Chapter One
November 1972
Now that I had moved away from the home of my dear auntEloise (the celebrated columnist for the Forrest County Dispatch) I hadvigorously embarked on evolving an epic idea for a verse play, in thegrand manner.
On March 1, 1966, I had moved into Mrs. Myrtle Titlebaum's teemingapartment building: home for wayward souls, foreign spirits, nearlydomesticated university students, oddball artists, off-the-wall musicians,raggedy-ribboned writers; small-time has-beens, would-be politicianswho claimed now to be nationalists; fellow travelers who sold grave plotsby dawn's early light; obese lunatics with thin portfolios. There wereeternal lovers with soggy armpits who were always setting up doomedlove affairs (for their lovers) slated as springboards for their own careerambitions. There were high-minded Marxists predicting the imminentfinancial collapse of the United States, any day now, who despised theJehovah's Witnesses (and their predictions), who in turn loathed theRoman Catholics in and out of the building under Mrs. Titlebaum'sownership.
There were several black nationalists awaiting the impending adventof an imperial African messiah, who could and would arrive upon theWhite House lawn (take over the Rose Garden) in a black, green, andred chariot (to match his cape) at high noon with a staff of angelicofficers armed to the grinding of teeth, their rifles at the ready. Therewere several of their ilk who believed in a Jewish conspiracy. Despitethe affable Mrs. Titlebaum's largess of spirit, they swore that this elderlyJewish woman "was a front for a huge, though mysterious cartel."
I observed at least three dropout Muslims, fiercely disillusioned withElijah's direction of the Nation, and continuing their grief over themurder of Malcolm X; as if the assassination had occurred just yesterday,at the Audubon.
There was a steady flow of exchange students with "revolutionaryagendas" for their return home (even as they had been away from"home" seven to ten years), where they planned to take over CIA-spawnedgovernments.
Then there were those identity-crackled African Americans, searchingin twelve different tormented-air circles for an ideal core soulsource: intellectual babes of toyland, ever pulling after and pinchingfor elusive and high-bouncing balloons, which, when punctured, didactually explode an odorless gas, guaranteeing death to the reasoningportion of the brain, as these rhetoricians mongered on, sucking up largegasps of the heavily polluted air of their own creation. (I later came togive them titles, born out of their self-assumed designation.)
I had written a significant segment culled from Sugar-Groove's saga,initially in the form of a journal, and then converted the log into acomplete play about this fabulous courtier, bon vivant, and spiritualuncle/father. In November 1968, the play was "performed" in a reader's-styletheater at a playhouse on East Sixty-seventh Street. There hadbeen about seventy-five people present at the "reading and rendering"of this play (with a working title of "How Can You Destroy What WeCreated?"). My aunt Eloise had sent out many invitations and to somedegree the size of our audience was a response to her call. Normallythe Playwright's Workshop drew only twenty people, in addition to thetwelve of us enrolled in the course. Each month a play was presented ina reader's-style theater to the students and a public audience.
Aunt Eloise had been in attendance (though not Hickles, her husband)."I'll review your endeavor, Baby-Bear, but you'll get no once-over-go-lightly-cream-puffs from Auntie," she had said, winking thosefiercely competitive gray eyes at her nephew and stepson. Eloise Hickleswrote a complete review of the play (a lengthy critique) as if it were to bepublished for the Dispatch. Her unpublished, though formally writtenreview—actually mailed to me at the Avon—both hailed my potentialand castigated "this playwright, concerning the very real structuraldefects of his play." Throughout her review she referred to me as "thisman, Antoine Jones." She went on to proclaim: "Antoine Jones takeson and attempts to take over, then explore native grounds common toRichard Wright and William Faulkner. In many ways Antoine Jonesgoes beyond these two modern masters of the southern Agony. However,these writers were novelists not playwrights, and Antoine Joneshas yet to master the craft of drama, which calls for a certain kindof immediate yet smoldering electricity between players and audience.He is most definitely a young playwright on the way up, still in theprocess of learning stagecraft-savvy, and surrendering to the demandingand selfish taskmistress of theatrical discipline." The critique was ninedouble-spaced pages. I read it twenty-one times. She never referred tome by my full name, Joubert Antoine Jones, in the review.
Another journalist in attendance for the public reading was WashburneWithers. I had been most anxious to hear the opinion of thisreporter, who worked for Jacob A. Gooselaw's weekly newspaper, Spearhead.Gooselaw had been beseeching me to write for his paper eversince I returned from the army in February 1966. I was seriously contemplatinghow I might incorporate a few hours at Gooselaw's weeklySpearhead into my own fairly tight schedule. Gooselaw's paper was farmore progressive than the Forrest County Dispatch. The second attractionwas the possibility of working not only with that wily Marxist Gooselawbut with Washburne Withers. The talented Withers wrote straight newsand some features for Spearhead on a part-time basis.
Withers had recently been hired as the first black reporter to writefor one of the main downtown dailies. His first feature story had beenpublished the week before the presentation of my play; the piece was onthe local Legend Ma Fay Barker, a social activist originally from KansasCity, Kansas. It was a fine story about this woman, whom I had metthrough Aunt Eloise. Ma Fay Barker was very much aware of certainjazz movements and currents of the territorial jazz bands. She stayed onthe periphery of the various movements and dealt with individuals incrisis. I admired Withers's controlled, thoughtful savvy, his burnishedintelligence, and the devotion to his craft that shone through his probingnews stories.
At the reception for my play, with a glass of white wine in my righthand and my manuscript in the left, I recalled turning away exactly atwhat the venomous Angel St. Clair poured into my left ear. She wasone of twelve students in the Playwright's Workshop. Her play wasbeing presented in January. She was proclaiming, just now, in a razorof a whisper: "I didn't come here, Joubert Antoine Jones, to hear norpreview any of your chauvinist shit. Not going to be conquered by youBear hound-dog you, by no stretch of my imagination am I going tobe diminished, as a very intelligent African woman, by this old wive's-down-home-nigger-womanhonky bastard poison."
I moved away from the stalking black feminist's shock waves to theporches of my ear, in order now to drift over to where Withers had stood,at the other end of the room, but it was at this very moment that theruggedly handsome, tall, medium-dark-brown-skinned reporter suddenlyvanished out into the November rain, his bare head buried nowbeneath the hood of his raincoat, his shoulders huddled.
Then I observed the lean and mean Angel St. Clair stalk out of thereception on a pair of wicked high heels—the black leotards protectingthose shapely legs of a stallion from the nasty November weather—asshe whipped a lengthy, purple scarf about her shoulders.
The new sophisticated lady, without silk stockings, and a jagged-edgedrazor for a tongue: the new armies of the night. Duke's ladyno place to be somebody here. I thought of the Satin Doll, out ofthe not-too-far-removed past, which was the place where a clique ofwhite gangsters in Forrest County frequented and picked up blackwomen. No Negro males were allowed entry into this place, as audience.Only black musicians (males) were allowed onstage. Somewhat akin tothe Cotton Club in New York, yet quite different. Black musicians—whiteaudience. Ripped off Duke's title but the song goes on. Sameold tune.
Not ever getting the quote from Blake exactly right, Angel St. Clair,as always, paraphrased in class: "The wrath of tigers is more useful thanthe horses of instruction," no matter the situation, or the setting. Whathad probably most pissed the Angel was the central dramatic story ofmy play.
Read aloud over three weekends in November at the Sixty-seventhStreet Theater, my play "How Can You Destroy What We Created?"was culled out of a confrontation between Sugar-Groove and his whitefather when the lad of fourteen discovered pictures of his scantily cladmother, Sarah-Belle, stuck up in the Bible of his white father, WilfredBloodworth. Taken perhaps twenty years earlier, at some remote partof a beach, these photographs revealed Sarah-Belle to the youth's awakeningeyes.
Sarah-Belle had died in childbirth. William Bloodworth (later knownas Sugar-Groove) had only heard descriptions of his beautiful mother.Old man Bloodworth had come to despise the lad, because Sarah-Bellehad elected to give her Negro baby's life dominion over Bloodworth'sbodily passions, possession and power over her existence. Because of hismysterious tie to Sarah-Belle, Wilfred Bloodworth felt something forthe son, akin to outrage and pity, filial tenderness and jealousy, racialarrogance, and also a measure of affection not previously gauged.
On this particular occasion, when the white man returned to hismagnificent library, in Forrest County, he and the youth he sired bySarah-Belle fought over the meaning of those photographs (as muchmythic as real). Mainly each fought to own the photos (to actuallyrepossess the woman in the photos as his very own, as if she wouldstep out, life size, and reveal herself at any moment).
The enraged older man gets the better of the physical struggle andis about to crash a chair over his son's head, when suddenly they bothbecame aware of a presence in the room. The window was elevatedand the cracked library door flew open on this Mississippi night. Sarah-Belle'sspirit was suddenly heard to faintly aggrieve, in a declarativespirit: "How can you destroy what we created?" The voice seems tohave floated through the room under some sheer, nearly invisible veil.(Young Sugar-Groove of course had never heard this voice.) Both manand boy were charged and shocked by the presence of the voice. Thisconfrontation came to a momentary close.
As the adult Sugar-Groove informed me in Williemain's Barbershop,his furor at Bloodworth remained alive. He revealed the dream of castrationwherein he severely punished Bloodworth for what he believedto be the sexual exploitation of Sarah-Belle, on the very night of thebattle with the man who sired him.
Raised as he was by his aunt and uncle, Sugar-Groove's overview ofthe relationship came to be more muted and complex with the flow ofreflection carried down through the years with this obsessive memory.Eventually the play was given a major mounting, in Forest County;it forms one of the cornerstones of my reputation as a playwright.This play garnered several prizes and it was nominated for a PulitzerPrize. The honors, the awards, the visiting professorships, all stem fromthis well-saluted and often-produced play. My most recent visit to theinternet revealed that some twenty dissertations had analyzed aspectsand scenes from this two-act play.
At this time, I had a second life's commandment, too, concerning theexistence, care, and keeping of my eccentric kinsman Leonard Foster.
* * *
Now that I was back home, at the Avon, I finally got around to telephoningShirley Polyneices. She immediately vaulted into the livingtorment and anguish that dwelling under the same roof with LeonardFoster meant. He had been leaving suicide notes in the basement, butnow he was situated in the psychiatric ward of the University Hospital.Then she insisted on reading a long poem, word for word, that Leonardhad recently written. I was instructed to take the poem down, word forword, in longhand. Shirley's voice was full of lament and torment.
"Joubert, you and I had two literature courses together, at BrightonHigh—in case you've forgotten—but I do remember how good youwere at interpreting shit. So, apply your imagination to this crazy poemas written by this riddled-brain nigger of mine, and your crazy cousin.
"You, with your oddball self ain't crazy, you just daffy to get awaywithout being committed by the skin of your Adam's apple. But then allthe dead people ain't at Memphis Raven-Snow's Funeral Home. Stilland all, you'll probably tell us—mainly me—more about your cousin,from your knowledge of him, direct from this poem. And certainly morethan any of these white-boy psychiatrists here at this university, which isinternationally known for its crackpots and crack-ups. Hell—far as theyare concerned we are all a bunch of crazy niggers. I sure heard enoughof that kind of shitty interpretation behind prison gates, down South,marching to try to free up this lousy country of ours, too. Leonard wasarrested far more than I was. I got slammed away in the honky-heartedjailhouse. But Joubert, you with your daffy, crafty, and cunning ass canlay in the cut no doubt and conjure up some profound shit about layersgoing down in this sappy but sweet splib of mine."
Wound-licking in its monstrous, self-inflicted loves, then suddenlycalled away from its mission, it still slouches and mores with the mayhem-ecstasy,under its belly, astride its reverie nightmare-genius (pale-horse) in the bottomof a ship, whose destiny is Eternity ... to take me back through space in timeto Mississippi ... to Forrest County ... take the blood of the lamb and strikeupon the door posts and the lentils.... And when I see the blood, I'll pass youover and I'll take you in.... Must I go back to that, too? But oh, how canthere be blood on my hands before I Arrive?
The monster-bloated spirit rebukes the God-willed mission and the innocentship is moored in Disaster made wretched by the sea's brooding, Raging monster,smoking with avarice, industry, Bondage, Miscegenation, and torment....Take this Swine from out of mine eyes.... Clothe me in my Right mind. Letthe devil depart me ... afflicted With every jelly and suffering Known andUnknown Unto mankind and worthy only to the bodies of swine ... tumblingdown to the sea ... in its hallowed be thy name talons.... Who knows notitself its face to the horrors of the wind, I ride out like the wind in the breath ofthose Hounds after the vixen transformed stag.... Lucasta Jones, hail womanfull of denied grace, The Lord is with you.
Oh vamping vixen, in the shape of an hourglass with the face of a Novemberleaf—pouring dread from her spider's web of a hair net; but he awakes on highand hard to find a haunting bloodstained cloak bas grown about his shoulders; atarnished Crown, ingeniously fashioned of rusty, Bloodstained, blood-poundednails, shells, beads, Scraps of iron (with a bulging round of paper in theband).... sits tentatively upon his swollen head. Wretched pair of whispering,wounded wings blossoming nails sits upon its side, primed for Golgotha's rideup the Stations. Primed to wakefulness, the driftwood bestial body (as if GodTouched) now sacrifices only itself to whatever Spouts and smokes out there uponCreation's Shape changing sea's face: a prologue and a Reality too abhorredand awesome for Remembrance wakefulness, forgetfulness, nostalgia, or merefear. Is there blood on my hands? How dare you! ... Keening, tumbling,turning, and tobogganing, In a feverish dance-swim, vaulting delirium, thebottomed-out of this tribulation; engulfed, Sanctimonious monster is bloodywith slime-puke And the buds of an entangling, savage miracle. He is of thesea monster's body and soul. (But I found out too late.) Keening ... Eden'sfruit foul in its haughty, Fly-shrouded breath; God's tears touch time. Thecolor-shifting rainbow's wings; he is the Dangling requiem for Gomer, and thespirit Auctioned. (Oh the withering away of the Soul.) Yet too much for meremonster to devour, the Angled monster knows not of its catch.
"Well, give me two days, Shirley. But I promise to stop by the hospitaltomorrow, after I leave my grandparents."
"Now you figure all that shit out. Leonard asks for you constantly,Joubert. Please don't fail me, nor especially your cousin."
Poor little Leonard Foster, for though I loved him, I also loathed hisinnocence. But why didn't I tell him earlier since none of them wouldtell him, for so long a time, so that when it did come down upon him itsnapped something deep within, something deep and fragile, as a branchcaught up in an electrical storm. Broken bones blasted before he decidedto burn all bridges and start anew, deep down in the Southland. Tryingto free his people, in search of his own people. Something else, too, hadtaken possession of Leonard's soul, a literary magazine.
Leonard's name for this "quarterly" was The Dark Tower. I had nevercared for the name of the magazine. However, Leonard insisted uponthe title and he was bankrolling the enterprise.
Another intertwining branch connecting Leonard and me was ashared memory behind the meaning of a mysterious funeral we hadattended as lads, at Fountain's House of the Dead Funeral Home. Nearlyevery time we talked at length, each of us ended up re-creating his ownspecial memory of the original event, adding to and subtracting fromit as we went along. Probably more than anything else, we debatedover what was the true identity of the funeralized man who was nevereulogized. There were no programs made available to describe his life,nor were there biographical sketches made known to the public. Yearslater I came to refer to this man (with the influence of the Muslims soprevalent in Forest County) as Mr. Double X, the mystery man. In fact,I remained uncertain as to the identity, even the gender, of this person.
Why had Granny Gram Gussie and Grandpa Forester insisted thatwe bear witness by attending this funeral, this odd spectacle, with them?And yet over the years, they, each in his or her own way, had let slip bitsof information on the man or woman inside the handsome bronzedcasket. Not strange enough? Then what of the following factor: therewere no grieving relatives there to send this personage on their way?The organist did play "The Death of a Princess" over and over again,in a most eerie tone, as I remembered it. And this led me to thinkthat the person on the inside was female, but all of the references mygrandparents made to the gender of the dead body implied that it wasa male inside this casket, which was not adorned with flowers on theoutside. Apparently the "house" organist did not know the song frommemory since he kept a close reference to the sheet music before him.How could anyone know that this was the song requested? Who hadplaced the request? Had a relative of the deceased fled a petition thatthis song be played, at the last minute? Besides the four of us, there werea few outsiders—five or six? Leonard and I usually ended up arguingover the body count of the living presence at the funeral. Lucasta Jonesarrived late. However, it was the mysterious man who sat in the secondrow all through the service whose presence really shook us up.
Since the events were so vivid in my memory, I had thought on severaloccasions of trying to write a play about what had happened, or didn'thappen, at "the funeral"; however, I was thrown for a loop, because whatin fact had happened? Would this qualify for the theater of the absurd?Talk about waiting for Godot! Where was the garbage can?
Leonard always felt that I was too lavish in my storytelling ("tooflowery" was his phraseology, and particularly about this saga). Yet Ithought now that this would be exactly the story I would bring up inmy recall, in order to sweep Leonard out of his deadly doldrums. Well,I could try anyway. I'd stay away from the Freedom Movement days,because, after all, he had Shirley for those shared and shell-shockingmemories. The war stories from the battlefront would only bring onmore mental pain.
All of this would fit into a routine of our dialogues over the years.Leonard was always telling people how I was forever and a day settinghim up and using the materials from our conversations as the seeds forplay conflicts. My ambitions to be a playwright are certainly not beyondthis manipulation. If it were not this kind of thinking, would we, afterall, have the Socratic dialogues in our possession?
Before I drove to the hospital that late morning, I headed out south.
Now I was moving ahead in Aunt Eloise's old green 1963 LincolnContinental, on my way to grandmother's house.
But I could also sense some impending chaos, mainly because of theenormous barking of a dog's voice beyond relief (which, as it turned out,was Marvella's brutal-voiced canine). A forest of children was scatteredabout as I started to tool down the block where Granny Gram Gussielived, and some of them greeted my old car with rocks, or pebbles, thendarted off to the sides of the adjacent buildings.
There was indeed a stand-off taking place, between the police andsome woman whose outline I could make out on the top floor (I thoughtI recognized her immediately), threatening to blow out her brains withthe gun she moved back and forth into and out of her mouth. My God,I howled, it was indeed Marvella, the crazed poet, who headed up asinging group (composed of lesbians) at one time.
As I came into the front-door vestibule of the building where mygrandparents lived, I recognized three attendants from Memphis Raven-Snow'sFuneral Home moving a sheet-covered corpse to the elevatedrear door of the mortuary's pickup Caddy for deceased bodies, fivebuildings down to the left of where Forester and Gussie Jones lived.
Marvella—dressed in a red, green, and black wraparound Africanheadpiece and a bright blue dress (as far as I could see) continued tocurse out the power structure and their ancestry, with particular stressupon the cop's lack of a biological tree. Granny Gram Gussie usheredme in nimbly, as if she was prepared now to impart some great familysecret. I got my notebook out and took general notes as they spoke.Also, I turned on my tape recorder.
GUSSIE JONES: Yeah, Brother-Bear, that's her all right (your oldgirlfriend, I guess, leastwise your aunt Eloise thinks so) high up thereon the third floor. And high on God knows what. Screaming, hollering,and threatening to kill off half the block, say nothing of what she'sprime to do to herself.
FORESTER JONES: When Marvella don't have that gun loaded into hermouth, like she's reared to make book on threats, if sane people don'tsurrender up to her foolishness craziness. And not be harmed by herdeath (now ain't that a killer)—and with the trigger pressed with herown fingertips, gun in her mouth.... Sure asking a lot of pity out ofpeople.
GUSSIE JONES: Baby-Bear, you better call your aunt down at the paperto find out what she want reported on .... While you in the field, asthey say!
JOUBERT JONES: I'll do that right away.
How did Aunt Eloise know that I was coming—? Oh, that's right,she knew the four days of the month I set aside to visit with mygrandparents. In fact, knowing Aunt Eloise, she probably had thosedays marked down somewhere. But what was this about Marvella beingan old girlfriend, offered by Aunt Eloise and picked up by Granny GramGussie? I came up front to hear what was going down. This was wild,like a carnival.
GUSSIE JONES: Why, this very morning, Joubert, Marvella just crepther old heavy sweeping broom up to our very step. Trying to beautifythe whole street, she proclaimed, like she was one of these saleswomenon television. Had the nerve to come all up in my face, with the badnews for five dollars, like she was egging for old man Grimm's grievingwidow woman. This here was tax for a block drive, all right, since thecity wasn't giving the kind of service we need. Alderman never to befound until a week before the election, when you might see a precinctcaptain, if you lucky, if you catch policy. Cops so glad somebody doingsomething halfway dishonest, and her cleaning up, too. They cleaningup, too, from the drug dealers, so this makes their business area lookso much better over in those lots across the way ... and old runawayhouses now used as drug centers but not for cleaning people up; butfor funeralizing addicts' mainline.
JOUBERT JONES: Of course you didn't give her any of your money!
GUSSIE JONES: Course not. That's my money that Forester worked hardfor (and spending change to play my little policy gig).
FORESTER JONES: Better-never-ever. That's the kind of distortion taxthe Blackstones try to take from good citizens, who owns businessespaying off. Marvella's bootlegging into that kind of money.
GUSSIE JONES: Showed up with good faith and five singles cometumbling out of her pockets. Marvella talking about she wants theneighbors to put up five dollars for the month, or whatever they can"cough up" for her services and flowers for "this wonderful dead manwho up and died, late last night." A special bouquet of flowers for thegrieving widow of Fletcher Grimm. So we "getting a sweetheart dealfor chipping in," and her street-sweeping only come to two dollars andfifty cents. (Probably going send along some packs of dandelions, tiedup with raggedy shoestrings.)
FORESTER JONES: President Nixon would like that. Must be some ofthose cocoa-leaf flowers Marvella hiding her reefer and coke behind.Why, that gal knowed old man Fletcher Grimm 'bout well as sheknowed Jack the Ripper.
GUSSIE JONES: Man ain't hardly de-nounced dead yet. Joubert, yousee Memphis Raven-Snow's workers taking Grimm's body out, justas you was ringing the bell? I almost thought it was them looking forGrimm's body, not you (also 'nouncing yourself not as grandson butreporter). You going off so many directions, wonder you can keep upwith yourself, and your head spinning off your neck. Marvella goneoff, went off, too, about eleven o'clock. Broom in one hand, dog on aleash (if that's got true hold of him) in the other one. Nervestirred up in her backbone—cancel out her skull bone—to believe she could doany spin on the pigeon drop on us, over here. She ain't living in HydePark. Here your Grandpa and I been living in Forest County too longto forget to remember. I believe to my soul Marvella got a grudgefulheart; she mindless to a windstorm.
FORESTER JONES: Lawd, listen to that dog ever roar. He shameless andsmart, too. (Like his mistress.) Sounds like we drifted over to the lions'part of the zoo. Yeah, Joubert, like your grandma say, nerve of Marvellatrying to work up a drowsy-eyed pigeon drop on us old settlers, likewe was scrubs, just off the train this week, with yesterday's news ofjobs for Negroes inside our grips from the Forest County Dispatch, upout the ole country—Forrest County, Mississippi. Then, of-a-sudden,Marvella flipping her wig. Just snapped off at the nape.
GUSSIE JONES: Like green beans. I said to Marvella, plain and simple:"Look, I ain't got nothing in this house what belongs to you. Now I dohave some mustards, string beans, and my emerald-colored green hat Iwore to Easter services; and you can't have none of it."
Now down the street, as if in a caravan, came ABC and WGN, withCBS trailing far behind. Kids were leaping about trying to run after thetelevision trucks, in awe and glory.
FORESTER JONES: I tell you, Joubert, that gal's ripe with rascality.Courting destruction and death.
I continued my efforts to jot down a few observations gleaned fromthe intelligence of their words. But this really sounded like a featurestory to me. TV cameramen, reporters, nearly all white, were out onthe street immediately and started a long process of milling around,talking with the cops and the growing throng of kids and adults; somefrom the print media wrote in their notepads from these interviews.
JOUBERT JONES: Have you noticed? Granny Gram Gussie? GrandpaForester? Have you seen any pattern or way she acts regularly? Or, Ishould say irregularly acts.
FORESTER JONES: Yeah, acts-out irregular. Been living over in herGreat-mother's building for the last three months and each day stirs upa new mess of scorched potatoes meant to be scalloped.
GUSSIE JONES: Forester, don't serve nothing on my grandson's plate hecan't put in the newspapers under his very own name and get hisselfcarried off from the job, as writing for crazy folks, like Marvella goingfor crazy. She playing crazy, not going crazy.
FORESTER JONES: That great ole gun Marvella keep poking in hermouth don't look too much like a play gun to me. Must think she's gota turtle's lease on life, and a shell to duck inside, 'case the gun goes off.
GUSSIE JONES: Tell it true, Marvella not crazy. She's mentally. 'Spectablepeople can't play crazy; keep up their reputation. Marvella could getaway with anything—till she moved around here. We got people overhere chuck her mess of scorched and mashed potatoes out. Know theyscorched without calling city hall. She's just plain mentally. Sure 'noughain't crazy. Play crazy like those actors do in some of Joubert's plays.
JOUBERT JONES: Sometimes I think my actors were already crazy andthen just learned to play crazy once they are on the stage, in order tokeep some parts of their sanity, on the outside world!
(Continues...)
Copyright © 2001 Leon Forrest. All rights reserved.
