How often do any of us realize, in the moment, that we’re in a Moment with a capital “M”—the minute details of which merit being burned into our memory?
A young writer was in the audience of a 1995 writers’ conference when one of America’s most esteemed playwrights chose to recite some of his poetry rather than deliver a prepared speech. That young writer was Steven Sapp, now a member of UNIVERSES, OSF’s ensemble in residence. The playwright was August Wilson, Tony and Pulitzer Prize–winning artist behind 10 plays about African-American lives in the 20th century.
“I can remember where I was sitting,” he says. “I can remember where he was standing. I can remember looking around the room and going, ‘Is no one here?’ Because no one responded. Everyone was just kind of listening, and I was like, ‘Do you not all hear this? What is that?’”
Every new play that emerged over the remaining 10 years of Wilson’s life, while a gift, left Steven wondering where that poetry was. Jump ahead to 2012, the year UNIVERSES—Steven, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp and William Ruiz, a.k.a. Ninja—premiered their musical Party People at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Steven mentioned his ongoing desire to know more about Wilson’s poetry to fellow cast member G. Valmont Thomas (Falstaff in both parts of Henry IV this season), who had been a close friend of Wilson and his widow, Constanza Romero.
G. Val suggested reaching out to Romero, who ultimately granted UNIVERSES access to a box full of Wilson’s poetry and written ideas, some of it handwritten on napkins and the backs of menus, some typed, some decorated with doodles and his name scribbled over and over again.
That connection to the Wilson estate is something “we wouldn’t have had if we had never come to OSF and met G. Val,” Mildred says. And without that connection UNIVERSES wouldn’t have created UniSon, a new musical premiering this season at OSF, inspired by Wilson’s poetry.
Protecting a legacy
When the Bronx-based UNIVERSES began interviewing members of the Black Panthers and Young Lords for Party People—an American Revolutions commission that has completed runs at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and New York’s Public Theater since its 2012 world premiere here—they knew part of their task would be to protect the legacy of the often-misrepresented people whose stories they were bringing to the stage, and they feel the same responsibility toward Wilson.
“There is young poetry in there that will not make it into our show because he made it to a certain level, and we want to make sure that level is recognized,” says Mildred, who found that while some of Wilson’s early attempts at verse made her hope she’d destroyed all the poems she wrote at age 17, most of his writing seems downright Shakespearean. They’ve agreed that David Carey, UniSon’s voice and text director, “is gonna have a ball in this world, trying to get us to roll that in our mouths.”
UniSon is not a biographical work about Wilson, but it is influenced by the insight UNIVERSES gained about the artist and other poets who have mentored them on their own journeys. Had these poems come out at the same time as Wilson’s plays, UNIVERSES believe the beloved writer might be viewed in a more complex and complete light, reflective of the rough-around-the-edges character who sometimes emerged when interviewed.
In UniSon, a poet (portrayed by Steven) has passed away and left an inheritance to his apprentice (Asia Mark) that includes a trunk of poetry he didn’t want the world to see. When the apprentice opens the box, she unleashes what Wilson refers to in one poem as seven “terrors”—sources of lust, nurturing, fear, guilt and violence during his lifetime that are embodied by Mildred, Ninja, Christiana Clark, Kevin Kenerly, Rodney Gardiner, Yvette Monique Clark and Jonathan Luke Stevens.
“Seven different sides of the things you hide in your mind.
Seven different looks of the things you write in your books.
Seven different voices that whisper in your ears.
That sacrilegious symphony that sounds so sincere.
Seven chakras, seven virtues, seven deadly sins.
Seven colors in the rainbow that lives within
bless and undress you for your crimes.
On the seventh day, seven priests with seven trumpets
March around your city, seven times.”
(Lyrics by UNIVERSES from UniSon)
“At the beginning, the apprentice is totally enamored of the poet, as is the world with August Wilson,” Mildred says. “Can’t do no wrong. Same thing with Shakespeare, right? Who knows what kind of skeletons Shakespeare had in his closet?”
Because the apprentice opened the trunk, the poet must now return from the grave to deal with what he left unresolved. The apprentice must deal with her shattered image of the artist she had idolized—and recognize that she, like all flawed humans, has her own terrors to come to terms with before her own time on Earth is up.
Not “an evening of August Wilson poetry”
Though UniSon is inspired by and incorporates some of Wilson’s poems, at its core it’s a new creation by the three poets/songwriters/playwrights/performers of UNIVERSES, in association with Romero. “I was thinking originally we would say that August’s poetry was the spine of the play, but it’s not,” Mildred observes. “It’s more like the chakras; so it’s bringing different energies to different parts of the body of the play.”
Also bringing their creative energies to the musical are Broken Chord and the critically acclaimed Toshi Reagon, co-composers with UNIVERSES. As of now, the show mixes blues, hip-hop, R&B, classical music and jazz. Leading the creative team, which included August Wilson scholar and dramaturg Joan Herrington, is director Robert O’Hara, who helmed The Wiz in 2016.
UNIVERSES headed into rehearsals in late February with a complete script, but according to UNIVERSES, “it’s a fluid document until opening night.” They look forward to O’Hara, the design team and their originating actors having strong opinions and profound influence in the rehearsal room.
“We’re going to be real vulnerable in here,” says Steven, who marvels at the journey from that first encounter with Wilson’s poetry in 1995—straight from the poet’s mouth—to bringing this play to life in 2017. “We’re going to get there, and that’s exciting.”
UniSon previews April 19—April 22, opens April 23 and runs through October 28 in the Angus Bowmer Theatre.