her personal act of integration. Where did such a woman meet a white man on at least an almost equal footing? The obvious place to find an unprotected young woman, living away from family and friends, is in domestic service on the kind of sleepin job which allows a monthly or bi-monthly visit home. The closest white equal in this case might be an unmarried tradesman operating a oneman business. In this way, the seamstress and baker were set up to meet and unfold the story. The most crucial three days in the relationship take place 10 years after their first meeting and so the entire action is accomplished during this three-day period.
The missing factor in the interracial tales usually found in fiction is the black man. The colonel's sweetheart never seemed to know any men of her own race, and those presented as background filler were usually slack-kneed objects of pity. This caused me to see an admirable black man in the center of the drama, one who could supply a counterpoint story with its own importance, a man whose every day existence is threatened with the possibility of a life and death struggle.
After the first or second draft of the script, there comes a time when all the earmarks of preachment must be searched out and removed, all that has been superimposed by the writer, all that the characters deny and refuse to accept, anything that smacks of pamphleteering on the subject. Out come some of your favorite bits and pieces—the idiom of speech never used by those characters who people your work. You are taxed to show them as they are, beautiful in a way not yet merchandised by Madison Avenue.
From The Playwright's Art: Conversations with Contemporary American Dramatists, edited by Jackson R. Bryer. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
ROBERTA MAGUIRE In Wedding Band…. did you know Herman was going to die?
ALICE CHILDRESS Some people saw that as his defeat. I don't like to see birth or death as defeat. We live in a world where we say "under God this and this" and religions teach absolute faith in God, and yet we are terrified by the idea of death. We speak of but don't
believe in the happy hereafter. When a lead character dies the play is considered "tragedy." I ask, "Are we going to our just rewards, or not?" However, I wasn't thinking of any rewards before or after death when I was writing Wedding Band. Even in his death throes, Herman had the strength of determination. He didn't "give up" and die.
I figure they are very strong people who try to live true to themselves up to the end. Herman had unfinished business to complete. Sometimes it's even hard for an actor to see that's why he came back to Julia's, to say: "I should have handled our lives another way." This is what he's saying: "I'll leave my deathbed to undo this." He is not saying, "I wish I had this to do over again"; he said, "I was wrong, I shouldn't have done that to you." We also have to understand his strength. He'd be a pretty weak man to walk out on his mother and sister—they had no way to make a livelihood. For him to walk off and say, "I'm in love, too bad about you, but I borrowed your money and you don't have any left." As he told Julia, "I owe them something. I used their money." He was talking at a time when commitment really meant something; one didn't walk out on a mother and sister-and leave them penniless. And where was he going? To a relationship outside of the law—the illegal relationship with Julia.
I thought Herman was a strong person. Julia thought so, too, at the end when she gave him a peaceful scene. She made him forget about dying. She said, "Look at the friendly people on the shore, they're waving goodbye, and they ask us to 'Come back,' but we're going, going, we're going." She meant we're going to be free of heartache and stress. She made a happy death for him. We're used to people who just drop their heads to one side and say, "Carry on, dear" or something. But Julia and Herman kept fighting to the end. He wasn't quite dead when the curtain came down. She said, "Yes, yes, at last we're living for ourselves." When she closed the door against others and said, "No one comes in my house. Go away, win the war, represent the race, go to the police. Do what you have to do," she's giving them their freedom, not hers. Herman and Julia were arguing all through the play and loving each other, but they were arguing about their condition of life—their helplessness. ROBERTA MAGUIRE Julia, by getting back to her beginnings, her heritage, is able to overcome that helplessness.
ALICE CHILDRESS Yes.
ROBERTA MAGUIRE: Herman's acknowledging his own heritage also enables Julia and Herman to forge an honest relationship.
ALICE CHILDRESS Look at Herman's mother at the end—at the very end. She says, I’ve tried but I can't understand it." That's about as honest as she could get. "You see me standing here before you." In that line she means she's defeated. "I stand here and just tell you—I don't know what this is about": because she sees it was a huge thing with Herman. Julia wasn't just his little fun-girl. That was common, having a woman on the side—whatever color she was. Men would "sow their wild oats," but he was making it a life-and-death issue. There's always been good response to the play, even though there's been this trouble about how it ought to end. Producers want things solved. That's safer ground. As phony as it would be, I think they'd prefer the mother or Annabelle to come in and take Julia in, as if to say, ''We've been wrong.'' Even kindly white supremacy is made of "sterner stuff."
From a letter written by Alice Childress to Ruby Dee, July 25, 1966. Dee played the role of Julia in the world premiere of Wedding Band at the University of Michigan in 1966, and again in the New York premiere at the Public Theater in 1972. This except published with the kind permission of SevenGrands LLC.
Ruby, you have touched the pulse-beat of Julia… “The love that over-rides or goes counter-point to the cliché… that doesn’t think itself or doesn’t try to be funny…but just is.” The first beat with the neighbors is not played for comedy… but it is funny, ridiculous and tragic. Certainly it is not funny to lose your last quarter… to owe rent… to be frightened and alone in a new and seemingly hostile environment and to feel under attack from what seems an organized, harsh community. It is not funny to call a little girl “A no-count, dumb-ass”… or to threaten to throw her out in the street. It is not funny to have the Bell-man assume a superior attitude,
assault a woman’s dignity and vulgarize a new home which is her last refuge from a hostile world. It is not funny to turn down Nelson (“Your own kind”) while living in the shadow of a self-conscious love relationship with a man whose skin color forever identifies him with the ever-present oppressor of an angry, bewildered, exploited, poor and underprivileged people. But between the lines we see Mattie’s deep and abiding true love for her husband and child… Lula’s seeking for spiritual substance… Fanny coveting and gathering material things to prove her worth….
In the beginning of act three Julia sees herself as a race-woman… dedicated to “my people” … trying to find and discover black… all black… savoring the beauty of blackness… of belonging… But by the end of act three… she knows with certainty that she is a whole, complete, adjusted, worthy human being… she has no need to rant and rave with Herman's Mother… The dialogue is over. She no longer fears the dark… or dreams… she is no longer superstitious or timid, or arrogant or brash… or anything but sure of a human's worth. She (A whole race of people) rises higher than the sin and dirt around her and gives Herman the one thing she never had… Protection and the assurance that he is wanted needed and loved. She is triumphant in the sure knowledge that she knows the dignity described in act one… that it rises above the ugliness even while firmly dealing with it. The impact or this on the audience should be even harder to bear than the spectacle of the act two ending. Finally we feel that no human being should be required to be bigger, better, grander, stronger and more dignified than the society in which she lives. Instead of Julia being the keeper of the flame… society should be protecting her.
Ruby Dee, Alice Childress and director Marcella Cisney discuss Wedding Band, from an article in Ann Arbor News, November 17, 1966. Ann Arbor District Library. Permalink. From “I Remember Alice Childress” by Peggy Holiday. Southern Quarterly, Spring 1987. Holliday played Annabelle in the 1972 Public Theater production.
The rehearsals at the Public Theater were very hard work, for the play was emotionally exhausting for everyone. It had extremely volatile language at the time—nothing obscene or gratuitous but very true and hard-hitting. A lot of rewriting went on and the thing that impressed me about Alice was that unless she was dealing with a point or a line about which she was absolutely unmoveable, she was completely accepting of suggestions and entirely without ego in her judgment of such suggestions. I have a vivid picture of her listening intently to actors' problems or suggestions about lines, then going off into a corner and writing with great intensity and concentration while we took a break. In a very short time she would bring us the speech or line rewritten to incorporate any suggestion she agreed with. And the writing always enhanced the suggestion. The rewriting was always done with artistry, incorporating all her knowledge of form, rhythm and picturesque speech. She was, to my mind, a complete professional.
The situation with Wedding Band grew tense toward opening. During previews Alice was dismissed as director and Joseph Papp took over. In spite of this, when the show opened to good reviews much of Alice's original direction remained. Through it all, Alice remained professional—supporting the actors and doing further rewrites. The play was very moving to both audiences and actors, and Alice's words provided a wonderful showcase for a cast of rising actors which included Ruby Dee, Albert Hall and the late James Broderick….
I know Alice Childress to be an extremely intelligent woman, a true lady and a human being of great heart. •
