Janice doesn’t want to return to where she grew up. Her parents, heroes to many, were civil rights activists fighting for the desegregation of the community pools. So they were heroes to many.
But in the ripple, the wave that carried me home Janice, played by LaKeisha Rochelle Randle, carries some lasting resentment of those days. Because while her parents were off fighting battles, they weren’t pouring anywhere near the same amount of attention into their daughter, she believes. That’s part of why she moved away and gave up swimming.
“She feels like her parents chose the movement over her,” Randle says.
Now she’s being asked to return to her town to take part in a ceremony honoring her father, who’s having a formerly segregated swimming pool after him. The play, written by Tony Award nominee Christina Anderson, is “almost like a therapy lesson,” Randle says. Directed by Associate Artistic Director Eboni Bell Darcy, the play also stars Sarah Sachi as Helen, DeShae LaShawn as Gayle and Joseph “Joe P.” Palmore as Edwin.
The 90-minute, one-act is “definitely an ensemble show,” Randle says. “But Janice’s story is definitely the crux story. We’re watching her find her way back home. She’s almost denounced her ties with her hometown. Rightfully so but not really rightfully. She’s experienced things in her childhood, some racial injustices.”
Randle, who graduated from Elkins High School in the Fort Bend ISD before going on to college and the Actors Theatre of Louisville, is making her debut at Stages. An eighth grade teacher who encouraged her to go into speech and debate was one factor. The other, she says, was growing up in church telling stories and engaging in the Bible ministry and praise dancing started Randle’s journey to theater. “I’ve been a story teller all my life.”
Much of the show is concerned with the idea of legacy — something Randle knows something about in her own life. Randle is the daughter of Daryl and Shannon Randle, owners of The Shack Houston on Reed Road that has, like many Houston area restaurants, struggled to stay alive in recent years. When they were ready to shut it down, “I pleaded with them to give me a shot to assume ownership and revitalize something that our family has spent its legacy on. We’ve been able to sustain ourselves and we’re still there. So in my ways, my personal life is reflected in Janice’s.”
The ripple, the wave that carried me home jumps in and out of time, Randle says. It starts in 1992 when the Rodney King trial is going on. [This] sparks some of the memories that take her back to ’73. So we go from the ’60s all the way up to the ’90s.”
“It’s a story of redemption and forgiveness first for herself and then for her parents in just figuring out how to re-establish connection before either her or her mother leaves the earth. How to make the most of time we have left.”
And she adds this:
“I think it’s important for folks to know that it’s a love story. It’s a story of love and its redemptive power for a husband and a wife, for parents and their child and also for folks who are fighting for the rights of others and the love that they must possess for those people in order to, so passionately, do so. It’s the ideas that in the midst of, what often feels like a sea full of hate that love, when you give in to it, truly can and will conquer all.”
Performances are scheduled for February 28 through March 23 (previews through March 5) at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Stages at The Gordy Theatre, 800 Rosine. For more information, call 713-527-0123 or visit stageshouston.com. $56-$96.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
