APRIL 16, 1993

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 25

ENTERTAINMENT

Cultural detachment as a price for success

by Barry Daniels

Samuel L. Kelley's absorbing and thought-provoking drama, Pill Hill, will be opening at the Karamu Performing Arts Theater on April 23. It is a realistic group portrait of six African-American men from Chicago's South Side. We follow their lives over a ten-year period, getting insight into the reality of their circumstances and of racism as it is constructed in our society. One of the men represents the generation that emigrated to the north to find better paying jobs in the steel mills and who achieve comfortable lives but do not find equality in the system. The five younger men are trying in different ways to get out of the steel mill and move up in the world. The characters are drawn with great sensitivity and affection, and there is much humor in the dialogue, even if the world the playwright creates is finally not a very pretty one.

Kelley has stated that Pill Hill is not simply about black men at a Chicago steel mill. "It is about human beings struggling to find their niche in a rapidly accelerating and increasingly volatile world." Karamu's press release elaborates on this, noting that the play "speaks to the enormous pressure black people face to be outstanding and to conform in a white dominated world while maintaining their dignity. Its message of the price of success and disillusionment of shattered dreams is, however, universal and knows no color."

It was partly these universal qualities that aroused my interest in the script when I read it and prompted me to arrange an interview with the director of the Karamu production, Gary Anderson. He comes to Cleveland from Detroit where he is artistic director of the Plowshares Theatre, where

he staged the play in 1991

(its original production was at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1990).

Pill Hill is an upper middle class AfricanAmerican suburb of Chicago that represents achievement and status to the characters in the play. But, noted Anderson, "Every black urban setting can automatically emulate the situation in this play When, as in Detroit, affluent black folks left the city and moved into the suburbs, what happens is a detachment, not only physically from the community, but there is also a mental and spiritual detachment. You say, 'That isn't my concern.' In a lot of cases upwardly mobile blacks divorce themselves from their brethren by saying, 'You know that's a damn shame, but it isn't my problem.'

Herman Saunders, Anthony Nickerson, and John Terry (l to r) in Pill Hill

Anderson and I discussed how effectively the white community uses division and isolation to shut out what it doesn't want to see and how the play tries to point up the real danger of this same process occurring in the African-American community. It is what Kelley calls "the price of assimilation . . . for African-Americans chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They looked askance at pressing social issues. They thought the sky was the limit as they headed up the corporate ladder, but they soon discovered that joining the 'good old boys' network' comes with an exorbitant price tag, mostly at the expense

of their own cultural identity."

Anderson noted that the play had a great impact on his Detroit audience and, although the play is "unrelenting in how honest it can be, it is impossible not to be affected by the circumstances of the characters in the play." As a director, he is not going to try to conceal the difficult moral and ethical issues that surface throughout the play. He says, "If you don't see yourself, your condition, your situation . . . if you don't start questioning what the hell's going on in your life, then I haven't done my job.'

99

For me, theater at its best provokes one to question one's own life and values.

JOEL HAUSERMAN

Kelley's Pill Hill does this and does it with great dramatic effect. The characters are beautifully realized and the action constantly holds our attention. By bringing a difficult play like this into our community, Karamu House helps remind us how meaningful theater can be in our lives. It is a much needed antidote to the kind of aesthetic vacuum represented by the Cleveland Play House.

Pill Hill will be performed in the Arena Theater at Karamu House April 23 through May 16 at 8 pm Thursday-Saturday and 3 pm on Sunday. Tickets are $8 (ThursdaySunday) and $9 (Friday-Saturday). For reservations call 795-7077.

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