Playwright, novelist and essayist Pearl Cleage has been feted by everyone from Oprah Winfrey to the staff of the Kennedy Center. Her universal appeal resides in her candid and poetic interpretations of gender, race, domestic violence and self-determination in America. Flyin’ West, Cleage’s 1992 play, explores these themes in the context of four African-American female pioneers who left Memphis, Tennessee, to establish a new life in Nicodemus, Kansas.
In the late 1800s, Nicodemus had all the allure of utopia for adventurous ex-slaves in the brutal Reconstruction South. With the Homestead Act of 1862, settlers were entitled to between 160 and 640 acres of tillable land (most of which were seized from Native Americans). Evangelistic developers wooed black settlers to Nicodemus by promising them land and self-governance. But even in a remote western town owned and run by black settlers, Cleage shows the impossibility of leaving racism behind.
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Manifest destiny: Stori Ayers, Carrie Stuart and Sharon Millner fight for identities and a home of their own in Flyin’ West at Live Arts. |
Flyin’ West, directed by Ray Smith, opens with a scene between the two most powerful female players in the drama: the elderly matriarch Miss Leah (Ty Daniels) and the moody Sophie (Carrie Stewart). Staged in the small Upstage Theater, Cris Edward’s set features a one-story cabin outfitted with all the staples of frontier life, including a metal wash basin and Sophie’s trusty shotgun. The relationship between Miss Leah and Sophie drives the action of Flyin’ West: Both women are independent and stubborn and it is a pleasure to watch them spar.
Shortly, Cleage’s cast of characters is complete. Middle sister Fannie (Stori Ayers), the peacekeeper of the family, flirts shyly with the adorable farmer Wil (Jared Ivory), her budding romance a source of much gentle ribbing from her sisters. Finally, Baby Sister Minnie (Sharon Millner) arrives on a prairie train from New Orleans (via faraway London) with her intellectual, “Mulatto” husband, the poet Frank Charles (David Straughn). The Kansans’ delight in having their sister returned home to them is tempered by their barely repressed dislike of Frank, who does everything he can to condescend to the women, setting himself apart both literally and figuratively. In some of the most stirring scenes in the drama, Frank is emotionally and physically abusive to his wife, calling her “too black for good luck” and projecting his self-loathing onto her while he tries to “pass” as white. Granted, he is almost too villainous to be true, but his scathing attacks make a viewer’s blood run cold.
The sisters’ African-American identity is alternately threatened and bolstered by life on the Kansas prairie. The women must constantly fight off white land speculators in an effort to remain “free Negro women.” But their removal from the South also inspires them to grow their pride and to preserve their personal histories. Miss Leah tells stories of plantation life that would break your heart if you weren’t also witnessing the ultimate Western triumph of her and her family.
