Less than 48 hours after the curtain went up Nov. 7 on “Clybourne Park,” director Lisa Gaye Dixon was off to New York, leaving the cast of U. of I. theater students to carry on through the end of the show’s 10-day run.
“In the professional world, once a show goes up, the director’s job is done,” said Dixon, a professor of theater at Illinois. “I was there opening night and the second night. We usually attend the closing performance, just to see how the actors have grown, but I wasn’t able to do that this time.”
Instead, Dixon was in rehearsals at Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, N.Y., where she is playing the title role in “Black Pearl Sings!” – a play loosely based on the true story of musicologist John Lomax’s discovery and subsequent promotion of blues virtuoso Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter. Playwright Frank Higgins recast the story with Susannah, a folk song collector for the Library of Congress, discovering Alberta “Black Pearl” Johnson in a Texas prison. Hoping that Pearl’s treasure trove of Gullah folk songs will help advance her musicology career, Susannah, played by Emily Dorsch (Cornelia Predock in “Boardwalk Empire”), finagles a parole and takes Pearl to New York City. Both women sing, mostly a cappella (Dorsch’s character sometimes uses an autoharp), but “Black Pearl” isn’t your typical musical.
“It starts out as a business proposition for each woman, but then that grows into an unlikely friendship,” Dixon said. “It addresses the questions of what is exploitation, what is genuine care. It deals with race, gender and female friendship.”
Race, gender and female power are some of Dixon’s favorite provocative topics. “Clybourne Park,” for example, was inspired by “A Raisin in the Sun,” and the first act, set in 1959, tells the story of the white family who sold their home to black buyers. The second act, set in the same property in 2009, shifts perspective to a white couple buying into what has become a predominantly black neighborhood undergoing gentrification. Last year, Dixon directed “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” a courtroom drama in which Judas tries to get out of purgatory (“It’s not for people who like religion straight, no chaser,” she told The News-Gazette). And when she’s not onstage, or teaching acting to Illinois undergraduates, Dixon is collaborating with internationally renowned choreographer and movement director Struan Leslie (formerly head of movement at London’s Royal Shakespeare Company) on a new improvisatory text and movement work examining gender, sexuality and female power.
Dixon began her professional career at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago and has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, at the Globe Theatre in London, at regional theaters around the U.S. and in independent films.
The Kitchen Theatre’s production of “Black Pearl Sings!” runs through Dec. 22. Dixon will return to Champaign for a few weeks before resuming her role Jan. 23 through Feb. 9 at the Geva Theatre in Rochester, N.Y.