Portland observer., May 16, 2018, Page Page 9, Image 17

May 16, 2018
Page 9
Mississippi
Alberta
North Portland
Vancouver
East County
Beaverton
Writing to Make a Difference
Local playwright
debuts new work
after injury
by D anny p eterSon ,
t he p ortlanD o bServer
After an injury and five year hiatus to fo-
cus on family and work, African-American
Portland playwright Kwik Jones is set to
premiere his new play, “Jupiter is Stormy”
for a free one-day-only showing during the
upcoming Memorial Day weekend.
Jones arranged the first rehearsal of the
production just last week, which is set to
premiere at 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 26 at
Kelly’s Olympian in downtown Portland.
The play was originally set to debut late
last month, but complications from a spi-
nal cord injury Jones suffered made putting
the production together unmanageable, so
he canceled that showing. He’s since been
put on a new nerve medication that has en-
abled him to continue working on the play,
although he had to recast it, Jones told the
Portland Observer.
Jones grew up in northeast Portland and
has been writing issue-minded plays lo-
cally, including “Voices,” and “Spotlight,”
for over 20 years. A Jefferson High School
alum, he has been known to use surplus
earnings from his productions to feed the
homeless with his family around the hol-
idays. This time, he’s funneling his gen-
erosity to the audience by premiering the
play at no cost.
“Jupiter is Stormy” centers on African
American teens, Blaze, played by Ari-
es Annitya, and Stormy, played by Netty
McKenzie, who are long-lost loves that
both enjoy alternative subcultures—Blaze
listens to metal and Stormy is a goth girl.
But Blaze has been masquerading as a hip-
hop head to avoid ridicule from his class-
mates. When they’re reunited, Stormy en-
courages him to just be himself.
“It asks the question ‘what’s black?’ Be-
cause I’m black I can’t listen to metal? Be-
cause I’m black I can’t play hockey? Be-
cause I’m black I can’t skydive? Because
you’re white you’re not supposed to do
hip-hop? How come I can’t be who I want
to be and still be accepted by my people?”
Jones said.
The unusual premise was original-
ly meant to be about teens in rival gangs
who fall in love. But when Jones asked his
teenage daughter if there were gangs at her
school, she said there weren’t very many.
Largely, she said, there were the “cool
photo CourteSy S tuDio 20
Actor and playwright Kwik Jones has been a writing issue-minded plays in Portland for over 20 years. His new play, “Jupiter is
Stormy,” follows his return to writing after a spinal cord injury rendered him unable to work.
kids,” the “sports kids,” and then the “goth/
emo” kids.
“So that’s where the story came from.
And when I was doing my research I
found out that there are people…alter-
native lifestyles is what they call them…
they love metal, rock, punk…there’s a
number of African Americans, black peo-
ple, that’s into that. And I was like ‘wow.’
I didn’t have any idea that the subculture
of goth was big for a lot of African Amer-
icans,” Jones said.
Jones used YouTube vlogs of goth teens
as research then used his own imagination
to tie in the story to themes such as civil
rights and gay and lesbian issues. It takes
place in one room, a program to catch up
on academic credits for high school stu-
dents struggling to graduate on time. The
play also took some inspiration from John
Hughes’ film “The Breakfast Club,” a 1985
coming of age drama about teens from
wildly different high school social groups
in detention together.
“I think the theme of the play is really
the imprisonment of people. Here are these
kids that are in a last chance program,
they’re in a credit recovery. They stay in
one room all day, every day. How do they
break from that? How do they break from
what they’re in? Do they want to break
from what they’re in?” Jones said.
The 44 year old playwright said he’d
dabbled in sketches and monologues in
grade school, but phased that out when
he became interested in sports. When
he sustained a chipped bone in his ankle
during his college years of playing foot-
ball at Eastern Oregon State University in
La Grande, he decided to get into writing
plays. His football coach laughed dismis-
sively at the switch, but Jones wrote his
first play that very night—“Both Sides of
C ontinueD on p age 16