arts & entertainment
More Than Just a Play About Breast Cancer
By Brian Stimson
Of The Skanner News
P
assinArt: A Theater Company will be
premiering their production of Oni
Faida Lampley’s “Tough Titty” – a
story about one African American woman’s
struggle to deal with a breast cancer diagno-
sis.
But don’t let the play’s main theme fool
you. Director A. Nannette Taylor says the
performance isn’t just for those women –
and men – who have experienced breast
cancer in their lives. The play is about much
more than that.
The performance runs March 11 to 26 on
Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. at the Ethos
at Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center,
5340 N. Interstate Ave. Matinees run at 3
p.m. on weekends.
Playwright Oni Faida Lampley’s play is,
for all practical purposes, an autobiography
of her battle with malignant breast cancer –
with names and some details changed.
Lampley’s real-life struggle was a chronic
one. Her cancer moved from her breast to
her brain and other parts of her body – even-
tually taking her life in 2008.
“When I read the script, I thought, yes,
this is a story that needs to be told,” Taylor
told The Skanner News. “Also, my sister is
a breast cancer survivor, so there’s some
personal kinds of things involved. After
reading the script I liked what it said and the
way it said it. It focused on a certain seg-
ment of the population, but everything that
is said in it, applies to everybody.”
When Lampley was first diagnosed, she
was in extreme denial. After all, every one
of those faces on breast cancer pamphlets
were White. Hers wasn’t. Writing in an arti-
cle for Self magazine in 2007, Lampley said
she had no risk factors, her lifestyle strictly
avoided any behavior or substance that
could cause cancer. She was mostly a vege-
tarian.
But yet, it still happened.
Lampley’s character in the play – Angela
– mirrors the frustrations of a person who
did everything right in life, says RaChelle
Schmidt, who plays Angela in the PassinArt
production.
“Her main way of dealing with every-
thing, is to minimize the circumstances,”
Schmidt says. “What she’s getting from her
loved ones, is how she should be dealing
with it. I think she’s pretty frustrated with
the people in her life. She’s looking for an
answer, she wants to know how this thing’s
going to be solved, and everyone from her
best friend, to her husband, to God, she
keeps wanting them explain to her, but they
keep explaining that it just happens.”
Anya Pearson, who plays Angela’s long-
time friend Rashida, says she’s one such
character in Angela’s life. Pearson’s
Rashida is convinced that Angela should be
dealing with the cancer her way or no way.
“But really, she doesn’t know what she’s
talking about,” Pearson says of Rashida.
“So she’s one of those friends. She’s really
fun to play.”
Drammy Award-winner Kenneth Dembo,
who plays Angela’s husband Shaka, says
the couple’s love story is complicated by
their new reality.
“It’s easy for him to come off as extreme-
ly angry, but I don’t think he’s angry at all,”
Dembo said. “He’s hurt, he’s confused, he
doesn’t know how to show those emotions
without going to those old stereotypes of
being weak. So he’s really trying to be
strong, and it’s coming across, for lack of a
better word, as an asshole.”
As Shaka feels left behind in his relation-
ship with his wife, he picks up the slack at
home, taking care of the kids and house
work.
“He really loves his wife and it really ter-
rifies him that she’s not going to be there,”
he said. “He’s really ticked off about that.
He wants to take away this pain but he does-
n’t know how. He can’t.”
While the play has been described as a
breast cancer pamphlet for Black women,
Taylor says she’s also tried to make it
appeal to the universal impact breast cancer
has on everyone who knows someone with
the diagnosis. She also doesn’t want it to be
unfairly pigeonholed.
“The subject matter is what it is,” she
said. “It’s also a beautiful love story. It’s a
story of friendship, of discovery, of explo-
ration and honestly it has something to say
to everybody.”
Many of the actors in the play – including
Pearson – play more than one role, with
shifting ethnicities and relationships with
Angela. Isha Tell told The Skanner News
it’s been a great challenge to take on such a
range of roles.
“At first I didn’t’ think I’d be able to do
it,” Tell said. “Especially when you switch
up the characters, you want one character to
be so different from the other. And incorpo-
rating different accents and things like that.
It was a big challenge.”
Taylor said some of the biggest chal-
lenges for a director are to find and assem-
ble the right cast.
“It’s a hugely collaborative effort,” she
said. “It’s a very moving piece, it’s a very
powerful piece and it’s a very honest piece.
… And one of the things I wanted to do is
allow the characters to be created so there is
a real true humanity and reality.”
For Schmidt’s Angela, there was a real
life person to deal with. Although the play-
wright was an actor who had been featured
on several television shows, Schmidt said
she didn’t watch any archival footage.
“I found a lot of information of stories
that happened to her that seem to be verba-
tim to things in the play,” she said.
Many of the cast members say their own
experiences with cancer have impacted
their devotion to the production. For
Schmidt, a real-life crisis may affect her
performance in unknown ways.
This Thursday, her mother died unexpect-
edly.
“Ironically, 14 years ago when my father
died, I was at the same exact point in a
show,” she said. “It was a completely dif-
ferent show, it was a farcical comedy. I
know that it saved my sanity to go and do
the show and immerse myself.”
March 9, 2011 The Portland Skanner page 7