Becoming a "Character"

BECOMING A "CHARACTER"

The three Chorus members were all inspired by black caricatures: Mammy, Jim Crow and a pickaninny girl. It can be very easy for an actor to portray them in a very stereotypical way. However, they are just as much characters as Sonya, Claire or Adanne. The chorus should be played just as sincerely as any of the other roles- with objectives and purposes in each scene. The purpose behind creating a play with black stereotypes is to break their stereotypes by reconfiguring them into more constructive/educational images.

Creating "positive black image" is a question that many black artists have struggled with, especially since America has been plagued with stereotypical images of blackness on the stage since the early 1800s. But Betye Saar, an artist heavily involved in the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s came pretty close to finding a way. One of her most famous (and controversial) pieces, "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima" found a way to give new meaning to Mammy's smiling face. Saar put a broom in Mammy's hand, and a shotgun in the other. The image was an allegory to the infamous picture of Huey Newton, one of the leaders of the Black Panther Party. It was a way of saying that Mammy not only has power, but she has black power- an important distinction, since the caricature of Mammy is supposed to hate her own blackness.




The Mammy character in the script was directly influenced by Betye Saar's "Liberation of Aunt Jemima." During the monologue in which Mammy "wakes up", she points her broom at the audience like a gun. Mammy questions the audience about their assumptions of her identity. She challenges them to say remember her name, suggesting that she might even have a different name than "Mammy", letting the audience know that they really don't know anything about her history.

"Whose mother am I? Whose mother am I? Seems like since my creation, someone decided I had to be a mother. I was robbed of my youth- no time to play when you’re caring after babies. And whose babies were they? I don’t remember letting any man climb up on top of me. (No man ever tried. Too obsessed with my breasts and not with my other parts.) And who loved me, loved all of me? Not you. You don’t even know me. You’ve never even heard my voice before this, didn’t even care if I had a voice. (slight pause) You don’t even know my name. Go on, try and remember my name."

Writing Assignment:

Read the monologue above and write down the immediate images that come up for you in the monologue. Think about the stereotypical traits that are associated with the Mammy caricature. Now think about the moments in which Mammy challenges these during the play.