Monologues for Actors of Color Page Intentionally Left Blank Monologues for Actors of Color Women edited by Roberta Uno Published in 2000 by Routledge 71 1 Third Avenue New York, NY 10017 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2000 by Routledge Text design by Tara Klurman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utiliz eind any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Copyright and permissions acknowledgments can be found on pages 136-39 of this book. These pages shall be considered an extension of thi scopyright page. We have made every reasonable effort to identify and locaet copyright owners. If any informa tion is found to be incomplete, w ewill gladly make whatever additional permissions acknowledgments might be necessary. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Monologues for actors of color: women \ edited by Roberta Uno. p. cm. ISBN 0-87830-068-6.—ISBN 0-87830-069-4 (pbk.) 1. Monologues. 2. Minorities—United States Drama. 3. Women Drama. 4. American Drama—20th century. I. Uno, Roberta, 1956- . PN2080.M536 2000 99-14171 808.82'45'082—dc21 CIP For the many fine actors who have graced the stage at NEW WORLD THEATER Keep telling all of our stories Contents Preface viii The Monologues Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women Rhodessa Jones 1 Blues for Mr. Charlie James Baldwin 3 Breaking Glass Dmae Roberts 5 China Doll Elizabeth Wong 7 Cleveland Raining SungRno 11,13 Cloud Tectonics José Rivera 15 Come Down Burning Kia Corthron 19 The Conversion of Ka'ahumanu Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl 23 Dark Cowgirls and Prairie Queens Linda Parris-Bailey 27 Diary of a Madwoman ChinWoon Ping 31 Do Lord Remember Me James de Jongh 35 Fish Head Soup Philip Kan Gotanda 39 Flyin' West Pearl Cleage 41 FOB David Henry Hwang 43 Foghorn Hanay Geiogamah 45 Funnyhouse of a Negro Adrienne Kennedy 47 Giving Up the Ghost Cherríe Moraga 51 The Have-Little Migdalia Cruz 55 Heroes and Saints Cherríe Moraga 59 How Else Am 1 Supposed to Know I'm Still Alive Evelina Fernandez 61, 63 The LA LA Awards Latins Anonymous 65 Latins Anonymous Latins Anonymous 69 Les Femmes Noires Edgar White 73 The Lion and the Jewel Wole Soyinka 77 A Little Something to Ease the Pain René R. Aloma 79 Long Time Since Yesterday P.J. Gibson 81 Miriam's Flowers Migdalia Cruz 85 The lVlojo and the Sayso Aishah Rahman 87 My Ancestor's House Bina Sharif 89 Night of the Assassins José Triana 93 Paper Angels Genny Lim 95 R.A.W. ('Cause I'm a Woman) Diana Son 97 The Rez Sisters Tomson Highway 101 Roosters Milcha Sanchez-Scott 103 Sneaky William S. Yellow Robe 105 Someday Drew Hayden Taylor 107 A Song for a Nisei Fisherman Philip Kan Gotanda 109 The Strength of Indian Women Vera Manuel 111 Talking in Tongues Winsome Pinnock 115,117 Tea Velina Hasu Houston 121 Unfinished Women Cry in No Man's Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage Aisha Rahman 123,127 Unmerciful Good Fortune Edwin Sánchez 129 Weebjob Diane Glancy 131 Wines in the Wilderness Alice Childress 133 Acknowledgments 135 Permissions and Play Sources 136 Preface While working on this and a companion collection for men, an incident occurred, poignant and revealing in nature, that spoke to the need for such an actor resource. The phone rang in the middle of the night and a young actor introduced himself asking, "Can you tell me where I can find a monologue written for a black, gay char acter?" Suppressing the impulse to ask him when my phone num ber had become an actor crisis hotline, I was intrigued by the des peration in his voice and the specificity of the question. When I questioned why he was looking for this monologue with such urgency that he had found it necessary to wake up a complete stranger, he apologized and explained that he was preparing for his final monologue assignment in four years of studying acting and, as a black gay actor, he had played a range of characters, but had never had the opportunity to inhabit the skin of a character who spoke to his most primary identities. He wondered aloud, did such material exist? A symposium entitled "Training the Actor of Color," convened by the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University in 1994, brought this question to the foreground when actors of color in the audience spoke about their peripheral existence in major training programs. One observed that even in situations where the student is not an obvious racial minority in an acting class or a production, reading lists and course assignments typically draw from a very narrow and viii Eurocentric canon. Another spoke enthusiastically about her experi ence acting in classics of European theater, but emphasized the special joy of speaking from the stage as a black woman, embody ing an image often invisible or misrepresented in American society. The issue of racial representation on the contemporary Western stage has historically been problematic, informed as it is by societal racism, a distorted and omnipresent media, the legacy of the American minstrel show, and the power dynamics of production. Although it's been some three decades since pioneers of the prac tice of nontraditional casting, such as C. Bernard Jackson, Joseph Papp, and Randall "Duk" Kim, opened the European canon to interpretation by actors of all races, surprisingly many theater direc tors still consider the idea new. Ironically, for many actors of color, "nontraditional" casting would mean the opportunity to portray one's own racial identity on stage. Asian American actors are all too familiar with everyone from Marlon Brando to Katherine Hepburn to Jonathan Pryce portraying Asians; Native American actors suffer the "war-paint-and-wigs Indians" born of spaghetti westerns; and Latino actors see choice film roles consistently going to Anglo actors with household name recognition. All find themselves frequently cast as "backdrop" or "sidekick" to the story of a white protagonist in any number of settings—South Africa, Hawaii, Los Angeles, New York, the American West or South—where frequently they serve to teach that protagonist a profound lesson about humanity. Many actors share absurdly painful stories of being asked to audition "more black" or "more street" or with a thicker accent. In his unpublished solo per formance piece, Assimilation, actor/writer Shushir Kurup portrays a South Asian actor following a casting director's instructions to become "more Indian"; the audience is mesmerized by his self- maiming transformation into a subhuman caricature that wins the unseen arbiter's approval. ix