The book Native Son has blessed so many lives since it’s been in publication. The story is all about social justice back in the 1930’s. Chicago was the spot where an African-American youth named Bigger Thomas lived in utter poverty in a poor area on the southside.
Here’s more of a vivid description from South Pasadenan.
Jon Chaffin stars as Bigger Thomas, suffocating in rat-infested poverty on Chicago’s South Side, with Noel Arthur as “The Black Rat” — the manifestation of Bigger’s double consciousness. When a job as the family chauffeur brings him into the white world of wealthy Mrs. Dalton (Gigi Bermingham), her free-thinking daughter, Mary (Ellis Greer) and Mary’s Communist boyfriend, Jan (Matthew Grondin), circumstances spiral out of control. The ensemble also features Mildred Marie Langford, Ned Mochel, Victoria Platt and Brandon Rachal. (Unlike most Antaeus productions, Native Son is single-cast.)
Double consciousness, according to W.E.B. Du Bois, refers to the effects of white racism — to “the sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”
“This is the story of a young black man’s life in 1939 America, who from birth is compelled to pass through a tragic gauntlet of oppression,” states Chapman. “The play moves like a runaway train. The tension starts at the top and ratchets up from there.”
“Everything is told from from Bigger’s point of view, through his lens,” explains Kelley. “The adaptation is an exploration of the concept of double consciousness as it relates to the concept of one’s ability to fly or be free. Think of it as a mind-map.”
One of the earliest successful attempts to explain the racial divide in America in terms of the social conditions imposed on African Americans by the dominant white society, “Native Son” was an immediate best-seller when it was published by the Book-of-the-Month Club on March 1, 1940. In his 1963 essay “Black Boys and Native Sons,” Irving Howe wrote: “The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever… [it] brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear, and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture.” The novel’s first stage adaptation, written by Wright and Paul Green, was directed by Orson Welles and ran on Broadway for three years.
“The birth of bigger Thomas goes back to my childhood,” Wright wrote. “But there was not just one Bigger, but many of them, more than I could account and more than you suspect… The Bigger Thomases were the only Negroes I know who consistently violated the Jim Crow laws of the South and got away with it, at least for a sweet brief spell. Eventually, the whites who restricted their lives made them pay a terrible price. They were shot, hanged, maimed, lynched, and generally hounded until they were either dead or their spirits broken.”
The play sounds pretty awesome. And you better believe Jon Chaffin will be bringing some of that War sauce he had on The Have And The Have Nots to Native Son.
Scroll down for deets on location and tickets!
Performances of Native Son continue on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at2 p.m., and Mondays at 8 p.m. (dark Monday, May 28) through June 3. There will be one additional Thursday evening performance on May 31 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30 on Thursdays, Fridays and Mondays, and $34 on Saturdays and Sundays.
The Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center is located at 110 East Broadway, Glendale, CA 91205 (between N. Brand Blvd. and Maryland Ave.). The first 90 minutes of parking is free, then $2 per hour, in Glendale Marketplace garage located at 120 S. Maryland Ave (between Broadway and Harvard). The theater is air-conditioned and wheelchair accessible. For reservations and information, call 818-506-1983 or go to www.antaeus.org.
And now….you’re officially in the know.
