‘Sonny’s Blues’ captures the struggle for African-Americans to find their own identity
James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” navigates two sides of the African-American experience: assimilation versus life as a perpetual outcast.
The Bay Area’s Word for Word Performing Arts Company is bringing one of the author’s finest early works to Santa Fe. The performance opens at the Lensic Performing Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 12.
Da’Mon Vann plays the title role in “Sonny’s Blues,” a tormented jazz pianist who has rejected a conventional life.
Sonny’s brother, a schoolteacher and family man, is the nameless narrator who provides the stage direction through the original text. Famed for staging short stories verbatim, Word for Word incorporates literally every sentence Baldwin used.
“You revel in all of the words,” Vann said in a telephone interview. “There is an underlying richness you can bring to the piece incorporating that stage direction. It makes it even more meaty. People are awed at how it really pulls them in and colors the play.”
For director Margo Hall, Word for Word’s approach brings freedom. Without explicit instructions, the director can design her own set, costumes and music.
“There are no boundaries; there’s just words on a page,” she said.
Set in 1950s Harlem, the story pits Sonny against his disapproving brother, as jazz mirrors the pulse of their pain. In the end, Sonny invites his brother to a Greenwich Village nightclub to watch him perform. As Sonny plays the music that expresses his soul, the brothers come to a deeper understanding that had once eluded them. The music helps Sonny distill his demons, bolstering his endurance and giving him the strength to triumph.
“Sonny’s a wonderful, rich character,” Vann said. “He doesn’t have a great relationship with his father. He’s very quiet, very introverted, yet he’s trying to deal with a lot of his torment and turmoil going on within him and bringing this creative desire and not knowing what to do with it.”
Sonny’s father discouraged his musical ambitions, but he is inexorably drawn to the fast life of bebop and the blues — particularly the music of Charlie Parker.
Sonny takes his adulation literally, believing he must emulate Bird’s taste for heroin, as well as his musical genius. Vann researched heroin addiction to play the role, studying the miniseries “The Corner,” a visceral depiction of urban drug addiction, written by the authors of HBO’s acclaimed series “The Wire.”
“It was definitely something James Baldwin knew about, not that he did it — how it hits you in the gut,” Vann said.
Hall found echoes of today’s celebrity culture in Sonny’s yearning desperation.
“I know that’s so prevalent today with rappers,” she said. Sonny’s “ ‘Brother’ is a different animal. He doesn’t get it at all. It’s very scary for him because he only sees the downside.”
“Brother” has bought into the middleclass American dream. He served in the military, went to school and repressed his feelings. Although he has a steady job, he still lives in the projects.
“Even though he’s fighting for his country, he’s not really free,” Hall said. “A lot of African Americans thought, ‘If I fight for my country, I will be applauded.’ Well, that didn’t happen.”
Baldwin’s story bristled with an acute resonance for Hall, who grew up in Detroit listening to live jazz in the family basement. Her father practiced with his band while he penned arrangements for the Supremes and Aretha Franklin.
“As soon as I read it, the music just jumped out to me,” she said. “It’s about two brothers who have taken different paths in life and are trying to connect with each other. Music is communal, and this is the only way they can come together.”
A fitness trainer who operates his own business, Vann started acting in college on a dare. He studied theology in the Bay Area, performing as an extra and in small theaters to support himself. He hadn’t acted for several years when a friend told him about “Sonny’s Blues.”
The story’s continued relevance is both cutting and freeing.
“You would swear that the story was written yesterday,” he said. “A lot of the issues Baldwin tackled, from religion to politics to the family, still resonate today. It’s a great American story. It’s also disturbing, too. You wonder how far we really have come.”
If you go
WHAT: James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” by Word for Word Performing Arts Co.
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 12
WHERE: Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St.
HOW MUCH: $15-$25; 988-1234 or www.ticketssantafe.org
