EPISODE 2

+ TRANSCRIPT

DOMINIQUE RIDER Hey, everybody, welcome back to the CLASSIX podcast, (re)clamation, an intervention in the current conversation around theatre history, where we recenter and uplift the Black writers and storytellers of the American theatre - both the celebrated and the forgotten. I’m Dominique Rider, your host for this episode, number 2 in our series exploring the life, work, and legacy of Alice Childress. In our last episode we focused on a conversation between Arminda and I discussing the impact of Childress’ on our lives. This week we’re joined by the amazing Kathy Perkins the author of Childress’ selected play anthology as well as the lighting designer for the recent production of Trouble in Mind on Broadway directed by Charles Randolphi-Wright. Arminda and I talked with Kathy shortly after the opening of Trouble in Mind.

DOMINIQUE So yeah, Kathy. Thank you so much for doing this. How are you right now? And how are you post-TROUBLE IN MIND? Because you guys made it to the end of your run.

PERKINS Yes! Oh my God, we knew Childress' spirit was in the room. I mean, it had to be, you know? No canceled performances, we made it to the end. So I'm just bouncing off the walls. You know, I'm just happy that it happened. I had no idea that it would happen, Charles. You know, I've been talking about it for 15 years. And I think we were all shocked when we heard it was going to happen. So it was beyond a dream for me this whole show and everything. So I tell people if I never see another Broadway stage, I'm fine. I'm content. You know, I did a show I wanted to do, so that's fine.

DOMINIQUE I love that. How did you meet Alice Childress and how did you begin to become more familiar with her work?

PERKINS I found out about her work my first year at Howard University. I was on the light crew and prop crew and the play was WINE IN THE WILDERNESS, and I'd never heard about Alice Childress, and the play just blew me away as an 18 year old. Like, wow, she's dealing with class and stuff. It was that moment backstage that go into lighting. We're just sitting backstage. And, he says, “What are you gonna do with a BFA in acting?” This is like 1973. And I said, “What do you think? I'm going to Broadway?” And he says, he sort of laughs. And he says, “no roles for Black women, I've seen you hang lights, why don't you consider lighting? We've got this big touring house at Howard. And you can make a lot of money”. tThis same friend of mine he was my guest, or date for the opening of TROUBLE IN MIND. And what was so funny, he said, “remember years ago, you said you were going to go to Broadway?” I said, “yeah, as an actress,” but he said, “but you still made it.” And so I just thought it was, you know, the fact that you know, he got me started on this show with Alice Childress and then yeah, he should be the person here at the theater for me, you know, with Alice Childress again and he got me into lighting. So I knew about her starting with WINE IN THE WILDERNESS. And then. We read her in grad school. And then when I was working at Smith College, a good friend of mine, Roberta Uno, who had a group called Third World Theatre at the time. She said, “Oh, Alice Childress is coming here to workshop a piece called GULLAH. Would you be interested in lighting it?” I said, of course, and this is not a professional company, it is pretty much all students and it was great. So she came, she and her husband, Nathan, it was in the dead of winter. And I had a chance to work with her. And the reason I got a chance to really know her was because spring break was happening up at UMass, and no one told Alice that the kids would be gone for like five days. And we're in the middle of a snowstorm. They don't have a car. And she says, “What am I supposed to do for five days up here?!” And so I would invite her over to my house. And I regret I don't have a photo with her. So she would come over, you know, I think I had her and Nathan over about three times. And we had dinner. So that's how we became friends, and so this is ‘84. And I think around ‘85, we sort of stayed in touch. And then there was sort of a gap in between because I had started a new job. I was out in California, and she was working on a new show called Mom's, And then we sort of reconnected again around 89 when I moved to another job. And I had just finished my first anthology.

I just finished a book, my first anthology. I was so excited. And I was in town. I said, I have a surprise for you. And so I get to her apartment and I show her the book. It has this Elizabeth Catlett, you know, cover on the front and she said, “Oh, that's impressive. Elizabeth Catlett.” And then she starts flipping through the book, she says, “plays before 1950. She said, “Well, you know, I wrote Florence in 1949.” And it's like, oh, shit, (laughter) like, “Well, shouldn't I be in here?” And like I said, I don't, I'm not a good liar. And I don't think that quickly on my feet, but I knew I had to come up with something. And I said, “Miss Childress, somebody of your caliber should have a collection of their own.” And so she was like, “Oh, well, when can we get started?” And so that evening we started talking about the plays. But it was never done during her lifetime. And, honestly, I was really afraid to do anything during her lifetime, because she dictates, you know, what's in her bio, and she lied about stuff. It's like, no, I don't want to do that. So if you notice a lot of the stuff was written after she passed. Or if there were any biographies written during her lifetime, she made sure you didn't put her husband's name in there. And, you know, the age was wrong. It's like, no, I can't do this while she's alive. So it was later when I published it.

But she talked okay. But what I always tell first of all, I tell people, I am not her biographer. I am not her biographer. She was very clear about, this is like around 89’. And toward the end of her life. She just said I'm tired of people coming in trying to pry into my life and no one's gonna ever get my biography correct. They should just Let it go. But she said, I need producers and directors, knocking on my door. And when she was working on A HOST OF FRIENDS, that's all she could think about, you know, she didn't want to talk about the past. She was working on three projects at the same time. She's trying to get A HOST OF FRIENDS produced, I know she was trying to get Debbie Allen to direct it, and George Wolfe was at the Public Theater. When I interviewed Debbie Allen, she just didn't remember. All she could remember was WEDDING BAND because she was trying to get WEDDING BAND produced for TV, and that just fell through. And then she was working on a book about Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Dunbar Nelson. But she did feel like her work was becoming, she really felt extremely neglected. Toward the end of her life. You know, nobody was doing... She never had any really large productions of her shows. And when you really think about it during her lifetime, yes, WEDDING BAND was done at University of Michigan. But, you know, but that was a small space. It was a professional show. And then it was done at the Public. And that was not a huge budget show. But I don't think she ever had any huge productions of any of her work until she died. When I was at university of Illinois we did a production of WEDDING BAND in 1992. And I do have to say there's an error in my book. And I don't mind admitting to mistakes. I said that WEDDING BAND was done in 1992 at the Tricycle Theatre in London, which is now the Kiln. But what they did was TROUBLE IN MIND. And the reason why I know I made that mistake, of WEDDING BAND, because in 1992, she was saying that, you know, her shows weren't being done, and you know, she really needed to work. And I said, well, let me talk to my chair and see if we can do WEDDING BAND for mainstage. And I said, it's great because it's an interracial cast. A lot of the characters are young. And I say, I'll make sure it's a well done production. So it was a fairly large scale production. And what I was doing was I was going to bring her in for that entire week, she was going to teach a class on playwriting. And then she was going to go talk to the English department, because, you know, she wrote novels and stuff. And I would say about two weeks before she was to come, I get this call from her. She says, I have some bad news for you. She says, “Well, they're doing my show in London. And I've never had an international, you know, production of any of my plays. They're going to pay my way. I cannot not go.” And I said, “Of course, I understand.” And she says,“I really feel awful about this, because I know you, you know, the kids have rehearsed and you were looking for it.” I said, it's fine, it will work out. So that's why I said WEDDING BAND when it should have been TROUBLE IN MIND at the Tricycle. And I have not been able to find any photographs from that production. I think the biggest production of WEDDING BAND was done at Steppenwolf. And that was one I lit. And that was a huge production, it was a large budget show. The Guthrie did a TROUBLE IN MIND. And then Yale did it and then Baltimore Center Stage did it. She did feel very neglected toward the end. And she kept questioning. She said, “I get tired of people telling me I've got too many characters.” And, you know, “I'm not doubling my people.” You know? And I think she was sort of comparing herself to a lot of the other Black writers, you know, Anna Deavere Smith playing 20 people, I mean, she liked the pieces. But she just said, I can't write that. I can't do that. And, you know, George Wolfe with THE COLORED MUSEUM with, you know, three people playing 90 people during that particular time of the recession going on, and nobody wanted these large casts. But she was just wondering, people keep telling me I have too many people. And my shows are too realistic. Yeah, I want a real kitchen. So she was really questioning, if she was relevant.

ARMINDA THOMAS What was the experience like working on GULLAH? What was it like working with her inside of the room?

PERKINS It was a piece she was extremely passionate about, because the play deals with, gentrification of, the South Sea Islands. I think it was originally called THE SEA ISLANDS or THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS.

ARMINDA SEA ISLAND SONG.

PERKINS Yeah, she just said that, it didn't really focus on the Gullah. So that's why she ended up calling the play GULLAH, specifically about them. It was good. Again, these were students that she was working with. So she had to teach them a lot. My colleague, Roberta Uno, who produced it, we were talking the other day. And I said, I know y'all did a interview with Childress. Where is it? She says, I don't remember where it is. But she said, But, she said, don't you remember that? Alice read the whole, she read at the reading? She read the whole play out? She said, Alice read the whole play, because she felt that she wanted them to understand the, the rhythm and the language. It was great to work with her, because the play was constantly changing. I mean, that's the way she works, she changes a lot. That's to be expected with a new piece. And if a certain student couldn't do a certain thing, she ended up having to change it, to accommodate them. I enjoyed working with her. I love the passion that she brought to her work. She was very passionate about what was happening to these people.

ARMINDA One of the things we're finding is, there are not a whole lot of people to speak to who knew her at the time. Which is interesting, because all these people said, Oh, we were good friends. And I’d say well, what about her daughter, and it’s like, “oh, that's right. She had a daughter.” It's like, okay, um. I've never seen a baby picture of the daughter. I just knew where she worked. And I know she died early. But I did speak with Sidney Poitier. And he was funny and he had me cracking up because he was talking about Miss Childress. Yes, we're good friends. We were really good friends. And, and I said, oh, when was the last time you spoke to her? He said, You know, it must have been just before I went to Hollywood after Raisin. I said, “We’re talking about 1960?” She just said, nobody will listen to regular people. And so I proved them wrong. I wrote a play. Now, some say it's overnight, but she did it for like two days, basically overnight. But he just said I don't know. We were playing pinnacle. I don't remember what she was all upset about. She just went into another room. But it was that night that got that started. Everybody I knew, that knew her, talked about what an incredible actress she was. He said he saw her perform before he knew her. And was just blown away. And then he got to meet her through ANT.

ARMINDA He had a really nice paragraph about her in his first autobiography.

PERKINS Oh, I didn't read it. Oh, what did he say?

ARMINDA He said “I developed a very special relationship with a woman named Alice Childress, an actress and a writer. I learned more from her than I did from any other person I knew during that period of my life, things about life that no one else ever took the time to explain. She opened me up to positive new ways of looking at myself and others, and she encouraged me to explore the history of Black people, as opposed to colored people. She was also instrumental in my meeting and getting to know the remarkable Paul Robeson. And for that alone, I shall always be grateful.”

PERKINS Oh, no, I didn't know that.

DOMINIQUE Shifting gears just a little bit. Kathy, just going back to your anthology that you released? What was, I think both for you and for Childress, the significance of GOLD THROUGH THE TREES being included in the Selected Works.

PERKINS I think it was important because, one, it was the first professional piece and it's not complete. And I say this piece is not the actual script. There was never an actual script, because she never finished it. You know, there was certain productions that Alice was in and the cast was changing. But she never completed it was just constantly being rewritten. Plus, she and Clariice were directing. So it was just constantly changing. So I put it in there because this whole history, we're talking about 52. She's talking about Africa. You know how many Black folks, particularly Black women are talking about Africa? So I was just fascinated by that whole aspect and the history of African Americans, she was close friends with Shirley Graham, and Shirley Graham wrote an opera called TomTom, which looks at Africans to America. So I'm wondering if, she was influenced by Shirley Graham, or what? But see, at the time, I knew I didn't think to ask her these questions, because I didn't know about it. She didn't like to talk about her past. She said, “we're moving forward, we got to get the shows up.” If she wanted to bring up the past. I would let her do it. But I didn't ask her any questions about the past. You know, I had wanted to ask her about Lorraine Hansberry, not because I knew they were friends, but because you could have been the first Black woman on Broadway, but then Hansberry. But prior experiences taught me I don't ask playwrights about other playwrights. Because you know, cause sometimes they think you’re comparing them and it's like, that's not the point. But Dr. Margaret Wilkerson interviewed Childress, she's been working on this Hansberry book because I said, people ask all these questions about Childress and Hansberry. You told me years ago that Hansberry had asked Childress to play Mama in A Raisin in the Sun. And Childress basically said, Broadway is a business and no one is going to accept a light skin petite Black woman, as Mama, you know, they want the stereotypical looking Black woman heavy set dark, whatever. And she says, I want your show to do well, so I'm just gonna bow out. So I just thought that was such a beautiful story.

The last time I saw Childress. She says, “Oh, and by the way, my very first review was written by a young writer named Lorraine Hansberry. She said she wrote my first review, and I thank her for that. She was much younger than me. But anyway, I'm very convinced that Hansberry was influenced by Childress’ work. Because when I think about Florence and TROUBLE IN MIND, the whole thing about, you know, ordinary Black people, and that's who you find in A Raisin in the Sun and the whole thing about confronting white people on stage. I don't know, I don't know if she got that idea from Childress or not, because, Black women weren't writing white people on stage. You know, that was one of the things about plays from before the 50’s. May Miller was like, maybe the only Black person who had white people on stage. But now I’m thinking, oh, I wonder if you know, Hansberry got that idea from Childress. And one of the African songs that she uses in A Raisin in the Sun was a song that Childress used in GOLD THROUGH THE TREES with the Alundi Alundi. So I said, that’s interesting. But, I don't know, I think she was influenced by Childress' work.

But see, I don't have any proof of any of this stuff. Like I said, I'm not trying to do a biography on her. You know, I do what she wanted me to do. She wanted me to get her plays out there. But there's a young woman who teaches at Morehouse, who said there's a couple of interviews of her in South Carolina. Because she said, “Did you know that Childress was Galla?” I said I didn't think about that. She says “No, she says it in some of those articles and some of those interviews.” I mean, which would make sense because she talked about a cousin of hers, a great uncle or somebody being buried in the Gullah cemetery. She always says, no one's gonna figure out my life. So just don't even think about it.

I mean, I've never seen a photograph of Childress as a child or the house she lived in? I don't even know where she lived in South Carolina.

ARMINDA We went!

PERKINS Oh, you went?

ARMINDA We went to the house. We were in South Carolina. We tried.

PERKINS Get outta here!

ARMINDA We went to the house and we went to the street where it was listed in the census but the number before was there and the number after was there and there was this big hole where the house was.

PERKINS Oh, the lot. Okay. But there would be pictures if you go through the city maps and stuff. They would probably have photos.

ARMINDA One of the things that I'm interested in, are these gaps. How many things that were important, like Shirley Graham, and Dubois and Robeson, and how she was very connected to these people and influenced by –

PERKINS Well, she did talk about DuBois. In fact, when I went to her house, she had this cigarette lighter that was DuBois’ and it was one of her prized possessions. And that was really important to her because it was sitting out in the living room. She talked about how instrumental he was in her career. She learned about Africa from him because he was teaching a course at the Jefferson School. And she learned a lot about Africa and Shirley Graham. And she talked about that. I'd never heard of the “Sojourners of Truth”, so she didn't get into all that. But she said they had seen oh, one of her plays, and they really liked it and, at some point Shirley recommended her play over hers. They were friends. Even though Shirley was, you know, slightly older than her at the time. She did talk about being close to them and the impact they had on her life. But yeah, trying to do a biography of her, no, I don't want to be involved. If you're going to do a documentary, we can talk about her plays and stuff like that, that's fine. When we were talking about the plays she would always talk about the circumstances surrounding the play. And I loved WEDDING BAND, because she really talked about that, because she was annoyed because people were thinking that, that's the story of my, that’s my mother and father. “My father's not a white man.” And, people always talking about “I'm white, I'm not white, my parents just happen to be lightskin.” And “I'm a Black woman”. So she said, “No, WEDDING BAND is not about my life”. “WEDDING BAND happens to be a story that my grandmother told me, which was true”, DOMINIQUE Kathy, I’d love to know, about the process of getting TROUBLE IN MIND on Broadway. You mentioned earlier, that it had been in the works for 11 years.

PERKINS 15.

DOMINIQUE 15 years. Thank you. Were you and Charles still working together or like thinking about it together even when it wasn’t...?

PERKINS No, What, back in 2008? We were working on a show—that was my first time working with him. I did a show with him at ACT, Blood Knot, and then we were talking about Childress. And I said “I'm gonna be doing a collection of work, of plays that...” I don't even know how we brought up Childress. He said, “Oh, I'm–I’m obsessed with Childress’s work. And I want to do TROUBLE IN MIND.” Then I think I met him like three years later. And my book was out. And we started talking about that. He said, “oh, I still want to get this show on Broadway!” I just knew every time I ran into him: “I'm getting TROUBLE IN MIND on Broadway, it's gonna go to Broadway. And as soon as I get it, you're going to be the lighting designer!” So when I read that it was coming to Broadway—I don't know if it was Variety or something—I was looking online. And it said Charles Randolph Wright was directing it. And it's like, I haven't been in touch with him in about four years, I assume his cell phone number’s the same. So I text him. I said, Hi, Charles, this is Kathy Perkins. It’s like: congratulations on TROUBLE IN MIND going to Broadway, just like: Do you remember our last conversation? And so he called me immediately. He said, “Oh, my God, I just came out of the producers’ office, and I told them I want to use you. And they said it was fine.” And you know, and he was saying they had been talking about doing it, like I said, 15 years. And he said, “we've been talking about doing it. And, um, we talked about it for last season, but nothing happened.” And he said, “maybe this is the right time” and that’s when they said, “well, yeah, let's go ahead and do it,” he just felt that this time was a good time to do it now that people are really thinking about race in the American theater on Broadway.

DOMINIQUE You talked about how Childress viewed herself in relation to theater, specifically, I think during those 10 years that you knew her. I think the thing that I'm super I'm curious about is like: how does she get to that point? Right? When you meet her, do you get the sense that she's already in that place of like, “nothing is going to happen. There are some things I am never going to receive”?

PERKINS Not in ‘84, because she had high hopes for GULLAH. Because she was saying, “oh, this show is gonna go to New York.” And it didn't, and then she was working on the piece with Clarice Taylor. But I think it was, like around ‘93, ‘94. That's when she was really having these feelings about “I'm not relevant.” And she was looking at works by other playwrights I remember she was talking about, she said, “a lot of these plays look like, they feel like movies, you know, like, they're all over the place. She said something like “I'm a super realist,” you know, we, we stay in the kitchen, we stay in the yard, we stay backstage. And, you know, “I'm looking at all these other pieces they like from, they're here, and they're all over the place.” And that's one of the things she was noticing. She said, It's like watching TV or watching a movie. And she says, “I don't write that way. So maybe I just don't fit in to what's happening in the theater. You know, everybody's doing multiple characters. And, you know, I just don't write that way.”

DOMINIQUE And can I ask how you - We're post- the Broadway premiere now. How you feel about–it feels like there are productions of TROUBLE IN MIND…

PERKINS Oh, everywhere.

DOMINIQUE Everywhere. How do you feel about this sort of, um, resurgence, I think that we're in, of her work?

PERKINS I think it's wonderful. I think you know, it's way overdue. She needs to be in the canon.

PERKINS I mean, we look at Tennessee Williams and stuff is still realistic and audiences, you know, clamor to that and I, you know, her work is so relevant, And I like her work because I like realism. I like the idea that she confronts people on stage, you know, be it with a, you know, with white characters or in WINE IN THE WILDERNESS, you know, dealing with class. So I like that about her. Because toward the end, after the–I think WEDDING BAND may have been her last play where she dealt with racial issues. And then she started focusing on Black folks, you know, it's like, “let me deal with Black folks in the community and our problems.” And that's when WINE IN THE WILDERNESS came about. Right. And then the piece String. You know, a lot of those deal with class issues. Because when we did WINE IN THE WILDERNESS at Howard, we did it with a piece called String. Short one-acts. And then what, MOJO? Yeah, so she started writing plays focusing on Black people. And, once I started putting her anthology...I had no idea she had written all this stuff. She put together one of the first Black anthologies. Black Scenes. And I had the book. It had, you know, Hansberry in it, all of these people. So I didn’t know it was one of the first ones. So, that was remarkable. I mean, she just did so much. Children's stories.

DOMINIQUE How did you figure out what you wanted to be included in the anthology?

PERKINS No, she pretty much told me.

DOMINIQUE Oh, okay. [Laughter]

PERKINS I was gonna have more plays in there, but I just couldn't, because it's like, “well, you have so many page numbers.” Because I think it has six. I had like 12. And, one of the things I regret is, she had nine versions of TROUBLE IN MIND. I did not go back, I did not read all those versions. But what she said was–she was very specific–she said, “I did nine versions of TROUBLE IN MIND. And the one that I put in the Patterson book, use that one.” And then, it had been published in someone else's book, too. But what I didn't know was that...I listened to an interview of hers, later, after I published the book and she said, “oh, yeah, I told Patterson to publish that. Oh, but I left out a whole...a monologue.” And so when I was–when Charles and them were reading it the first time, he said, “oh, LaChanze said there's something missing. And I just said, “I don't know what's missing.” I said, “this is the one she told me to put in.” And then somewhere in an interview Childress said, “oh, yeah, I told Patterson to do it, but I forgot to tell him to put in this monologue, but you know, whatever.” And so LaChanze wanted that. That whole scene is where she says, “let me tell you about character parts.” And, I think yes, it has to be in here, you know, by all means. And so they're doing a reprint of this book, it's gonna make the correction that the play was not WEDDING BAND, but TROUBLE IN MIND in Europe. And I said, “can you all do like, what do you call, a RADA and put it in” and they said no, because it exceeds the pages. It's crazy. Like, “no, we can't add anything. We can make a correction.” I say, “well, that is a correction.” But they won't do it. So. But she picked the plays except GOLD THROUGH THE TREES. So, and I just felt that I really wanted to put that in there and I was just trying to figure out which version should I use anyway. But no, we talked about FLORENCE, TROUBLE IN MIND, WEDDING BAND, WINE IN THE WILDERNESS and she did want MOJO and STRING but I had to cut back, so.

ARMINDA Ah, okay.

DOMINIQUE That makes total sense. That makes total sense.

PERKINS Yeah. I would love to put all of them in there. I mean, I was looking at the Fannie Lou Hamer... which was, I don't think that's finished either. She did a screenplay for Fannie Lou Hamer. So I don't know, maybe I don’t know if anything is gonna happen with that. I would love to see somebody do something with that. She was writing a whole lot of stuff. Because she spent a lot of time down in Mississippi. She interviewed a lot of people. I mean, when she wrote something, she knew how to do research. So I always admired her about that. She... “Oh, yeah, I went down there. And I did this. And I did that.”, you know. But I like GOLD THROUGH THE TREES because you know, this whole thing about Africa.

ARMINDA If there was a piece that's not TROUBLE IN MIND or the ones that we kind of know get reproduced, if there was another piece to get staged - Which one would you...?

PERKINS I would love to see somebody do something with GOLD THROUGH THE TREES. it's very visual and the music and how it made a lot of people's careers, you know? If there were any things that you felt she was able to address in novels that she maybe wasn't able to talk about or do in terms of, her plays.

PERKINS I think she was able to expand a lot of her characters. I mean, like in–and it's been ages since I read A Short Walk, because we had this woman that goes from South Carolina up through Harlem. She covers so many, you know, periods in, in America.

ARMINDA She couldn't do that in a play, because she was so weighted into realism in her plays. In a short period of time, it's like one day, next day or whatever, but I don't know if she was able to cover that type of timespan in her plays. She just didn’t write that way. And then she has another great book called Those Other People, it was ‘89 when it came out. She was dealing with topics that a lot of people just didn't touch, like A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich, she's dealing with drugs. And then in Those Other People, she's dealing with the whole issue of homosexuality. I mean, who was writing about that, openly in ‘89? Usually her books are usually banned. I think there were some schools that did not want that book. There’s a 17-year-old white guy. And again, that was a book that dealt with multiracial characters, a lot of it was she was able to expand more, timewise, in her books, that she didn't do in her plays. She just said she wrote in different genres, because she just couldn't make a living being just a playwright or just a novelist. And that's why she expanded doing children’s theater. I don’t know if she started writing children’s books because of her kid or what. Um, she may have, because I think she said something was dedicated to a granddaughter or whatever. So. I didn't know she had a granddaughter until I went through her papers. ‘Cause she never talked about that. She had a granddaughter who lived in Canada, who died.

ARMINDA There’s something you said in the foreword - That she started to turn to smaller plays…

PERKINS The way the book came about, she said someone approached her to do an anthology of plays. And then that's when she decided the scenes would be better. That's how that came about. And I don't remember what year that was. But I think she was–in the 60s–she realized she needed to focus more on Black people. Because she said there were small groups, community groups asking her for shorter plays and stuff. And I think that's when she said, “I really need to start focusing more on just Black people.” And yeah, and that's when she stopped writing the, you know, multi-racial plays. WINE IN THE WILDERNESS was one of the first ones. Yeah, that one was commissioned. And then I think she said she realized that there was a need for plays that focus on the Black community. And that's when she said, “okay, I’ll leave the...the racial things alone.”

ARMINDA Is that kind of, like, just maybe an outgrowth of the Black Arts Movement?

PERKINS I think so.

ARMINDA And...Roger Fuhrmann’s theater and NEC and those places that maybe couldn't have...?

PERKINS Yeah, I think it was an outgrowth of what was going on at the time, because she kept saying there was a need, and “people were asking me...you know...what did I have?” And, you know, that's when a lot of those plays came up. But I know she was trying to do more screenplays. Like I said, I don't remember what year the Fannie Lou Hamer thing came out, and I'm sorry that didn't happen. There was a lot of things that she was writing that she didn't get to finish. But like I said, one, maybe one of these phenomenon: I'm not gonna even lie and say I'm going to read all nine versions of TROUBLE IN MIND. But I would like to read the version that was Off Broadway. Did anybody read that one?

ARMINDA Doris Abramson? Has a book. “Negro Playwrights Until 1959.” And she has a pretty extensive description of TROUBLE IN MIND in there.

PERKINS Right. Right. She was a mentor of mine too. And I know we have a few minutes. She did not win an Obie. The woman did not win an Obie!

ARMINDA I know!

PERKINS I never heard her say I won an Obie.

PERKINS But knowing her the way I did–again, this is the last 10 years. It's like, “if you say I won an Obie, I won an Obie.”

ARMINDA Exactly.

PERKINS And I probably deserved it. But it was so weird, too, because when I was doing the anthology, the editor called and said, “where did you get this, that she won an Obie?” and I was sort of insulted. I said everybody knows that she won an Obie! She said, no, I need proof that she won an Obie. And so, I called...this woman named Barbara Strattonere. She used to be at the New York Public Library as a curator. And so I said, if Barbara doesn't know this is a fact, then no one does. And I said “Barbara, they're telling me that Childresss did not win the Obie.” She said, “what do you mean, she didn't win the Obie?” It's always “we know, that's a fact.” I said, “I've got to be able to prove it.” And so she said, “I'll have my person do some research.” And then I was looking at my books to find out where it was first stated that she won the Obie, and it was James Hatch.

PERKINS And so I started doing some more reading. And there were a couple people that disputed him saying that she did not win the Obie. And so I called Jim, because he was one of my mentors. I said, “Jim, I'm being told that Childress did not win the Obie.” Oh, then the other thing, since you brought up Doris Abramson, she did the book up through 1959. So if she won the Obie it would have been in ‘55, ‘56. She says nothing about her winning an Obie. And I said something's wrong with this picture. And then I called Jim, I said, Jim, you're the first person that I see put that in print. I said, where did you find–how did you prove that? He said, “oh, it was a mistake.” He said it was a mistake. “And it had been out there for so long, I just let it go.” I said, Are you serious? He said, Yeah, I just let it alone. And I said, oh, okay. And then a day later, my friend at the New York Public Library showed me. She said we know where this error came from. She said the same paper–in The Village Voice–where they were announcing the Obie winners, there was another article right next to it listing another set of Off Broadway winners and Childress won something called the “Off Broadway magazine something”. It was was confusing them. And then, the Obies have their own website.

ARMINDA Yeah.

PERKINS And she ain’t nowhere to be found.

DOMINIQUE Thank you so much to the legendary Kathy Perkins for joining us this week. And thank you all for listening. Next week we’ll dive more into the political life of Alice Childress. Our sound editor is Aubrey Dube. The theme song was composed by Alphonso Horne. For more information on Alice Childress, please visit The Classix– with an x–.org and follow us on Twitter and Instagram. See you next week.