INTERVIEW: Regina Taylor’s ‘Oo-Bla-Dee’ revived at Two River Theater
Photo: Oo-Bla-Dee, now playing the Two River Theater, stars, from left, Marva Hicks as Evelyn Waters and Allison Semmes as Gin Del Sol. Photo courtesy of T. Charles Erickson / Provided by Two River Theater with permission.
Approximately 20 years ago writer Regina Taylor created a show that highlights the struggles and triumphs of an all-black, all-female jazz band trying to secure a record deal in the post-World War II environment of the United States. The themes of the show, focusing on the lack of opportunities in a male-dominated society, are still resonant in 2019, which is perhaps why Two River Theater, in Red Bank, New Jersey, has decided to revive the play with music.
This new, updated version, directed by Tony Award winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson, features even more music by accomplished composer and Obie Award winner Diedre L. Murray. Taylor, a Golden Globe winner, wrote the play and also provided original lyrics to Murray’s tunes.
The inspiration for Taylor came many years ago when she was at the Novotel Hotel watching a friend’s great-aunt play the piano. After the show, the musician came over to Taylor’s table and started to talk about jazz. In particular, she started telling Taylor about all-female bands and individual performers in the 1940s.
“I didn’t know anything about them,” Taylor said in a phone interview. “So I wrote them down on a napkin, and I went to the Schomburg Library the next day. And I started doing research on them. Some were noted, some were footnotes, some I would find out through word of mouth, some were recorded, some were not, some you had descriptions of their music. I was going, oh, these women have been erased.”
The stories that Taylor unearthed dealt with deep discrimination in the world of jazz and throughout the United States in the middle of the 20th century. She saw that it was socially acceptable for women to play the piano, but no horns, no upright bass, no drums.
“But certainly these women took up these instruments, and they were shining and stellar,” Taylor said. “I wanted to write about these women. The play takes place in 1946 … [when] they were fighting to have space and to have their own voice, and they weren’t going to be silenced. And certainly those women are an inspiration even now, today. Women are still fighting to not be silenced, to have a voice and not be erased.”
Taylor connected with Murray because the writer has always been a fan of the composer’s music. In fact, the two recently collaborated at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey. Taylor wrote and directed Crowns, a show that follows a teenager from Chicago to South Carolina, where she finds an emotional connection with a community of African-American women in the local church. Murray provided original composition and arrangements for that show.
“I have been a huge fan of Deirdre Murray’s,” Taylor said. “She is a noted musician, having played in several bands and having her own at a certain point before coming into the world of theater and being this brilliant composer. … She is passionate about this story, and she is passionate about it because it speaks to her own life.”
What Taylor and Murray created in the late 1990s, when Oo-Bla-Dee first premiered, has only taken on more significance as the years have passed. In particular, the #MeToo movement has placed some of Oo-Bla-Dee’s themes at the forefront of the national conversation.
“I think it totally resonates with what’s happening,” Taylor said. “If you want to look at the #MeToo movement, if you want to look at women’s rights and how we’re still … wanting to make sure that we secure certain grounds that we thought we had gained. Absolutely, people will see it and recognize who we are at this moment in time in terms of how we look at women today and how women are still in the fight.”
The show follows Evelyn Waters and the Diviners as they travel from St. Louis to Chicago to set up a record deal. It’s an historic, uncertain time in the United States because so many men were lost in WWII and so many men are returning home. Evelyn and her band face discrimination as women and as African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.
“They are women, and they are African-American women,” Taylor said. “So, yes, it does deal with attitudes toward women at the time, and it’s a double thing with African-American women. Even from the terrain that we’re looking at, it’s very dangerous to be out on the road. It’s very dangerous to be a woman. It’s very dangerous to be an African-American out on the road. It is a time where — 1946, end of the war — women have been allowed to step into this certain ‘male territory’ because the men have been away, so you have Rosie the Riveter, you have the female baseball league, and you have these bands. The men are coming home, and with that women are going to have to make certain decisions about where they belong, what is their place, where do they need to be at this moment in time.”
She added: “You have black men coming back from the war, and these fighting men who have been celebrated as heroes overseas are coming back to this Jim Crow America.”
Taylor’s ultimate motivation for creating Oo-Bla-Dee was posterity. She wanted these women to have their stories memorialized so future generations could learn from their struggle, and the connections to today are obvious from the very first scene of the show.
“The play starts in this present moment,” she said. “There’s a character, Luna, who is our master of ceremonies who is taking us through that journey, and Gin has joined Evelyn and the Diviners as their new sax player. And she has to try to find that individual voice that is worthy of being recorded and carried on. … All these women are crossing borders. They’re playing be-bop, which is the new sound, as swing has been appropriated by mainstream America. African-Americans are trying to find their unique voice with cutting-edge be-bop, and they’re crossing lines in so many ways, stepping into male territory in terms of their instruments.”
Taylor was reminded of one passage in the play that sums up her thesis. A character says a derogatory line about women who “cross the line” — whether that’s smoking, drinking, wearing pants, playing music.
These women, according to this character, are “ruined” for any man. The character then asks, what’s a man to do with a woman like that? The harsh response: I’d spank her bottom.
“It is not only that the woman might get spanked,” Taylor said. “Sometimes someone might want to beat her into silence, and it is the challenge of Gin to have the courage to open up her mouth and sing her own song in this world, to have the courage to speak with her own voice in this world. And that is true yesterday, today and tomorrow.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Oo-Bla-Dee, written by Regina Taylor, plays through June 30 at Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.
