Dawn Ursula as Jacqueline Marie Butler. Photo by Teresa Wood.
Part of Washington DC’s Women’s Voices Theatre Festival, Queens Girl In The World premiered on Monday night, September 21st to a cheering packed audience. This one woman show, the semi-autobiographical poetically rich creation of Caleen Sinnette Jennings, was mesmerizing and is playing at the Theater J through October 11, 2015.
In addition to the finest acting I have seen in the last several years by Ms. Dawn Ursula, the brilliant artistic vision of director Eleanor Holdridge was well appreciated by the standing ovation. To direct a show such as this one requires not only an amazingly talented actress, but an incredibly detail oriented director. One woman representing so many different characters by sculpting little more than a facial gesture or body movement is an undertaking for only the most technical of actors.
It {Queens Girl In The World}is a must see for any age or color, religion or gender.
The set is simple, a 1960s city stoop, adorned with a silver metal milk crate and a transistor radio. Talented set designer Ruthmarie Tenorio changed scenes by projecting differing movie images, making the backdrop effortlessly change from subway to historical contexts of civil rights marches to the Museum of Modern Art without moving a prop. Sound designer David Lamont Wilson offers us some of the late 50s and early 60s music of the day, brought to the stage by a transistor radio, the original walkman! The playbill gives the audience a time table of what was happening historically at this time.
Dawn Ursula plays Jacqueline Marie Butler, and about 20+ other characters with no changes of costuming only acting, accents and gesturing to create the many personalities. The show begins in 1962, with the backdrop of the unrest of the Civil Rights Movement, young Jack, or Jackie as she is referred to, is 12 years old, and living an upwardly mobile life as an African-American teen in Queens New York. She talks of her family being first to move to a white neighborhood, which upon their arrival prompted white flight. She quickly transitions from one character to another changing mannerisms and accents sometimes mid sentence. Jacqueline’s mother, Miss Grace, is a teacher (her perfect pronunciation and posture always make the audience know when it is mom who is speaking). Her father, a doctor from Nigeria, is a good-natured altruistic professional with a lilting Carribean-like accent. He is as direct as mom is prim.
Neighborhood characters influencing Jackie’s life are the lower class Persephone, who, while being the only age and gender appropriate playmate in the neighborhood is played in a kind and humorous way. Persephone becomes someone that embarrasses while at the same time educates Jackie on life issues in a manner crude and hilarious because of how genuine it seems. The playwright alludes to Persephone’s grandfather as either a molester or at least one who fondles young girls. Yet Jackie neither reports this, nor seems overly disconcerted about it. Life, it seems is a continual learning experience as the rest of the show continues to educate. Her sexual awakening with her first kiss and her mother’s condemnation of such behavior confirm the audience’s understanding of the rules of the times.
Public school for our well-educated parents is not appropriate for young Jackie, with the neighborhood pressures and influences within the neighborhood, they send her by subway into Manhattan to an integrated and liberal private school. This play is not about a black girl being shunned at a white school. Instead, it is about the authors experience with changes in black-white relations during those times, in New York, obviously if she had been raised in the south, her experiences would have been very different. At her new school she is no longer the best and brightest student, she is among 3 other black students. She is introduced to progressive whites and the Jewish people, important black leaders and teachers with strange accents and dialects, Jackie tries to make sense of it all calming herself by writing in her journal and for her classes. What does it mean to be a black woman in the world?
Meeting Malcolm X, in the middle of the night was a pivotal point in Jackie’s life. As the civil rights era continues, she ages and sees her family and neighbors react from the killing of Malcolm X to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I do not want to give away anymore than I already have. This is a vibrantly acted and directed story that has waited patiently to be told. I really cannot wait to see another show by Caleen Sinnette Jennings! I would like to add, that I was raised in Washington, DC and attended Georgetown Day High School in the late 70’s. Now as an adult, I am aware of just how unusual the author’s childhood and outlook on life is. The time and place, the when and where we are born and raised, has everything to do with how we think and understand the world around us.
It is a must see for any age or color, religion or gender. I give this my 12 STAR Rating out of my personal scale of 1-5! It is not a children’s show, but I believe that 8+ would understand and appreciate this production.
Running Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes with one 20 minute intermission.
Advisory: Adult themes.
Queens Girl In The World is running through October 11, 2015 at Theater J, 1529 16th St, NW, Washington 20036. For tickets click here.
