Dang. Why don’t more Americans know Langston and Zora? Tsk.
Everyone respects them as venerable writers but it really is so much fun to read their short stories, articles and poetry. Each astute and witty, both undeterred by the Great Depression and prevalent racism, the best of their respective works are vibrant with joy. Perhaps this is why they became friends upon their first meeting.
In 1931, Hurston and Hughes collaborated on writing the comic play Mule Bone. Writing in Harlem, they wrote from their observations of Southern life. For decades Mule Bone went unproduced. On his own manuscript, Langston wrote “This play was never done because the authors fell out.”
Mule Bone ended their friendship–which is a resonant irony–since Mule Bone itself is about a shattered friendship. In the play, musician Jim Weston, and dancer Dave Carter, pals and partners in a musical act, become competitors when they both fall in love with Daisy, one of the cutest girls in Eatonville, Florida. The authors describe her as plump, dark, sexy…and fickle. Push comes to shove, and fists fly, until just about everyone in the small town is involved in a trial charging violence perpetrated by the mule bone in question.
Insight into small town culture and celebration of each of the characters’ unconventional behavior provides the fun.
The show is directed by June L.S. Duell, herself a venerable figure in Buffalo African-American and entertainment communities. Over fifty years ago, with a career as a club singer already established, she was cast in the role of Ruth in a church production of A Raisin In The Sun, a role she would repeat at Jane Keeler’s Studio School, the forerunner to Studio Arena. Since then she has performed the gamut from comedy to drama, and new scripts to the Ancient Greeks. She was also an Artie Award winner in 1993.
This script will be a mighty challenge for this group, but certainly not beyond their reach. Plus, you get to know Zora and Langston.
Produced and presented by Paul Robeson Theater.
February 2 – 25 at the African American Cultural Center — 350 Masten, between East Utica and Glenwood. (716) 884.2013