(light upbeat music) (light upbeat music continues) (light upbeat music continues) (light upbeat music continues) (light upbeat music continues) - Hello and welcome to "The Bookmark," I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today my guest is Celeste Bedford Walker, playwright and author of "Sassy Mamas And Other Plays."

Celeste, thank you so much for being here today.

- Oh, it is my pleasure, I'm just delighted.

- Well, I'm glad to have you here for a couple of reasons.

First of all, this is our first collection of plays, and you're my first playwright, so that's, I love hitting new milestones, but- - Great.

- I do have a recovering theater kid, so reading a play is not a new thing to me and I'm excited to be able- - Great.

- To talk to you about that.

So, I wanna start just by asking you, how did you get into writing plays?

How did that become your genre of choice?

- Well, it was something of a journey.

When I was younger of course I tried to write poetry, and wasn't very good at that, and then I did some short stories and essays.

I knew that I wanted to write, you know, I wanted to express myself.

My favorite subject in school was English and language so I wanted to express myself and I hadn't thought about plays until later in life when I was in my 20s and I thought that I would write The Great American Novel.

And when I got about 30 pages into the novel, I realized, oh no, this is not gonna work, I don't have the patience, I don't have the insight for a novel, to write something that long, I just want the characters, you know, to get in the scene together and just kinda duke it out in the scene with their dialogue.

And that's when I started to think, well maybe, you know, maybe I just wanna try to write a play and that's how I got off into plays.

And my very first play, of any significance, I wrote little plays along the way, the one acts, for myself, I don't even know where they are now, but my very first play was a play called "Sister, Sister."

That came out of an experience, well, I didn't personally experience it, but this was during the '70s when Black Americans were expressing Black power and getting in touch with their African roots and one of the tenets of getting in touch with your African roots was that a man could have one wife and have two wives, you know, polygamy.

And I would see these couples, this was on the East Coast, I had joined an organization on the East Coast, a "Black power movement," and one of the things they did was try to create these different families with polygamy.

And I would watch the families and think, eh, I wonder what's really going on in those households, so my imagination set to work and out of that came the play, "Sister, Sister," which was later renamed, "Once in a Lifetime," and that was in '78 and it still gets productions today.

- What was it like, I mean, you said you wrote a few plays that didn't really go anywhere, but then what was it like taking, making a play a reality, like seeing it performed, getting it produced, what is that experience like to see it, so few authors get to see their work come alive like that, what is that experience like?

- Absolutely, you're right.

I was fortunate in that I joined, I had joined a group called, Writers Clinic, Inc., that I had met when I went to audition originally to be an actress in a play.

And then I met a few other writers, and a bunch of actors, and we decided, well, why don't we form a group, call it, Writer's Clinic, Inc. we'll bring in our sick plays (laughing), novels, or whatever, and we'll work on 'em, we'll help each other.

So I joined that group and out of that group came my play, "Sister, Sister," which was later retitled, "Once in a Lifetime."

I had already written, "Once in a Lifetime," and put it on the shelf for a few years when I joined this writer's group.

And they decided I would bring the play in bit by bit, piece by piece, and they were just thrilled with it they couldn't wait for me to bring in the next episode, we put the play together, we did the play, they produced the play, and that's how I got started.

I was with a group already of actors, I was very fortunate.

We would rehearse in the director's home, for about nine months, and her home was located directly over an old cemetery.

And while we were in rehearsal, sometimes some of the actors could say they could feel themselves being joined by these ghosts.

Thank god I never saw any, I never felt any, but that's how "Sister, Sister" got started and my director, (indistinct), and you better pronounce her name just that way, in her living room and out of that, as I said, "Lifetime" went on to have many performances.

We did it in Los Angeles and while we, this group, Writers Clinic, Inc., were in Los Angeles doing the play at a small theater.

One of the icons of film and theater, and TV, Esther Rolle, who was the star in "Good Times," saw it and put up a production there to Wilshire Ebell Theatre of "Sister, Sister," which was later retitled, "Once in a Lifetime."

- And then from that you got bit by the bug and you just kept writing plays?

- Absolutely, it was no stopping me then, so.

- Well, I really like the, obviously we couldn't put all your plays in one volume 'cause no book can be that big, but I like the ones that were selected for this because they show a nice range of the types of genres you write in.

How were they selected to be in this maybe first volume of your collected works?

- Hopefully it is the first volume.

We tried to, of course, have a variety, and we wanted some of the plays that had gotten some productions and had a little mileage and reviews, and so those were the ones who actually, that actually had emerged out of it and out of that we did discover that they did have variety, so.

- Well I wanna dive into a few of the plays, 'cause certainly we can't discuss 'em all at length, but, "Reunion in Bartlesville" was one that I wasn't familiar with going into it, but it was such a delight to read 'cause it's kind of like a murder mystery, which I imagine is really fun to write and stage.

Can you talk about how you write a murder, do you know who the murderer is when you start, or how do you write a murder mystery (laughing)?

- That was one I really did enjoy.

I think, "Reunion in Bartlesville," I think it may have been, was it my second play, or third play, it was one of my early plays.

And I like to write about a lot of different things, just go from topic to topic, whatever grabs my fancy.

And for some reason, well, I love murder mysteries, I came up on murder mysteries, Sherlock Holmes.

I would skip class to go and sit in the library and read Arthur Conan Doyle.

So I wanted to write a murder mystery, and as you said, you do have to kinda know who the murderer is before you start, because that thread is so tightly woven if you pull one little thread, you know, one little piece, then the whole thing comes apart.

So I had to start at the end, in my thinking, of who I thought had done it and what I thought maybe the last words of the play would be, I always like to have my last sentence if I can in a play.

And I had heard, my dad was a storyteller, and I remembered him talking about some murder that had happened in some small town and that kinda sparked me to think, hmm, why, why don't I set the murder mystery in a small town and why don't I set it at a reunion?

A high school class reunion, all of these former classmates from different backgrounds, from different paths in life, decide to come together, one of the classmates had been in jail for years for having murdered his girlfriend, but he said he was innocent and he suspected that one of them had came and had murdered his girlfriend.

So he crashed the party, he crashed the reunion, to try to find out who actually killed his girlfriend.

- It's a fun play, we won't spoil it, so you can either read it, or maybe find a production and watch it, but it's a fun one.

There are two plays in here that are based on historical events.

- Yes.

- What's the process for that?

Do you have to do a lot of research before you write about something, obviously you probably wanna get it as true as possible, even though the conversations maybe imagined.

So what do you have to do to write a historical play?

- You do have to do a lot of research, and I love historical plays.

I've written several.

I usually try to allot time in the year, every year or two, to do something historical mainly usually talking about Black American history, Texas history.

So you do have to do a lot of research.

Let's see, the two that are in the book are, "Camp Logan"- - And "Greenwood."

- And "Greenwood," yes, they both required a lot of research and they both happened around the same time.

Camp Logan happened in 1917, and then Greenwood happened in 1921.

- '21, um-hm.

- So it was that same kind of period of time.

So Camp Logan was a story that had been discussed in my community, growing up I'd heard the elders in my community talk about Camp Logan, because of course it was a true story, it's a World War I military drama about a mutiny that had happened in Houston in 1917.

These soldiers, the 24th Infantry, all Black Infantry, was stationed in Houston to work on Camp Logan before they were gonna be shipped out overseas.

And while they were there, they encountered quite a bit of racial animus, and discrimination, and harassment, from the citizenry, the white citizens, but mainly from the police officers.

That's why this story seems, and sounds, so modern today, many of the audiences say.

So they had encountered quite a bit of harassment, and finally everything just exploded when the soldiers thought that one of their members had been killed by a police officer and they (indistinct) it and they thought that a mob was coming to the camp to deal with them.

And so they marched out into the city, Houston, well, there was a riot, there was a mob, there were killings.

And I'd always heard about that story and it just so happened that along with the written research that I did, mainly at Texas Southern University there in Houston, and at the public library downtown, the Julia Ideson Public Library, she had quite a bit of information, and then the ultimate book that was written by Robert Hayes, I was able to obtain that, but I also had a lot of oral history.

It was at a point in time, I was really in the midst of history, looking back now, then I was young, but it was, I still had people available to me who had lived during that period.

I had a neighbor that lived right across the alley from us, her name was Cheney Smith, and she was the girlfriend of one of the men who was in the camp.

I had a teacher at the time, a Mr. Holland, he remembered, he was a little boy at the time when the soldiers marched through the city, and he had a picture, he said, where they had fired a bullet hole, a picture with a bullet hole, where they had fired through the window with their Springfield rifles, so there were quite a few of living people.

And then of course there was my grandfather, he was in World War I, he didn't know them personally, but he knew of the incident.

He was coming out of the war, he came out, he went in in 1819, and they were there in Houston in 1917, they never did get a chance to go overseas, but he knew quite a bit and about the feel of the times, so I was really fortunate to get quite a bit of oral history.

- That must add a real richness to be able to talk to people who could tell you the emotions, and the feelings of living, not just in that time, but in that place, in that location, so that's- - It really was, it really was a help.

- And I wanna highlight "Greenwood" too, because that's about the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, which fortunately has been getting more attention lately, there've been some more dramatizations on television and people are learning more about it.

When you're dramatizing something that's such an awful dark kind of, how do you stage that?

How do you decide to portray it on the stage and be sensitive of all the factors at play?

- You're right, that is a challenge because you don't wanna just focus on the trauma, you don't wanna just go in on the event.

So what I have found helpful to do, and I did it with "Camp Logan" too, is I just present the characters just living their normal lives because they don't know that these events are gonna happen, especially the ones in Greenwood, they had no idea.

They were very affluent, and very intelligent, and very prosperous neighborhoods, so they had no idea it was gonna happen.

So about the first half of the play is just them, us getting to know them, them living their normal productive lives, and then little by little the animus starts to seep in and the trouble starts to seep in.

And by the end we know them well, hopefully we know the characters well, we feel for them not just as abused bodies, but as full-blooded human beings, so that's what I try to do with the historical pieces.

- Well, if I can compliment you, I think you do it well, and I think that's the benefit of art like this, is that we're not just reading a paragraph in a history book, or a Wikipedia page, or something, you help us connect with the people so that we can maybe feel more, we're not just, it doesn't become rote, you know, it becomes personal when we can connect with a character and feel for them when they go through a tragedy like that, so I- - That's what I want to do.

Thank you, that's exactly what I was hoping- - You do it well.

- Would happen, thank you.

- Yes.

And I wanna highlight too, since we're on a PBS program right now, that the Karamu House did a stage a production of "Greenwood" in 2020, when everything was shut down, and they broadcast it online and you can go- - They sure did.

- On pbs.org and watch the production of "Greenwood," which it was sad when all the theaters were closed, but now we have this living treasure we can always go back and revisit.

Were you involved in any way in that production, or did you get to see it early, or what was that like?

- Well, yeah, you know, at first they did it at the theater, of course, and then they filmed it, so I was involved in the sense that I kind of helped shape the theater, the theatrical version, for the film version.

You know you have to go in and make some cuts- - Sure.

- And do some cutting and pasting, and so that kind of a thing, but that was just very, very exciting.

That was, like you said, the COVID eliminated some things that you could do, we couldn't do it before a live audience, but it provided a film archive.

- Um-hm.

- Of the play, so.

- But I wanna, it's wonderful to have it online, but I also wanna ask you, like you said, a lot of your plays started in smaller theaters.

Can you talk about the importance of maybe all of us supporting our local, our regional, our repertoire theaters, and what that means to you?

- Well, it just means so much because I started at a small theater and now this theater it's just doing wonderfully, the Ensemble Theatre, it's just really (chuckling), they're just really doing wonderful, getting a lot of attention, getting a lot of awards, and working with a lot of different creatives.

So I'm very, very grateful to the Ensemble Theatre and then there are other theaters there in Houston, the Encore Theatre, who did my gospel musical, "Praise the Lord and Raise the Roof," and there's so much talent in Houston.

And actually my very first, when I first met that Writer's, Inc. group, it was in a theater in Houston, in a section of town called, Fifth Ward, that they called then the Bloody Fifth, but now it has really, it has really grown and progressed.

And it was at a theater called The DeLuxe Theater, which has been become quite a jewel in Houston now, but at that time it was, you know you had to walk across glass-strewn parking lot to get to the theater, so.

They are so very important, the local and regional theaters, because they will give a playwright a chance, before you get to the big national theaters, you have to have somewhere to go.

- Sure.

- You have to have a home, so.

- Um-hm.

Well, and then if you're a patron of those places you can see creatives that haven't made it big yet, or that are writing about where you live.

- Exactly.

- I imagine, for the people of Houston, some of these plays, to see their own lives, or their own histories, referenced back on them must be a treat to watch as an audience member.

- That's what makes it all worthwhile to me, when I'm writing the plays, I always think about the audience, that's who I'm thinking about.

And when I go to see a play I like to sit, of course, way in the back so that I can see the audience and the play, mainly the audience.

And I remember one play of mine, "Distant Voices," a play about a cemetery, true, about a cemetery there in Houston, about the citizens buried in that cemetery from 1840 to 1970.

So there was quite a history, quite a variety of people to pick through, to tell their stories, as we walked through the graveyards.

And I remember at one of the performances, it was at the Ensemble Theatre, we were sitting in the dark looking at the play of one of the characters that I had brought to life from a gravestone, and somebody reached and grabbed my hand there in the dark and just held my hand during one of the scenes that was going on about this mother who had died in a fire, and after the play was over and the lights came up, this person that was sitting next to me told me, "That was my mother's story," and she said, "And you just brought me such closure."

- Oh wow.

- That's what I believe happened, that's how I believe she went, 'cause she went in peace.

I wanted to bring some humanity to their deaths.

I had each character explaining how they had died and how they felt and this and that, and I was able to let that dying mother say some things that spoke to her daughter's heart as she sat next to me there in the theater and I'm gonna always remember that, that's what it's all about.

- What a gift.

- Yeah, that is a gift- - What a wonderful gift.

- That was a gift.

- Well, that play, I think, I mean, they're all wonderful, but that's the one, when I was reading it, I wished I could see it the most because the way you describe the staging, and these voices, and these people coming in and out, I can just imagine how beautiful that must be to see staged, so I hope I get the chance to see that sometime, because the way you wrote, even on the page it was still beautiful, but I can only imagine with the lighting, and the staging, and the creative director, you could have a, it would be a wonderful production.

- Oh, it was beautiful.

I have to give a lot of that credit to the director, Peter Webster, oh man, did he ever stage that play, and the costumer, which was Shirley Whitmore, the costumes that she made for 'em that had a kinda otherworldly appearance about 'em, they did some great staging with that play.

You're right, the staging was really another character in that piece.

- Well, we're running short on time, but I wanna make sure we talk about the title play, which is "Sassy Mamas," which is very different, like all these other ones have been different from each other.

This is a more lighthearted, a more fun one, how did "Sassy Mamas" come about?

- Isn't that the truth, it is more lighthearted.

(both laughing) - But it still has heart, I mean, it's still.

- Yeah.

- There's (indistinct).

- Yeah, right, right, because really, to me, it's about woman's empowerment.

These older women have decided that they wanna empower themselves and one of the ways of course people always think, and it happens in the play, that they empower themselves to choose younger men, and they did.

But I wanted them to choose them for, each one to choose to be with a younger man for a different reason.

Of course, one, you always think, well, we're just gonna have fun, so you're gonna have to have that, but then you have, I wanted to have more.

One of the characters had never been in love and it just so happened that the person that she fell in love with was a younger character and she seemed younger than he did, because he'd had more experience in the world than she did although she was quite successful in her life.

And then one was going through a divorce and breaking up with her family and her children blaming her for the divorce, so I, it is fun.

- Um-hm.

- But, because these women say, "When I was younger I tried to please everybody else, when I became older I just pleased myself," and that's in many different ways, not just in relationships, so.

- Well, like I said, we're running low on time, so in our final few minutes what do you want people to take away, maybe from this collection, or just from your work in general?

- Well, I want them to, I would like to be exposed to more theater fans.

I would like for them to become interested in my work and become a fan, and of course buy the book, and come and see the plays and become interested in theater is what I really want, to become interested in representation, how the Black American, particularly those are the subjects that I deal with, the culture that I deal with, to become interested and invested in their representation on stage, film, TV, that's really what I want.

- Well, it's a wonderful collection.

I was already a theater fan so you didn't convert me but- - Good, good!

- But you strengthened my love.

And I hope this finds that audience and those people who can get a greater connection to theater, because I mean I love theater.

I think it can, the art can bring us closer- - Yes.

- And seeing, and being in it, I would hope people would want, maybe read these plays and wanna try out for a play or- - Great.

- You know, run lights or something if you don't wanna- - Yes!

- Be on the stage, there's a community out there that people can join and I think- - Yes.

- You just told us that story, how you got involved, and now here you are with a Lifetime Achievement Award from Texas Institute of Letters'.

- Oh yeah.

- And this wonderful volume that hopefully is the first of many (chuckling).

- Absolutely, hopefully.

- Well, thank you so much for coming and for talking to us today, I really enjoyed this.

- I did too.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- The book again is, "Sassy Mamas And Other Plays," by Celeste Bedford Walker.

Thank you so much for joining us and I will see you again soon.

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