Brash civil-rights activist takes on the KKK in Best of Enemies
Credit to Author: Shawn Conner| Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2020 17:15:47 +0000
Best of Enemies
When: Feb. 28-March 21
Where: Pacific Theatre, 1440 W. 12th St., Vancouver
Tickets: $20-36.50 at pacifictheatre.org
Set in 1971, and based on true events, Best of Enemies pits grassroots civil rights activist Ann Atwater against KKK leader CP Ellis in North Carolina over school desegregation.
Atwater “had a loud voice and a big mouth,” said Celia Aloma, who plays the brash historical figure (who passed in 2016) in an upcoming production. “She also has these zingers. My favourite is ‘You think you’re Jesus Christ coming to church on Palm Sunday and I think you’re the ass he rode in on.’”
The Pacific Theatre presentation marks the Canadian premiere of the play, by Mark St. Germain, which in turn was inspired by a 1996 book, The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South by Osha Gray Davidson. (The book also inspired a 2019 movie with Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell.) Ian Farthing directs Aloma, Rob Salvador, Anthony Santiago and Rebecca deBoer.
“It’s not very often I get to audition for roles that are fully-fleshed characters and who aren’t racist stereotypes,” said Aloma.
To prepare for the role, the actor listened to recordings of Atwater “to get the cadence just right.”
She also delved into the background of the activist, who was 36 when she took on the KKK. Atwater’s father was a church deacon and a sharecropper.
“She said her whole life she was taught to survive,” Aloma said. “And she wanted to show everyone else in her community how they could survive.”
As her character and Ellis clash in a public forum, they discover they share a mutual enemy. But Best of Enemies is unflinching in its portrayal of racism, particularly in Ellis’ convictions (i.e. “Slavery’s a biblical right”). Aloma says that being on the receiving end of such hate to tell a story doesn’t take a lot out of her.
“The point is to share their story and what they went through in their time,” she said. “That’s what I focus on instead of the racism, even as we’re pretending.”
In its straightforward narrative approach, Best of Enemies is different from, say, The Shipment. That experimental play (by American playwright Young Jean Lee; SpeakEasy Theatre presented its production last year at the Firehall) attempts to turn racist stereotypes on their heads through caricature and inversion.
“There’s room for both kinds of stories,” Aloma said. “Just as there are different types of racism. I grew up facing institutional racism.” When she was in middle-school she expressed interest in attending an arts high school, she says. “My teacher refused to give me the proper documents. She told me that wasn’t a place for me because it was mostly white. Then when she did give me the papers it was after the deadline.” And then there is flat-out, in-your-face racism, like being called a derogatory term on the bus.
“There are different ways of telling stories just as there are different ways we’re facing racism and classism,” Aloma said. “Today, it might not be blacks, it might be Indigenous or Muslim people. There’s always someone facing inequality. And our job is to fight it by telling these stories.”