One Good Play Deserves Another

Taking its cue from Ntozake Shange’s choreo-poem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” Keith Antar Mason’s “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Homicide When the Streets Were Too Much,” opens this weekend at the Rose Theatre.

“As black men, we add a good deal of joy, wealth and value to the world,” said Mason. “But most of the time, we have to seek (that affirmation) out for ourselves. The picture of black men is one of violence, not caring, an animalistic tendency. Here’s an interesting example: Last Easter Sunday, a person came up to me in Venice and asked if I was the drug man.”

The resemblance to Shange’s title, he said, is no accident. “I saw ‘For Colored Girls’ in ’79 and it just inspired me. As Gertrude Stein said, ‘One good poem deserves another.’ So this is my compliment to (Shange’s) struggle, her vision.” In 1982, Mason mounted two productions of his play, winning the best play-writing award at the Midwest Black Theatre Festival.

Over the last six years, he said, the form of his work remains constant: “It’s still a celebration of life; that hasn’t changed. But the point of view has. I’ve become more jaded. I was in my gray period then, my renaissance. Now I’m in the midst of what I call my cool-jerk period, struggling with all the things black men have to deal with in society--a world that seems to only see us in stereotypical ways.”

“Fear is prevalent through the entire proceedings,” said director Jordan Charney of the suitably titled “Fear,” Irish playwright Mark Brennan’s murder mystery, receiving its American premiere at Actors Alley. The story concerns a British soldier who is killed in Belfast, and the brother who comes to investigate his murder.

“It’s a psychological, twisty kind of story,” Charney said. “Not much action, but great characters.” They include protagonist/investigator Lusardi, hooker Denise, homosexual art teacher Mr. Farrell, his student Connor Lundy and police Sgt. Byrne--”all of whom have their little secrets and are somehow involved in the event.

“Brennan is just 28 now--and he wrote it when he was 19,” said the director, who first read the play five years ago and has been angling ever since to acquire the rights. “It’s amazing for a 19-year-old: clever, mature, intricate--like a wonderful crossword puzzle. It’s also very Irish, with that real feel of the scuzziness of Belfast.”

Five years ago, when Paul Selig wrote his plague-themed “Terminal Bar” (opening tonight at the Cast Theatre), there wasn’t much known about AIDS. In fact, when the piece was first performed--as a student project at the Yale School of Drama--people thought it was a metaphor for a nuclear holocaust.

“It makes more sense now--that’s what’s scary about the play,” said the playwright, a co-recipient of the 1988 Drama League Award for “The Pompeii Traveling Show.” “This plague has crossed over boundary lines, affected (different elements) of society.”

The setting of “Terminal Bar” is an abandoned club in New York’s red-light district. Inside are the three last people in New York: a resident hooker, a runaway housewife from Texas and a 17-year old parochial student. “Sure, there’s hope,” said Selig of the gloomy setting. “It lies in a recognition of our humanity, of our ability to love--and to see each other through a crisis of this magnitude.”