Fictional play helps make history real

When the family play "Color Me Dark" was performed in Colorado recently, actor Jefferson Russell said, a young boy stood up during a question-and-answer period after the show.

"He said: 'I don't understand. Did this stuff really happen?' "

That's why historical theater is so important, Russell said.

Though the play deals with what must have seemed like ancient history to the boy — the Great Migration of more than 1 million African Americans from the Southern states to the North — "the fact that he asked that question let us know he's open to learning about this country," Russell said.

"It's important for us to see and to know this is a part of our history, not just black history but American history," Russell added.

Set in 1919 in Tennessee and Chicago, "Color Me Dark" is presented by the Kennedy Center Imagination Celebration. Adapted for the stage by Jerome Hairston from a novel by Patricia McKissack, it covers a period of American history seen through the eyes of a young girl named Nellie Lee Love, who is part of the Great Migration.

"In the early 1900s, folks migrated from the South up North for a better life," Russell said. "That was the greatest mass migration in our country's history."

"Color Me Dark" will play at 2 and 4 p.m. Sunday at the Everett Performing Arts Center.

In the hourlong production, Nellie's Uncle Pace returns from fighting in World War I, after being accepted in Europe as a hero. But back in Tennessee, he is persecuted by the Ku Klux Klan.

"There's an irony: He's fighting for liberty and democracy, and back home he's killed because he's a black man in the South," Russell said.

Nellie's older sister, Erma Jean, is with her uncle when he dies, and the trauma renders her speechless. The family sends her and her father to their Uncle Meese's home in Chicago, to find a doctor to help her. Eventually, the whole family moves north.

Russell stressed there are laughs in the show, too, especially as Nellie and her family adjust to life in Chicago, where Meese runs a nightclub.

"They don't know what a nightclub is, and their friend Rosie, a transplant from Mississippi, makes sure the girls are citified, integrated into what it is to be in Chicago," he said.

"Her trying to show the girls how to act while living in the city — getting rid of their country ways — is a very funny scene."

A musical score that includes bluegrass, gospel and jazz helps set the time and place. The cast of seven — Jeorge Watson, Bernie Alston, Fatima Quander, Danielle A. Drakes, Gabriel Sigal, Goldie E. Patrick and Russell — is directed by Ricardo Khan.

The Kennedy Center Imagination Celebration, one of the country's most acclaimed youth-theater programs, has been touring the show in the Western states. The tour usually changes casts in fall and winter. This cast, which was formed in January, will take the show back to the Southeast before winding up in April, Russell said.

"What I love about doing these pieces is that it's all about telling these stories that are most directly targeted toward theater for young people," he said.

In this show, "there's a lot of humor and a lot of history to it, and we're telling a wonderful story about an important chapter of the history of this country."

Aimed at ages 8 and up, the show hints at the rougher issues without showing them. And it can speak to many people coping with displacement.

The universal issue, Russell said, is that "hope has thrust them forward to make a better life for their children. They have their challenges in the play once they get to Chicago, but [the theme is] as long as we stick together, we'll weather this storm and there will be a brighter day."

The night the actors performed in Colorado, Russell said, "we had evacuees from the Gulf region whose houses were destroyed, who lost loved ones, probably, watching our show."

"Families of soldiers who are overseas were also watching the show," he said. "It helped put in perspective what we're doing. We're storytelling, and the story we'll be telling with 'Color Me Dark' is important."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com

Information in this article, originally published February 1, 2006, was corrected February 7, 2006. In a previous photo caption, Danielle Drakes was misidentified as Bernie Alston.