INTERVIEW: ‘Vivian’s Music, 1969’ confronts legacy of race riots
Photo: Vivian’s Music, 1969, written by Monica Bauer, stars Kailah S. King and Russell Jordan. Photo courtesy of Al Foote III / Provided by Karen Greco PR with permission.
Vivian’s Music, 1969, the new play from Monica Bauer, reimagines the life of a young African-American girl named Vivian who lost her life in the American Midwest. She was shot by a white police officer, and the incident sparked one of the worst race riots in American history.
Memories of Vivian and the events that followed stayed with Bauer for almost 50 years, and she felt inspired to “reimagine” a story involving this young girl and the life she tragically lost.
“This story actually comes from my hometown, a place that is flyover country — Omaha, Nebraska — right dead center in the middle of the country, but it’s really like many, many other cities in the United States,” Bauer said in a recent phone interview. “It has a very, very traumatic racial history. It was segregated when I was growing up, not by law, but might as well have been by law. There was a black side of town, a white side of town and a rich white side of town, and I was in the working-class, poor white side of town when one of the worst race riots of the 1960s broke out.”
The girl who is at the center of the story is based on a real person. She was two years younger than Bauer at the time (the playwright was 16, and Vivian was 14).
“She was killed by a white policeman’s bullet to the back of her head, and this triggered this riot,” Bauer said. “And it was a traumatic event from my young adulthood. I’ve never forgotten it, and no one ever said anything about this young girl, nothing except her name, her age at best and the way she died.”
A SECOND TIME
Vivian’s Music, 1969 is actually the second time Bauer has attempted to adapt this real-life story for the stage. The first time was a play called My Occasion of Sin, which took a different approach to the time period and the issues of her hometown. That previous play had a protagonist who was a white girl, essentially a fill-in for Bauer. Vivian was only a side character.
“But it turned out that it really should have been Vivian’s play,” Bauer said. “So I had that play produced several places, including Urban Stages in New York and Detroit Rep, but I was never satisfied with it. And I just stripped all the white characters out of it and put two black actors on stage, Vivian and perhaps her father, Luigi, and made them the protagonists of the story. Then, they sort of told it themselves. That was the magic, was to allow them to tell their story, and I’m just channeling it.”
Bauer said Vivian’s Music, 1969 is not an example of documentary theater. She did not conduct a lot of research on the race riots or the initial incident that was emblazoned in her memory. She did not interview anyone. Instead, the play stands as an “imagination story.”
“It’s a writer’s take, so it’s inspired by a real event,” she said. “Jazz is a big part of this play, and I grew up around, in part, black jazz musicians. So I didn’t have to do a lot of research. A lot of this comes out of my gut and my writer’s imagination.”
Vivian’s Music, 1969, which is now playing at Midtown Manhattan’s 59E59 Theaters through Dec. 2, is directed by Glory Kadigan and features the acting talents of Russell Jordan and Kailah S. King. Good Works Productions serve as producers on the play. It previously played 59E59’s East to Edinburgh festival and the actual Edinburgh Fringe.
When audience members leave a performance, Bauer hopes there is a connection made with headlines in 2018.
“Unfortunately this story remains all too timely,” she said. “So instead of writing a polemical play about a political issue, what this play does is it creates a human being, a flesh-and-blood human being that the audience identifies with, and I think it takes an awareness of Black Lives Matter into the world of art where I think it can be very potent and powerful. So unfortunately it remains timely.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Vivian’s Music, 1969, written by Monica Bauer and directed by Glory Kadigan, is now playing 59E59 Theaters in Midtown Manhattan. The production stars Russell Jordan and Kailah S. King. Click here for more information and tickets.
