Gullah, the language and Afro-centric culture of blacks living in the Lowcountry regions of South Carolina and Georgia, is seldom heard during the National Black Theatre Festival.
Cedric Mays sees that as an opportunity.
Mays studied acting at UNC School of the Arts, graduating in 2006. He has written a play in which Gullah is spoken and aspects of contemporary Gullah culture are explored. It’s called Buh Fuh De Ro Uh Saints (“But For The Row Of Saints”), and it will be read today in Studio 713 in the School of Drama at UNCSA.
Mays, 27, is from South Carolina but didn’t know much about the Gullah people until he did some research on them at the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, which he described as the “hub of Gullah traditions and culture.” When he arrived there, he was asked to explain his interest in Gullah culture.
“I said, ‘How could I not be interested in the culture? It is my culture.’ When I said that, I got this look of, like, ‘Wow, that’s the answer we like to hear.’”
Mays had intended for Saints to be read in the festival’s Readers’ Theatre but balked at a stipulation that the writers of plays not direct or act in them. This enables playwrights to focus on the writing and get the information they need to improve their plays, said Garland Lee Thompson Jr., one of the Readers’ Theatre organizers. “They’re not going to get that information if they’re thinking about other things.”
Readers’ Theatre, a mainstay of the festival since it began in 1989, aims to bring plays to life in a way that instantly lets a writer know what works and what doesn’t. Does the audience respond appropriately? Do the lines flow well? Between 25 and 30 plays are expected to be read during midday and late-night presentations at the Marriott Hotel through Saturday, Thompson said.
Mays’ play Saints depicts workers on St. Helena reacting to the news of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination. Do they continue building a cabin in his honor? Or do they abandon the project? (Mays said that King and his followers came to St. Helena to discuss strategies in secret.)
He doesn’t use King’s name in the play. “I don’t want it to be a play about King,” he said. “I want it to be a play about these people. Ideas and philosophies are going on; these ideas shape a story.”
Mays suggested that if a movement such as civil rights is successful, it can generate its own momentum, regardless of what happens to its leaders.
Will the audience have trouble understanding the Gullah language in Mays’ play? He doesn’t think so. “It is not as difficult to understand as one might think,” he said. “It’s very much understandable; it’s just the way the words are put together in a sentence that may give people some problems.… When we hear Shakespeare, we accept that that’s the way the people speak. It is we, the audience members, who have to attune our ear to their world.”
Mays still thinks of himself as an actor. But having tried to make it in the real world of auditions for a few years, he has found few opportunities for himself and other black actors. He sees Buh Fuh and similar efforts as a solution. “Not that much work is being generated (for black actors),” he said. “What better way to generate work than to write it?”
■ Cedric Mays’ Buh Fuh De Ro Uh Saints (But For the Row of Saints) will be read at 3 p.m. today in Studio 713 in the School of Drama at UNCSA. The reading is free and open to the public. For information, call Mays at 926-1655. The National Black Theatre Festival Readers’ Theatre, will be at 11:30 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. through Saturday in the Winston, Piedmont and Bethabara rooms of the Marriott Hotel. Admission is free.
■ Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).