To make our play successful we decided to shock the audience. They needed to feel the pain and suffering of the blacks and resent the white race. So I suggested we use a recognisable symbol from the holocaust that was responsible for millions of innocent murders. The Star of David labeled every Jew as if they were a herd of cattle, some lower being that deserved no pride. Similarly we would label Cassie and TJ as they entered the café with a bold label saying ‘NEGRO’. This would distinguish their character as well as make the audience feel uncomfortable and embarrassed for them.
One of my group members, Adam, decided to increase the hatred portrayed here, and Mockingly stop them in front of the entire café to viciously slap the label onto their arms.
As they were labeled the group whispered ‘strange fruit’, a source that we had used earlier to show the feelings of black people using different techniques. Hopefully the low whispering voices using a song that is all about unfair death would create an uneasy atmosphere.
The pace of the play runs reasonably slow and calm until we mark the moment that Cassie tugs at the waitress’s sleeve. The white customers make a sudden ‘bang’ as they stamp on the floor, bang on the desk or thrust their chairs backwards and stand enclosed around Cassie like a prison.
The lights turn red at this moment. Red is often associated with fear, danger and maybe even blood so we thought it would add to the tension and suspense being created. There would be a pause for 5 seconds to allow the audience to take in what has just happened.
We use choral speaking to drown out Cassie’s cries as we push her towards the exit showing our strength against her.
“How dare you argue with us!”
“You make me sick.”
“You Nigger!”
.
The second scene includes just Cassie and TJ on the street outside after being humiliated and thrown out of the café. Although Cassie always speaks her mind and expresses her true feelings, TJ bottles up his emotions and views. This meant that we had to find another way of letting the audience know what he was feeling. Each character gives a short monologue written by Penny and Sean who play them to express their thoughts. The monologues were more appropriate because it symbolises that black slaves weren’t allowed to speak to each other or show their true feelings. This meant that the audience could hear something that would never have been said out loud.
On Cassie’s cue “ Things are going to change.” There is a blackout that remains for several minutes as we all speak different lines to audience members making them feel included and uncomfortable. Getting louder and louder and in more furious and desperate tones of voice a climax occurs, the lights come up and I quietly read my line one more time
“ So much hatred, so little reason”
We do this to symbolise the black people, later on in time finally standing up for themselves. It was suggested that we wear costumes of the time that Martin Luther King stood up for their rights but being set around the sixties, the costumes may have detracted from the seriousness of it all.
I researched speeches from Martin Luther King and similar figures and suggested that we all use them to show why he was fighting for his rights and how.
My speech was from a poet describing the discrimination of black people:
I swear to the lord,
I just can’t see
Why democracy means,
Everyone but me.
Sometimes it is the simplest of explanations and movements that has the largest effect.
The last scene returned to the café location, but further on in time. We all play the same roles as before and Cassie and TJ are different black customers. They are served and TJ requests a ‘white’ coffee but we finish it without letting the audience know whether he got what he had been fighting for. The only clue the audience has that everything turns out differently is the way the rest of the customers and the waitress reacts. We sit peacefully, smiling, not even acknowledging the situation, and leaving it on a cliffhanger. This ending satisfies the audience that out of the all of the horrors that happened hundreds of years ago when black men and women were treated like animals, justice is served. This is equality.
The different texts that we use during our performance of “ Roll Of Thunder Hear My Cry” are Speeches from Martin Luther King and similar figures, a line from “ Strange Fruit”, and a script we have devised our self.
When performing it to the audience, we all agreed that for the play to have full impact on them, they needed to feel totally involved. Everything that we were experiencing through the characters they had to feel themselves. So they were sat in closely around us in a horseshoe, but spaced apart from one another to make them feel vulnerable when we interacted with them.
