Lynn Nottage, playwright (Photograph: Bryan Derballa)
Hollywood gossip isn’t typically my thing. But the controversy that has erupted between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni touches into so many “in this moment” memes, trends and themes that it has taken up residence in the public square. Some of this reminds me of the “blue/black” or “white/gold” dress controversy 10 years ago but with a lot more at stake. (Maybe this one is closer to a blood sport. The Roman Coliseum does come to mind…) The dueling lawsuits and appeals to public opinion are like a fast moving basketball game where the lead changes every minute.
Doreen St. Félix’s summary in her New Yorker piece is well considered:
“Information is misinformation and vice versa. Victims are offenders and offenders are victims. The word that comes up again and again in all the Internet litigation of Lively v. Baldoni is ‘narrative.’ Abuse seems to be far from anyone’s mind. What matters is which side’s story is better suited to the politics of our time.”
What matters is which side’s story is better suited to the politics of our time. That’s clearly a moving target, and it is one that is not necessarily heading to a better and more evolved world. And the unknown element, luck, certainly plays a part. Unfortunately.
This high profile “he said/she said” drama does makes clear how narrative can be weaponized in our winner takes all world. As St. Félix points out, the culture moved into the #MeToo era quicky but we have now moved out. Believing what women say is still difficult in this culture, especially with social media platforms inundated with professional hawkers and influencers. “Lively’s allegations against Baldoni were never going to be seen as brave, but, rather, as the kindling for a culture war.”
It has never been easy being female on this planet.
Meanwhile we all know the longstanding dominance of the western canon: it’s a game plan that has overlooked, misunderstood and denigrated anyone who is not male, white and European. Longstanding, yes. But that doesn’t mean the dials don’t move. Even if it the shifts feel miniscule.
The current “story better suited to the politics of our (particular) time” does have some good aspects. Pens are now in the hands of many non-male, non-white, non-Europeans. There are more voices, even if they are still being shouted over.
Some of those freshly penned voices stay with the canon itself and do a rewrite. For example, Madeline Miller and Anne Carson have artfully reinterpreted Greek mythology with Circe and Autobiography of Red. Percival Everett revisits Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s point of view in James.
Others take us, fully immersed, into their non-canonical worlds: Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Ocean Vuong, Kaveh Akbar, to name a few. Others flip narrative forms upside down, reassigning roles in a way that can make our heads spin: Baby Reindeer, Emilia Perez.
The way narratives evolve and how they speak to the politics of a particular era came to mind when I saw Lynn Nottage’s 1995 play, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, now at the Lyric Stage in Boston.
The play takes its title from a Langston Hughes poem that also seems apropos to this current moment:
Luck
Sometimes a crumb falls
From the tables of joy
Sometimes a bone
Is flung.
To some people
Love is given,
To others
Only heaven.
Set in Brooklyn in the 1950s, the play is a family drama: Godfrey, freshly widowed and devout, moves from the South to Brooklyn with his two teenage daughters. Add to that a politically radicalized aunt and a German refugee who becomes Godfrey’s wife.
“Imagine a pairing…between Tennessee Williams and Lorraine Hansberry, a memory play about a black family, a glass menagerie in the sun… CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY [is] a small window into the past, and this almost voyeuristic glimpse is worth attention.” (New York Post reviewing a previous production of the play)
Crumbs is not Nottage’s most signatory work. (She won the Pulitzer in 2009 and 2017 for her plays Ruin and Sweat.) But narrative seeds that flourish in her later works can also be seen in this 30 year old play.
Nottage dismantles many familiar tropes. This is a family drama dominated by the women. They are not caricatures but four very different human women seeking meaning in their lives. Nottage presents each of their individual journeys, flaws and all, with respect. These characterizations feel refreshing. (August Wilson, our most significant dramatist of Black America, wrote many family dramas. II’m not an expert on his total oeuvre, but most of the Wilson plays I have seen have had a male centric orientation.)
Crumbs also shifts the path of prejudice. Gerta, a white German woman who marries Godfrey quickly, is surprised by how difficult it is to win his family over. Her experience of discrimination, determined by her experience of living in Germany during the war, does not prepare her for the very complicated dynamic she faces in marrying an African American man with a family. Crumbs and bones, both.
Directed by Tasia A. Jones with a strong cast, the Lyric Stage’s production of Crumbs is timely and memorable. Bravi to all. The play runs through February 2.