Angela Y. Rice sees herself and fellow playwright Crystal Rae as keepers of stories in the tradition of the griot, West African storytellers who preserve and pass down wisdom from generation to generation.
“We are essentially the old lady in the community who knows everybody’s business and everybody’s story,” says Rice. “I believe that there are people who are selected and chosen to do that, and I am so grateful that we are privileged to be at least two of the griots that walk the earth.”
For two performances on Saturday, November 16, Rice and Rae will continue to meet their societal charge, telling stories that speak to the spirit of the Black experience, when they present shortened versions of their full-length, historical-based plays, Tonight We Were Gods and Tied, during Spitting Nails and Telling Tales: the griot tour.
Both playwrights agree that their plays are connected in their shared celebration of the power and strength of Black men.
“Rarely do we see the common Black male being celebrated for simple decisions that were made,” says Rice. “Quite honestly, it sounds small in today’s measure, but in that time, they were ordinary men doing extraordinary things.”
Rice’s Tonight We Were Gods is set in the aftermath of the racially driven Houston Riot of 1917, also known as the Camp Logan Riot, which saw violent confrontations between the African American soldiers of the 24th U.S. Infantry Regiment and the white officers of the Houston Police Department.
“The tensions in the city between the military men and the citizens of Houston at the time were volatile, and it came to a head on the night of August 23, 1917,” explains Rice.
The lead character, one of the three condemned soldiers we meet in Rice’s purgatory, is based on a real soldier convicted and sentenced to death despite proclaiming he never left the camp that night.
“Prior to his death, he actually wrote a letter to his parents,” says Rice. “He was very adamant about his parents knowing that he was not a murderer. His father was a minister. So, that letter piqued interest for me. It took them out of history, and it made them personal.”
Rice says the letter made her consider what it would be like to be wrongfully accused after living a life of “perfection.”
“You’ve done everything you’re supposed to do. You follow all the rules, you do all the things, and then you still end up in this position…And so, we find him reconciling with that, with his relationship with God, [and] with his relationship with his parents,” says Rice.
Rae’s Tied is a one-man play written from the perspective of the father of one of the four little girls killed when the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963. The play originated over coffee with actor Silvana LaToison.
Looking for audition pieces, LaToison brought up the idea, and Rae says she was first struck by an actor wanting to pretend to be a father in one of the most traumatic moments in history.
“That he wants to be a dad in that moment was so loud to me,” says Rae, adding that she was also intrigued by the angle, as she says she had not considered the perspective of the parents before.
“I had thought of the girls and had thought of what it meant to be little and to be at church and to be giggly,” says Rae. “I hadn’t had a single thought about what the parents lived through, and specifically what the dads lived through.”
Rae attributes part of her interest in writing the piece to her respect for her father and a “quiet” mandate of her own.
“I want to be a part of storytellers who are supportive of Black men. I don’t need to make them perfect, because there’s no such thing as a perfect person, but I want to leave behind writing that my nephew could read and feel like he understands how to handle the turns that are coming up in front of him,” says Rae.
Rice was the one to suggest bringing their stories together, and Rae says that there was no ego on either side. According to Rae, they were both focused on one question: “How do we tell stories well and bless our community with something that belongs to us as a people, that belongs to us as a city, as a community?
“Otherwise, I think we can’t restore, and we can’t come back together,” says Rae. “How do we bridge gaps if we don’t know where the holes are?”
Though set 46 years apart, Rae says the plays “feel close.”
“The distance between 1917 and 1963 should be plenty of time for these stories to not feel so connected, but because times don’t change as fast as we’d like, the tissue of those moments, it just feels like it’s all part of the same body,” says Rae.
Though Rae says this can be scary, she sees value in the act of remembering.
“I think that there’s something beautiful about asking ourselves to remember on purpose and allow those memories not to haunt, but to breathe again and inform us and bless us with a compass of how we want to live,” says Rae.
Though both plays broach difficult topics, Rice says these stories must be passed on and told for the good of the community. But despite the heavy subject matter, Rae says audiences won’t be left in the darkness.
“They walk together, hand in hand, because I feel as if – totally biased, by the way – but I feel as if we don’t sit in the darkness too long,” says Rae. “Both plays call for hope and light and demand a silver lighting to make itself known.”
Rice adds, “The hope is that through history, the telling of these stories, the telling of the strength inside of the trauma, will allow us to gain something so that when we see it again, we can approach it with different power, with different strength, with a different mindset, and with intention, with the hope of a different outcome.”
Spitting Nails and Telling Tales: the griot tour is scheduled for 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday, November 16, at the Anderson Center for the Arts, 13334 Wallisville. For more information, visit here. $40.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
