Renaissance Men I: 3 Plays

By Laurence Holder

This book is an exploration in time and distance as it takes you from the present day of America with When the Chickens come home to roost, and Malcolm X to 18th Century Caribbean Isle and the world of Bussa, passing through the mid 20th century of Paul Robeson and Wes DuBois

The issues of racism are perceived through the prisons of slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. The end result of any insurrections, civil or criminal, the survivors write the history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 1, 2002
• ISBN: 9780759690172

Laurence Holder

Mr. Holder is noted for writing historical, biographical plays such as Zora Neale Hurston at The American Place Theatre in 1998 starring Elizabeth Van Dyke and Joseph Edwards, directed by Wyn Handman, and When The Chickens Came Home To Roost starring Denzel Washington as Malcolm X and Kirk Kirksey as Elijah Muhammad, directed by Allie Woods, at The New Federal Theatre in 1981. Mr. Holder has won playwriting awards including the AUDELCO twice (Audience Development Committee acknowledges theatre excellence in African American Theatre) for When the Chickens Came Home To Roost and M: The Mandela Saga. For the body of his work, The National Black Theatre Festival presented him with both the OTTO for Political Theatre and The Garland Anderson Award. Mr. Holder is also noted for his experimental works including the multilingual BIRD OF PARADISE in 1972 with Ornette Coleman and the URBAN DECALOGUE in 1974 with Jacquie Berger. In addition to his work as a dramatist Mr. Holder is the author of several volumes of poetry and 7 novels. He has also acted in ZORA: WHU, which featured Yvonne Southerland as the famed novelist. He is the father of three children and husband to Andrea, an actress. Mr. Holder is a member of the faculty at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) where he has taught English in the SEEK Department for the past twenty-five years. The author is a native New Yorker and has watched the scene change slowly over the last sixty years. Over the last ten years he has made some astounding realizations about the nature and cause of it all, which is reflected and refracted in his work.

Book preview

Renaissance Men 1

THREE PLAYS

By LAURENCE HOLDER

Edited by Richard Gaffield-Knight

With an Introduction by Gerald Markowitz, Ph.D.

RENAISSANCE ANTHOLOGY SERIES

Five volumes of plays by Laurence Holder

Edited by Richard Gaffield-Knight

Volume 2: Renaissance Men 1

© 2001 by Laurence Holder. All rights reserved

With an Introduction by Gerald Markowitz, Ph.D.

This book is a work of fiction. Places, events, and situations

in this story are purely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, is coincidental.

When the Chickens Came Home to Roost: © 1992, 1994, 1995, 2000

by Laurence Holder. All rights reserved

Red Channels: © 2001 by Laurence Holder. All rights reserved

Bussa: © 2001 by Laurence Holder. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written

permission from the author.

ISBN 978-0-7596-9017-2 (ebook)

1stBooks—rev. 12/07/01

For my wife ANDREA

my 3 children

CHRIS, DORI and LAURA

my Mother GOLDIE

to WOODIE KING, Jr.

ROME NEAL,

MIGUEL ALGARIN,

FRED NEWMAN,

DIANE STILES,

and GABRIELLE KURLANDER

and to our lately departed:

GLORIA FOSTER,

EDMUND CAMBRIDGE,

and LOFTEN MITCHELL

RENAISSANCE ANTHOLOGY SERIES

All plays by Laurence Holder

Series edited by Richard Gaffield-Knight

Volume 1—Renaissance Women—Ethel Waters, Hot Snow

(Valaida Snow); They Were All Gardenias (Billie Holiday); Zora

Neale Hurston; M: The Mandela Saga (Winifred Mandela)

Volume 2—Renaissance Men 1—When The Chickens Came Home

To Roost (Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad); Red Channels (Paul

Robeson, W.E.B. Dubois, Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy); Bussa

(Bussa, Nanny Grigg, Thomas Jefferson, Phyllis Wheatley,

William Wilberforce)

Volume 3—Renaissance Solos—Bird (Charlie Parker); Monk

(Thelonious Monk); The Gospel According To MaxRoach (Max

Roach); Sugar Ray (Sugar Ray Robinson); Langston (Langston

Hughes); Hot Fingers (Jelly Roll Morton); Hot Lips (Valaida Snow);

The Last Dust Track; Zora (Zora Neale Hurston); Man

(Contemporary Man); Woman (Contemporary Woman); The Fighter

Volume 4—Renaissance Men 2—Juba; Scott Joplin; Hotfingers 2

(Jelly Roll Morton); VSOP:MONKnBUD; MONKnBUD (Thelonious

Monk, Bud Powell); Swee’pea And The Duke (Duke Ellington, Lena

Horne, Billy Strayhorn)

Volume 5—Renaissance Collection—Ruby And Pearl: A Class Act;

Nelson’n’Simone (Nelson Algren, Simone Debeauvoir); Dream

Rooms; Fagen (A Buffalo Soldier); F: The Fringe Candidate (Lenora

Fulani); Zora And Langston (Zora Neale Hurston And Langston

Hughes); Zora:Whu (Zora Neale Hurston, Fred Whu)

For production rights information contact

Author’s representative:

Donald Sutton, Global Artists Management

Email: [e-mail]

Telephone: [phone], or Fax: [phone]

Renaissance Anthology Series information:

http://www.laurenceholder.com

Laurence Holder, 626 Riverside Drive 10-J

New York, NY 10031 [phone]

Table of Contents

Author’s Foreword

Introduction

WHEN THE CHICKENS CAME HOME TO ROOST

RED CHANNELS

BUSSA

About the Author

Author’s Foreword

I was quite fortunate writing—Chickens—when I did, and then the resultant resonances I received from people who hadn’t seen it, but had heard about Denzel, Kirk, the writing, the direction, the set, the producers: Woodie King, Jr. and Steve Tennen. All gave a much needed boost to my spirit and the urge to go on with what Frank Rich said was destiny to write about the people making waves and breaking heads. When Woodie led me to the first production meeting for When The Chickens Came Home To Roost, he said, Here comes the big time. I had no idea. However, the mainstream so far has ignored Frank Rich’s call.

It was the early ‘80s. There was still hope that independent artists might survive—even make a stamp—some groups like Theatre In Progress were laid low by fire—others by institutional neglect, and other attempts to codify African American culture by African Americans were met with cold, stiff shoulders, stiff lips, stiffs—most saying no to us and others like us, the few fringe lunatics who do have a little visibility—still, it was a time of hope.

What happened in the 90s? We thought we could coast our way up the feeding chain of Arts and other philanthropic agencies which were giving up most of their budgets to create and maintain the few megaliths and a couple of splinters— and still there was hope.

Now our eagle has been stung by wasps not easy to rid, yet we retain the will to create and produce by any means necessary. Always there is hope.

Bussa is too large a script for anyone to produce economically onstage. Besides, what is the interest level in a script about an enslaved freedom fighter, who lived 200 years ago on a small island far away? Considerable—if you come from the Eastern Caribbean, or know many talented, unemployed, nonunion theater artists with a desire to speak out against oppression. Or, maybe you will read the script and see a block-buster movie. TV mini-series?

Red Channels was produced twice in New York. Directed by my good friend and collaborator Rome Neal, it premiered at Theatre For The New City, Crystal Field, Executive Producer/Director, and it was awarded six Audience Development Committee (AUDELCO) nominations for excellence, including Best Writer, Best Director, and Best Set. In the Fall of 1994 it was produced again by the Castillo Theatre and directed by its Artistic Director Fred Newman.

When The Chickens Came Home To Roost also won six AUDELCO Awards for Best Actor, Best Director, and shared Best Writer with Charles Fuller for his A Soldier’s Play. It also won Best Set Design, Best Lights and Best Production of the Year. Afterward it toured around the country as a staple of Woodie King, Jr.’s National Black Touring Circuit.

I hope that reading these plays brings you as much joy as they brought to me while writing them and seeing them produced. Remember to secure the musical and publication rights to use the songs in productions. For that I am not to be held responsible.

Laurence Holder, Winter 2001

New York, New York

Introduction

By Gerald Markowitz, Ph.D.

Laurence Holder has been inspiring theatergoers for over a generation. As Americans have endured the slow erosion of civil rights, not to mention civility, the cruel attacks on social welfare, and the conservative assault on civil liberties, that have characterized the last quarter of the twentieth century, Laurence Holder has provided a rich legacy of plays that speak to a different sensibility and vision. Holder’s work reminds us of the struggles that people of color have had to wage to achieve the extraordinary successes of the past two centuries. His work reminds us that art, justice, humanism, and love are as much a part of American society as hatred, cruelty, violence, and injustice. As an historian I am particularly struck by the incredibly perceptive insight Holder provides into United States’ history. His plays recover an America that has been dismissed, denied and overlooked. Just looking at the subjects that he has chosen to explore over his career, from Phyllis Wheatley, W.E.B. DuBois, Lena Horne, Malcolm X, Thelonius Monk, Winnie Mandela, to many others give a sense of the panorama that Holder has painted of the modern world. He has recovered the history of long lost genius; he has forced us to consider the hypocrisy and foolishness of revered heroes; he has asked the difficult questions and provided no easy answers.

In this collection we can see the story of America. The last play, BUSSA, takes on a traditional theme in U.S. history— the search for freedom, but whereas most textbooks and American mythology place that striving for freedom in terms of the founding fathers, BUSSA places that struggle in an international context and reverses the traditional roles. Slavery, as Holder shows, was an international system and America’s growth and development was based on the labor of people of African descent and the brutalizing of those human beings in the Caribbean and the United States. The play shows that slaves, far from being dehumanized by the slave system, kept the vision of freedom and the importance of love and family alive against incredible odds. Men and women of color kept the true meaning of what it meant to be a human being alive in the midst of slavery and white oppression. While most textbooks define America’s founding fathers as the beacons of light that sustained freedom loving people, Holder shows how the light of the Haitian revolution inspired oppressed people, and how hypocritical the cries of freedom were coming from the mouths of slave owners. As Holder has one character state, We were enslaved, but we have never been slaves.

In RED CHANNELS, Holder portrays the cruel absurdity of one of the most despicable periods in twentieth century American history. Here two of the giants of the modern world, W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson were forced to confront the power and sadism of Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover (off-stage). Instead of being celebrated in America’s Time of the Toad, Robeson and DuBois were reviled, and left to be rediscovered by a generation of young people because they have been written out of history texts. The casual racism of America’s leaders and the disdain with which they treat two of the most important leaders of the African-American community stand as a stark warning to others who would dare to stand up for justice, equality and freedom. Most of the histories of the Cold War and the domestic repression that accompanied it, neglect the critical importance of the repression of Black America that was part and parcel of that effort. American leaders understood that African Americans had come home from World War Two as changed and militant as the New Negro had come home from World War I. With the rise of anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia, the segregation and suppression of basic, fundamental democratic rights of voting, equal education, freedom of movement, and freedom of assembly were being denied to America’s people of color. If America was to win the Cold War, the militant protests of DuBois, Robeson, the Civil Rights Congress, the Negro Trade Union League and countless other individuals and groups had to be prevented from claiming the world stage. In the end the lesson that the newly emerging civil rights leaders learned in the 1950s and early 1960s was to not challenge the fundamental nature of American economic philosophy and politics, even as they were challenging segregation. Indeed, at the very moment that the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. began to challenge the basic precepts of American society, he was cut down by a sniper’s bullet.

The play captures the impossible position ordinary Americans were caught up in. How does one live a normal life in such times? How does one balance an ambition to rise in one’s chosen profession with maintaining one’s moral balance? How does one become an informer and live with that sin? Holder holds up a light on an every man, a poor guy who just wants to work, be an actor, get along, meet the right people, who finds that he faces a choice between his own survival and those of others. Holder shows that he is manipulated by friends and enemies alike—lovers, cops, government agents, who are determined to squash him, keep him in moral hock, keep him tied to a system that is corrupt to the core. All of this was invisible to those who were being manipulated. The Red Channels of the title was among the most vicious manipulation of all—blacklisting hundreds of actors, directors, writers, and screen writers who were accused of being Communists or fellow travelers. There was only one way to remove oneself from this list—to inform on your friends, denounce old allies, name names. And for what? Red Channels helps us to see the absurdity of the red menace, and the corruption that it caused in the body politic. By contrasting the humane and progressive, indeed radical, vision of Robeson and DuBois, with the hateful, narrow-minded and reactionary obsessions of McCarthy and Nixon, Holder indicates the choice that we, as a people, or as individuals, must face.

It is very much this kind of choice that Holder lays before us in the first play, WHEN THE CHICKENS CAME HOME TO ROOST. Here Malcolm X confronts Elijah Muhammad about the latter’s infidelity, but more generally about the meaning of the struggle for human rights in the twentieth century. Can the movement of liberation be led by one man who will not listen to new ideas, new voices, but demands blind obedience to his power? The play explores Malcolm X’s own transformation from a street hustler who lands in jail to a devoted follower of Elijah Muhammad, to a world, leader in his own right. From today’s perspective the statement that Malcolm X gave to the press that led to his silencing in the Nation of Islam seems even more perceptive and prescient than ever. The most famous line that the press quoted after the Kennedy assassination was that this was a case of when the chickens came home to roost. But the rest of his statement made clear exactly what that meant—that the violence done to African Americans over the centuries had come full circle and that no one can escape the consequences of living in a society built on violence: It’s a shame but you can’t live in a violent country without being touched by that violence.

Today, as the country contemplates the horrors of young men wreaking violence in communities of every size and complexion, whether in urban centers or suburban high schools, and at a time when young men are being seduced with depictions of manhood driven by violence, misogyny, and apathy, Malcolm X’s statement is more important than ever. In these plays Lawrence Holder lets us envision another type of person, a person committed to freedom and justice, a person ennobled by struggle, a person driven by love.

Gerald Markowitz

John Jay College, Fall 2001

Renaissance Men 1

THREE PLAYS

WHEN THE CHICKENS CAME HOME TO ROOST

By Laurence Holder

Cast of Characters:

Elijah Muhammad Malcolm X

Time:

1947-1965

(THE SET IS FOUR DIFFERENT AREAS: (1) THE PRISON CELL WHERE ELIJAH MUHAMMAD VISITS THE MANIC MALCOLM AS SATAN, (2) THE SUMPTOUS OFFICE OF THE HONORABLE ELIJAH MUHAMMAD, (3) THE AIRPORT, AND (4) THE BASEMENT SCENE BEFORE MALCOLM TAKES THE PODIUM IN THE AUDOBON BALLROOM. THE STAGE IS RUDE, DARK, THE BOWELS OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT. WE HEAR RATHER THAN SEE, FEEL RATHER THAN KNOW THERE IS A MAN THERE, SHIFTING UNEASILY, DISCHARGING BODILY IMPURITIES. A LIGHT COMES UP, NOT TO ILLUMINATE, BUT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE EXISTENCE OF THE MAN)

SATAN: You gotta let me out of here. There’s no room to move. I can’t even find the toilet. LET ME OUTTA HERE!

(THERE ARE MIMICKING CRIES FROM THE OTHER PRISONERS)

VOICES: Let him out. Sure. give him a pass to the inauguration. A sign of good behavior. Sure—Harry’ll let him go. Margaret needs a date. Who the hell is Margaret? the president’s daughter, that’s who.

(LAUGHTER)

(SATAN IS STANDING FINALLY, BEARDED FACE, EYES, DIRTY, ANGRY)

SATAN: When I get out of here I will personally take each and every one of