Hearty admirers of great black women in theater history weathered an icy, snowy night last Wednesday to pay tribute to a diva for all seasons, Rose Mc-Clendon, 1884 - 1936. The famous actress of the Harlem Renaissance and the Federal Theater was movingly portrayed by Vinie Burrows.
Once inside MIT's Kresge Little Theater, the treacherous slips and slides were soon forgotten as the goodly sized crowd warmed to a tale of a black actress whose opportunities were diminished by a perfidious racism on Broadway, but who struggled on so that other actors of color might have an easier time of it.
The emotionally stirring, one-woman workshop-performance, "Rose McClendon: Black on the Great White Way" starring Burrows, was a result of her having received MIT's prestigious 2002 Eugene McDermont Award in the Arts, established in 1974. Other distinguished artists so honored have included sculptor Henry Moore, painter/filmmaker Gyorgy Kepes, and architect I.M.Pei. In recent years, the award has gone outside the MIT community to an artist who will return to the school within a year for a residency working with faculty and students. Burrows's residency culminated in this single performance on March 6, forcefully directed by Alan Brody, associate provost for the arts at MIT.
As the gripping two-act drama opens, McClendon has been whirled back to earth, a return she never prayed for she proclaims. You well believe her from a number of the episodes she revisits in her life. As a little child she and her family flee her South Carolina home town when an uncle is lynched. "We were of the early wave of the exodus" North, she observes of the move to New York; "instead of the promised 40 acres and a mule we had only gotten the terror of night riders with hoods."
Magically, Burrows, blessed with a lovely seductive voice, theatrical but not stagy, becomes the very embodiment of McClendon. As Rose travels through the years, you experience her triumphs and travails moment by moment but also comprehend the meaning of the eras as regards the progress of black people in this country.
To give an example, Rose, as a teenager, saves a man being chased by a mob through the Tenderloin district where she and her mom take in washing. She hides him from his pursuers. That man becomes her husband, Mac Mc-Clendon, a relationship that is sometimes a great love and sometimes a great waste. The drama of "Black on the Great White Way" is like a roller coaster, one minute you tense up at the roar of a crowd of blood thirsty wild men and a daring rescue, and the next moment, you soften to the flowering of a tender love story. At the same time, you are learning about the 1900 race riot, one of the worst in the country's history.
Most of the evening is appropriately devoted to McClendon's years in the theater. Set designer Bill Fregosi has devised a wonderfully utile playing area with a rack of costumes at the back behind which Burrows can change yet continue to speak to the audience; a chaise lounge on which she reclines to reminisce and tastefully suggest the many backstage romances that spiced up her life; and a dressing table that holds reviews and other memorabilia to which she refers.
McClendon's years in the theater make for a fascinating resume. She was compared to the renowned Italian actress Eleonora Duse and to Ethel Barrymore of America's "royal family of the theater." A theatrical producer who attended McClendon's performance in "Deep River" with Barrymore, whispered to her as they watched McClendon descend a spiral staircase, "She can teach some your most hoity-toity actresses distinction." Barrymore replied, "She can teach them all distinction."
McClendon debuted professionally in 1919 in "Justice," and four years later appeared with Charles Gilpin and later Paul Robeson in "Roseanne." Among many roles was Serena in Dubose and Dorothy Heyward's "Porgy" for which she received the Morning Telegraph Award along with Ethel Barrymore and Lynn Fontaine. Her last starring role was as Cora in Langston Hughes's "Mulatto" (1935), which ran for 373 performances on Broadway, the second longest run for a black playwright at that time.
McClendon was also a director of the Negro (Harlem) Experimental Theater located at the 135th St Branch of the New York Public Library and founded the Rose McClendon Players and the Negro People's Theatre of the Federal Theater Project (whose initial show was an all-black version of Shakespeare's "MacBeth" with McClendon picking 18-year-old Orson Welles for its director).
This coming Monday, McClendon is one of 11 black women of American theater history recalled in "Black Beauties: Celebrating 100 Years of African American Women on Broadway," a production written by Shauneille Perry and directed and produced by Woodie King, Jr. The March 17 show at the Lamb's Theater begins at 7 p.m. For reservations, call 212-840-0770. Vinie Burrows stars as McClendon; other actresses invoking the great ladies of the stage of the past include Debbie Allen, Tarzana Beverley, Ruby Dee, Novella Nelson, Clarise Taylor and Barbara Ann Teer.
At MIT, Burrows was exquisite. She wears clothes with the flair of a high fashion model who is confident about how good she looks, which must have been a joy for costume consultant Leslie Cocuzzo Held. Well known lighting designer Eric Levenson provided a tender scheme, establishing mood and ensuring we could always see how Burrows as McClendon felt.
There is a moment when Burrows as McClendon is back stage during the intermission of a play when she is in such physical pain, she begins to softly cry. There is more to her misery, as well, the knowledge that racism has cut into so much of what she has to give on stage and what her stature off stage should deservedly be. She was not the only one in tears.
Photograph (Vinie Burrows)
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