arts & entertainment
Portland Center Stage's Oklahoma! makes Waves
lisa loving
of The Skanner News
M
aking waves in the
local theater scene
this month is
Portland Center Stage’s all-
Black production of the
musical Oklahoma! The
show is brilliantly staged
with the original score, cho-
reography by Agnes de
Mille and a cast chosen
from theaters around the
country -- backed by
Portland’s very best produc-
tion artists including direc-
tion by Chris Coleman,
scenery
by
William
Bloodgood and voice
coaching
by
Mary
McDonald-Lewis.
Nevertheless the refiguring
of this classic prairie love
affair – for the first time
ever set in an African
American town --
has touched a
nerve
among
Portlanders
who’ve
never
heard the history
of Black cow-
boys.
The
Skanner News
recently sat down with the
two leading actors in the
show, Brianna Horne, who
plays Laurey, and Rodney
Hicks, starring as Curley, to
talk about their work in
Oklahoma!
brianna: It’s such a joy. I
mean we can’t say enough
how exciting it is to take on
roles like this – traditional
musical theater roles. To
sing the score of Rogers and
Hammerstein.
It’s…we
don’t get to do it. We don’t
get to do it ever. So to
express this love story
between two people every
night is…it’s such a gift.
rodney: And to do it in a
way that’s rooted in reality
makes it that much more
palpable and enjoyable for
the both of us.
TSn: Chris Coleman, the
director, has taken this
musical which – love it or
hate it, everyone knows the
music from this show – and
used it to open a window on
coming from the South
looking for a better life
because of the Jim Crow
laws. When slavery was
done the Jim Crow laws
became even worse. And
then realizing that Black
cowboys, but also the Black
frontier men – that we were
also instrumental in, Black
Americans
and
also
Mexican Americans were
also instrumental in build-
ing Los Angeles. And I did-
n’t ever hear that.
brianna: Didn’t know it.
TSn: So as you perform
this play, are any of the lines
changed? No — you already
said it, nothing’s changed.
rodney: But what it does
– it leaps off the page in a
new way because you have
new people, new
voices speaking
these truths. And a
lot of it – for
example,
‘The
country’s chang-
ing, gotta change
with it.’ ‘They’re
gonna make this
territory into a state, they’re
gonna put it in the union.’
And what that means, it’s
very different -- for white
Americans at that time it
just means they’re going to
get ratified. For Black
Americans, it means there’s
a sense of freedom – anoth-
er sense of freedom for us,
that we can be equal, and I
think Curley says to you
(turning to Brianna), ‘Now
that I have you to help me,
I’m gonna amount to some-
thing yet.’ It’s just powerful.
And you have a monologue
of what you want.
Impeccably produced --
and for the first time ever,
set in an all-Black town
The Skanner news:
When people come here to
see this show is it going to
be the musical they remem-
ber?
brianna: I think absolute-
ly – the music is intact, the
story is intact, it’s just new
faces to the story. So people
that are looking for that tra-
ditional show that they love
with the music and charac-
ters, it’s all there. It’s a dif-
ferent spin on it and I think
people will love it and
embrace it.
rodney: To add onto that,
it’s just from a different per-
spective: same story, just
different location.
TSn: What does it mean
to you to be here in Portland
performing this show?
a different experience than
most Portland audiences
have ever had. All-Black
towns in Oklahoma? Most
people don’t even know
what you’re talking about.
Yet this is American history.
So you did learn something
from doing this show. Talk a
little about what was sur-
prising to you.
brianna: I think just the
history of Black cowboys.
My dad is a fan of cowboy
movies so I’ve seen them
onscreen, in the black and
white movies and every-
thing. But to understand the
history of Blacks – prosper-
ous Blacks in Oklahoma at
that time, that they were
owners of land, that this was
a prosperous time for people
– I didn’t know that. I didn’t
know that before taking on
this project.
brianna: Absolutely. And
it was attainable at that
time. I think that’s the joy,
the desire that they had at
that time, and the hope that
was so prevalent. It just
grounds the piece – you feel
the hope of the characters.
rodney:
And
that
Oklahoma at that time had
the largest population of
Black Americans, because
of the Black exodus in, I
believe, 1889, of Blacks
rodney: Hope, yes, from
the minute the show starts.
It’s …without struggle
there’s no hope. And what’s
great about this casting
Black actors, you don’t
have to see the struggle –
we already know the strug-
gle. We already know the
history of it. Now you’re
going to see the hope. And I
think that’s what this does.
Because we’ve seen the
struggle; we’ve seen all the
plays, all the musicals about
Black America, it’s always
about the struggle. And this
is hope.
TSn: One of the things
that struck me when I first
heard of this show -- first of
all I had to just stand and
think about it. But do you
feel as though this show,
and this production of it
speaks to the universality of
the very best theater?
brianna: Absolutely.
rodney: Very much. Very
much so. You can tell in our
audiences, you can feel the
energy coming in with
expectations – not knowing,
how are they going to sing
it? And Mary Mac, she does
the dialect. She grounded it
in Southern dialect, so
therefore that switches
things as well. Southern
people – there’s a grounded-
ness to them. And there’s an
at-ease and at-home feeling,
and when we speak that
dialect you forget that we’re
Black.
Read the rest of this
story online at
www.theskanner.com
G
On ene
lin ral A
e d d
isc mis
ou sio
nt n
ava $2
ila 0
ble
october 12, 2011 The Portland Skanner Page 7