One Drop of Love

It is an exciting time to be an actor, when the notion of ‘performance’ is taking on new meanings and has the potential to change the way we view the art form. Traditional definitions of ‘performance’ include the act of staging or presenting a play; a rendering of a dramatic role. Now scholar/activists like Judith Butler are exploring a new definition of performance, or ‘performativity‘ - looking at how we use language and behavior to construct identity.

In my solo show, One Drop of Love, I get to meld these two understandings of performance. I am an actor who portrays several different characters: my Jamaican/Pan-Africanist father, my Blackfeet-Cherokee-Danish mother, candy and fruit vendors from East and West Africa, Census Workers from the 1790s to the present, racist cops from Cambridge, MA and many others. At the same time, in taking on these roles, I explore the construction of ’racial’ identity, and how these identities are created through speech and acts - and not through biology.

In 2006 I was going to marry the man of my dreams, and all I had left to do was call my father and ask him to walk me down the aisle. The thought of this call filled me with angst. I hadn’t witnessed my father interact in positive ways with ‘white’ people since my parents’ divorce in 1977. The man of my dreams (much to my own surprise) is European. After weeks of stewing, I finally convinced myself that this thing called ‘race’ was not going to get in the way of my joy. I made the call. And then my father did not attend our wedding.

One Drop of Love begins here and then journeys through time and space to examine the constructs and behaviors and speech acts that led to this moment. In the end, my father and I reach some sense of reconciliation, but questions about the influence of the one-drop rule, and how it affects our - and society’s - relationship to ‘race’ remain for me, my father, and the audience to continue to ponder. I know how privileged I am to be able to perform (in both senses of the word), and I plan to utilize that privilege to encourage complex conversations about ‘race’ and racism and use my chosen art form to create change.

In our first production meeting Set Designer, Heather Fipps, pitched a really lovely idea of using flats and screens for the various slides I use in One Drop. In the center would be a sexless face based on the different characters that morphs as I change from one to the next. We would also have two screens on either side for the informational text and graphic slides. In the end, though, we decided not to use the face and instead will only have the slides on one screen in upstage center. Jillian and I thought the face might end up being a distraction for the audience - and we didn’t want them to have to switch back & forth from one side to the other to get information from the slides. The next hurdle was getting one screen that would be big enough to project the images and slides. The school doesn’t have one that suits our needs, so this will be my first major purchase for the show. I’m getting a 7′x10′ screen that can be projected both from the rear and front.

Next I had to think about lights. I had no idea how to speak to Morgan, our Lighting Designer, about how the show should be lit - having never been in a position of thinking of the overall visual look of a show! My Director Jillian suggested I comb through the script for tone. I sent Morgan a list of ideas and character descriptions like, ‘He’s generally warm, but in this moment should feel technical and cold.’ I thought about which characters would be represented by amber, red and blue and sent that along as well. To my amazement he understood what I wrote!

Monday, March 4 we put all of this together for the start of our Tech rehearsals. I know I have a really talented team behind me - and although there are often tears and anxiety during Tech week, I’m confident that this one is going to go smoothly.

My grandma Cynthia’s passport photo from the 60s

I really love doing dialects, but I can’t just turn them on and off easily the way some folks can. I’ve done entire plays in different dialects convincingly, but if someone asks me to ‘do’ an accent when I’m not in character, I get flustered.

In One Drop of Love I play characters from Cape Verde, Kenya, Jamaica, Washington, D.C., Boston, China and Thailand. Fortunately I’ve had personal experiences with everyone in the play, so I was comfortable writing their dialects. But keeping these all separated, while distinguishing the characters physically and vocally will take some mental-stamina.

One of my favorite resources for dialect work is the International Dialects of English Archive. They have hundreds of samples of people reading from the same text, ‘Comma Gets a Cure’ and they provide you with lots of demographic information about the speaker as well. Even if you’re not an actor, the samples on the site are really fascinating. Check it out!