‘Rachel,’ one of the first plays by a Black American, can be heard Sunday on KGY FM
Written more than a century ago, “Rachel” — one of the first plays by a Black American — reveals a lot about the experience of being Black in America in 2021.
“Unfortunately, we’re still dealing with a lot of the themes in this play,” said Andrea Weston-Smart, who’s directing an all-Black cast in Goldfinch Productions’ radio adaption of the play, airing at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 28, on KGY FM.
“There’s a character who talks about what’s keeping African Americans down, including problems at the ballot box,” she told the Olympian. “We’re dealing with that to this day.”
“History is repeating itself,” agreed Jalen Penn of Tacoma, who plays John Strong, the man who is in love with the title character. “They mention a lynching in the show, and that reminded me of George Floyd and especially Breonna Taylor because a person was pulled out of their home.
“A lot of the things that the characters go through are things I’ve experienced in my day-to-day life,” he told the Olympian. “We chose this show because we wanted people to understand that some of these sentiments from back in the day are still around.”
“I want people to realize that this is not just a story about the past,” Weston-Smart said. “I want them to know what the Black experience is and what we have to deal with.”
Playwright and poet Angelina Weld-Grimké had similar motives when she wrote “Rachel,” first produced in 1916 by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It was a response to D.W. Griffiths’ “The Birth of a Nation,” which depicted members of the Ku Klux Klan as heroes, and an attempt to change minds about the value of Black lives 100 years before the Black Lives Matter movement.
The play is set in a northern city, where Mary Loving (Deborah Baker Hampton of Tacoma) has moved in hopes of protecting her teenage children, Rachel (Randee Wilhelm of Olympia) and Tom (Jordan Hall of Centralia), from the racial violence of the South.
(Rounding out the cast is Michelle Gipson of Lacey, who plays a visitor to the family’s apartment.)
No one will be surprised to learn that the Lovings face racism in their new home as well, and Rachel finds herself wrestling with the myriad ways it affects her life and narrows her choices.
“This is a very real thing,” Weston-Smart told the Olympian. “People of color have to make decisions based on the effects of racism. Parents have to talk to their sons at a young age about what to do when the police pull them over.”
Weston-Smart, last seen on stage in Goldfinch’s 2019 “As You Like It,” is a regular on stage at Olympia Little Theatre and has done her share of backstage work as well, but “Rachel” is her directorial debut.
“This is a new experience for me, period,” she said. “I’ve never worked on a play with these types of themes, and this is my first time working with an all-Black cast. It would be nice to have that happen more often — to have a play with more than one person of color in the cast.”
Penn, who was also featured in “As You Like It” as well as Goldfinch’s 2020 “Dr. Faustus,” echoed that sentiment.
“This is the first time I’ve ever been in a show with all Black people,” he said. “I didn’t know going into this experience how much I needed it. With all the stuff going on out there, it was really refreshing to be present with people who look like me.”
‘Rachel’
What: Goldfinch Productions presents a radio theater version of Angelina Weld-Grimké’s 1916 drama, one of the first American plays written by a Black author about the Black experience.
When: 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 28
Where: 95.3 KGY FM and online (http://www.kgyfm.com/)
Tickets: Free, with donations encouraged
Listen later: Starting at 7 p.m. March 7, “Rachel” will be available on demand on the Goldfinch Podcast Network (https://anchor.fm/gpn).
More information: https://www.goldfinchproductions.com/
This story was originally published February 26, 2021 at 5:45 AM.