Blasts from the Past
George Heymont
Sunday, September 13, 2009
myculturallandscape.blogspot.com

Several weeks later, I attended the world premiere of a new work commissioned by Berkeley's Shotgun Players entitled This World In A Woman's Hands. A three-year long project that began with community outreach as playwright Marcus Gardley interviewed residents of local nursing homes who had worked in the Richmond Shipyards during World War II, This World provides some long-overdue back story to the people who inspired such names as Rosie the Riveter, Wendy the Welder, and Dorothy Dynamite. In his director's notes, Aaron Davidman states that:

"The collective effort of 93,000 men and women working around the clock in shifts daily at Henry J. Kaiser's shipyards in Richmond, California from 1941-1945 was inspiring. It was the largest mobilization of civilian life in the history of this country and the sheer volume of materials, and the speed with which they were turned into ships and planes and weapons is astonishing. Perhaps the most enduring image of the effort is Rosie The Riveter, immortalized by the compelling advertising artwork of the time. She is a symbol of mythic proportions: the housewife who rises above her personal needs for family and comfort, dons dungarees and a blast shield, and goes to work for the common good."

While we wouldn't know it from the "We Can Do It!" ad campaigns, Rosies came from many ethnic backgrounds, and the challenges women of color faced on the job were formidable. To understand the complicated social and economic challenges facing Richmond today, in our clearly not post-racial society, we need to know the whole story of the moment when Richmond and America were changed forever."

Among the many assets of Shotgun's production is the strikingly folksy (and extremely cost-effective) musical score by Molly Holm. In an interview with Shotgun's managing director, Liz Lisle, the composer explains that:

"Circle-singing is an improvisational/compositional tool that I learned from working with Bobby McFerrin in the original Voicestra. I have used it a lot in my classes and ensembles over the years. Many of the compositions for This World were derived in the same way. I ran a series of vocal trainings where I gave the actors experience in the kind of music that I do: music that grows out of the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic elements of traditional jazz, avant-garde or free jazz, blues, North Indian raga, modal improvisation, Afro-Cuban music, new or experimental music, and extended vocal techniques.

"My life-long love of jazz is heard here and I am in love with the music of the African Diaspora: early African-American work songs, shouts, and spirituals; Yoruban (Nigerian) sacred songs from the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion; Afro-Brazilian music; and Senegalese drumming that my brother Carl has studied and recorded extensively. Linda Tillery, an African-American "roots-music" virtuoso (one of my favorite singers and a mentor) has played a big part by doing several workshops with the cast of This World. In particular, she brought us the mesmerizing Texas prison work song, "Ain't no mo' Cane on Dis Brazos."

All it takes is one look at Lisa Clark's massive set of wood scaffolding that fills the Ashby Stage to realize what an ambitious project This World In A Woman's Hands represents. In addition to the invaluable community outreach which helps to justify an arts organization's mission (and stimulate fundraising), this show gives Richmond a unique piece of drama as working history.

Gardley's play goes a long way toward explaining the racial barriers and women's struggle for equal pay that provided a huge push toward the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. In addition to telling the story of Richmond's "wisdom tree," it also makes audiences painfully aware of the jobs and pride that women working in the shipyards were forced to relinquish after men returned home from the War to reclaim their jobs.

This World In A Woman's Hands includes a dramatic reenactment of the Port Chicago disaster and describes how women were still expected to report to work within 24 hours (even after picking up the charred body parts that had been flung far and wide by the explosion). While Shotgun's all-female cast works very tightly as a musical and dramatic ensemble, special kudos go to Beth Wilmurt as Helena, Dena Martinez as Maria Saint Fay, and Liz T. Rogers-Beckley as Sapphire Harbor.

Margo Hall delivers a fierce interpretation of the play's protagonist, Gloria B. Cutting (a poor, illiterate black woman from Louisiana who left her family and traveled to Richmond with dreams of becoming a welder, only to get slapped down, exploited, and eventually be transformed into an activist). In her blog, one of the shipyard's survivors, Betty Reid Soskin, writes:

"I'm hoping that the community's young people will be well represented in the audience. They truly need to be made aware that they are the descendants of the extraordinary ordinary people who helped to save the world from Fascist domination 69 years ago. I believe that this Gardley play can provide some of the background that's been missing from their history books, and that has tragically cheated this generation of youngsters of their rightful legacy ... the sense of belonging ... the feeling of being part of something larger than themselves -- that thing that provides the sense of worth that gives life meaning and that just might possibly provide for today's children the now-missing will to survive in an often unsympathetic world; a world where their only power seems to be the ability to instill fear in others."