Michal Roxie Johnson and Kayah Calhoun reading from the work of May Miller. Photo courtesy of FPCT.
“We create only from familiar elements, the possibilities of which are enhanced by imagination.”
– May Miller, “The Creative Urge,” Journal of National Association of College Women 1936
A prolific author during the 1920s and ‘30s, May Miller (Sullivan) was both versatile and prolific. If her name is less well-known than some others of the Harlem Renaissance period, it’s because Miller was never based in New York. She was born and raised in Washington, DC, where her father was an important professor at Howard University. She studied under Angelina Weld Grimké (“Rachel,” 1916) at Dunbar High School, who encouraged her to try her hand at play writing. She created fifteen titles over her career, nine of which were published. Most of them were written during a period when Miller worked as a teacher at Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore.
…a highly engaging, salon-style presentation…
Fells Point Corner Theatre (FPCT) has produced a highly engaging, salon-style presentation of several of Miller’s works. The evening is directed by Mari Andrea Travis, and features four poems and three short plays, performed by an ensemble of gifted actors. The salon format is a worthy new experiment for FPCT, based on the idea of breaking down the invisible divide between artist and audience. One ingenious expression of this thought is in a series of interconnecting string lights above the house and stage: performers and spectators share a common space, and participate together in a common experience. Each of the plays is followed by a free-flowing discussion, moderated by Travis.
The poems and plays are presented book-in-hand. There are several props and costume pieces employed, which give the work a feeling of being somewhere in-between staged reading and full-scale production. Technical elements are minimal. The ensemble, when not actively performing, occupies a Brechtian ring of chairs. The four selected poems are very short, and used to great effect as a sort of punctuation among the three presented plays. The first of these is “Sojourner Truth,” a parable in which Michal Roxie Johnson plays the title character, “scouring” the land for sinners. Pausing in a small town, she encounters a group of young white boys who have pyromania on their minds. Truth dissuades them, and the group is so overcome with salvation that they later take her side when local citizens try to run her out of town. “Sojourner Truth” was one of three pieces Miller wrote for a 1935 anthology entitled “Negro History in Thirteen Plays.”
“Christophe’s Daughters,” also from 1935, is the second play of the salon. It is an adaptation of real events surrounding the death of King Henry I of Haiti in 1820. Christophe Henri had been a leader in the Haitian revolution 30 years before, eventually rose to the presidency, then established a monarchy for himself. At the end of his life, he feared a coup and committed suicide. For Miller’s purposes, the King’s death was switched to assassination—but her play centers not on His Majesty, but on princesses Athénaire and Améthiste (Amina Banks and Kayah Calhoun). The pair fear for the life of their father, as a rioting mob closes in on the palace. The king’s life can’t be saved, but the girls must still do whatever they can to save his corpse from mutilation by the mob.
In 1925, Miller’s “The Bog Guide” took third prize for playwriting in the inaugural contest of literary magazine, “Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life,” a publication of the National Urban League. The play is set in “the great dark continent” where two white Englishmen, Elwood Bealer (Brent Warren) and Rupert Masters (Jalen Bond), find themselves in unfamiliar and scary surroundings. A mysterious Woman, Sabali, appears to them. She is revealed to be the “bog guide” and delivers reckoning to both men. Tiffany Ginyard, who provides drumming accompaniment throughout the production, does so here as well—adding urgency to Sabali’s poetic and fluid sequences.
Running time: Two hours without an intermission.
Advisory: Racial epithets (the “n” word).
“An Evening of May Miller” runs through February 4, 2023 at Fells Point Corner Theatre, 251 S. Ann Street, Baltimore, MD 21231. Tickets are available online. Masks are not required at the theater. Proof of vaccination is not required.
