Late poet's words ring true for many
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
Were he alive today, Langston Hughes could walk throughout the Farrington High School campus without being recognized. As soon as he started reciting his poetry, however, some of the kids probably could pick him out.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
That's because they've now seen "Langston Who?" the stage production that showcases the work of the poet whose writing illuminates the experience of black America from the 1920s into the '60s, in all of its pain and glory.
Students in T-Shirt Theatre, an ensemble of the Farrington complex of schools, perform in the production of "Langston Who?" The show is based on the works of the late Langston Hughes, who often focused on civil rights.
Mark Parel, 17, would be among the students who would recognize him.
"I learned that he's very open with whatever he wants to do," Parel said. "He wrote his poems, and he knew he was going to get bashed for them.
"He taught me that you should express yourself any way you want, no matter what people say."
Parel is in fact a 2003 Farrington graduate, but these days he's still on campus because he was called back to play the title role in T-Shirt Theatre's fall production.
The theater company, based at Farrington, involves 30 students from that campus as well as from Kalakaua Middle School. It is a program of the Alliance for Drama Education, a 23-year-old nonprofit founded by Walt Dulaney and George Kon.
Dulaney, a lifelong admirer of Hughes, secured the rights to use 30 poems from the poet's estate and then wrote the script.
Performance tonight
Kon directed the company, discovering first that he had to educate the kids — most of whom are of Asian and Pacific ancestry — about the civil-rights struggles of the generations before they were born.
"They were shocked by all the Jim Crow segregation laws, with the idea of having to have separate bathrooms," Kon said.
He was referring to a part of the show in which vaudeville star Burt Williams sings his signature tune, "Nobody," and then is directed by a sign to the "colored toilet in the basement." That is followed by the Hughes poem "Democracy." It reads, in part:
I tire so of hearing people say
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.
Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.
"Walt told them that in the South, when you were driving and you came to an intersection, if there's a white person there, the white person goes first," Kon added. "The kids were appalled by that, having no rights."
But although Hughes' most plaintive works dealt with racism, he did not limit himself to that subject. He lampooned cat-fighting women in "Argument"; he depicted the strains between husbands and wives in "Early Evening Quarrel."
James Langston Hughes • Born Feb. 1, 1902, in Joplin, Mo. • Began writing poetry after he moved to Lincoln, Ill., to live with his mother and her new husband, eventually settling in Cleveland. • His travels took him to Mexico and then, as a seaman, to Africa and Europe. First book of poetry, "The Weary Blues," published in 1926. Graduated from Lincoln University in 1929. First novel, "Not Without Laughter," won the Harmon gold medal for literature in 1930. • Wrote 16 books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of fiction, 20 plays, children's poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies and dozens of radio and TV scripts and magazine articles. • Died in 1967 in New York, where city officials gave his Harlem home landmark status.
Dulaney and Kon observed with amusement that the school audiences really howled at material on the gender wars. The line "Lawd, these things we women have to stand! I wonder is there nowhere a do-right man?" drew outright cheers from the girls at one show.
Hughes also pokes fun at religion, lampooning a preacher-man in "Sunday Morning Prophecy."
Dulaney took a contingent of students to preview the show for what might be considered a tough audience: The City of Refuge Christian Church, a predominantly African American congregation in Waipahu.
He was delighted when the pastor, the Rev. Wayne Anderson, was taken with the performance, the minister waving off warnings even about the part that gently teased his own profession.
Even more heartening: Anderson took about 100 of his parishioners to attend the first public show last week.
"It was a chance for two communities to be holding hands that don't usually get together," Dulaney said.
Anderson said he was moved that a company of actors disconnected from the black experience invested such effort in learning about this particular literary hero — and they didn't wait until the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to do it, either.
"I was very much inspired that they took on the challenge and were very expressive of a great American," he said. "I really appreciated the fact that young people took the time to study a man's work outside of their culture. That was very enlightening and broad minded."
Besides, everyone agreed: There was much in the text that resonated with everyone.
Kon said that some of the kids responded to the tales of racist cruelty, hearing a call to practice kindness in their own lives — even if that meant simply being nicer to their kid brother or sister.
And one poem, "Harlem Sweeties," was rewritten as an ode to the Asian-Pacific racial melting pot of the company's hometown, Kalihi.
Tonight's public show won't be the last, Dulaney said: A reprise is planned around Martin Luther King Day.
And for their part, the City of Refuge wants to collaborate on a future joint production of the show, Anderson said. The material seems to adapt well to a multi-ethnic cast.
"Because his work is relevant today, I think people can identify with him," Anderson said. "It's not about the color of the person, it's about the message that the messenger put to paper."
Reach Vicki Viotti at vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8053.
