Drawing Lessons From a Troubled Time in Memphis

Don’t look for playwright OyamO any time during spring break--or summer recess or Christmas vacation. He’s in hiding.

“When I’m writing, I want to sit down and work till I’m done,” says OyamO (pronounced o-yahm-o), who finds competition for writing in his day job--as associate professor of theater--at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. “During vacations, I lock myself in my place and don’t come out till it’s time for classes again. It certainly doesn’t help with social relationships.”

It does, however, provide tangible work results: The 52-year-old OyamO has authored--he’s not sure of the exact count--between 30 to 40 plays and one-acts.

*

Currently making its West Coast premiere is his acclaimed drama “I Am a Man” (at the Fountain Theatre), set during the 1968 Memphis garbage-worker’s strike, the political event that brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis--and to his death. OyamO’s story, however, is only peripherally about King. The playwright, who was commissioned to write on the subject by New York’s Working Theatre in 1991, has focused on one of history’s lesser-known players, charismatic strike organizer T.O. Jones.

“T.O. had always been a staunch supporter of workers’ rights,” explains the writer, who lugged home 60 pounds of photocopied research material from the University of Memphis. “But when he called this strike without contacting the international branch of the union, it put him in opposition with them. Also, religious leaders in the community were the traditional negotiators [with the city]; he ran afoul of them too, because he didn’t go to them first. And the city administration was so intractable, so opposed to the unions, period--not even including the fact that these were black people.”

The uneducated, hot-tempered Jones quickly saw his grass-roots action spiral out of his control, eclipsed by larger agendas and more sophisticated players. When the two-month strike finally ended, Jones had witnessed the brutalization of protesters, the disdain of the bureaucracy, the end of his own marriage--and the death of a national leader. The striker’s gains were limited to a nonspecific “memorandum of agreement” (with the city promising to talk about better working conditions and benefits in the future) and an 8-cent-an-hour raise.

On these points, OyamO sticks pretty closely to the facts, though he defends his right to theatrical license. “I don’t purport to be accurate historically, though I use a lot of facts,” he says. “I knew I’d have to make it partly a history lesson, because so many people didn’t know about this event. But mostly, I wanted to bring this man back to the fore, show how an ordinary person can begin something that can be really significant. We’re not powerless. I believe the great societal movements begin with someone who says, ‘I’m tired--I want to change this!’ ”

OyamO knows about that kind of angst. In the mid-’60s, he enrolled at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, but later dropped out, “angry at the educational system.” It was more than 10 years--time interrupted by other college stints, plus Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships--before he landed at the graduate theater program at Yale. “I had already lived through so many things,” he says. “I was older than most of the other students, I already had kids. I was the only black playwright there. And I was already very radical and politicized, much more so than anyone in the class.”

Over the years, OyamO had supported his family (five kids--the youngest is now 6, the eldest 30) with a variety of jobs, including dishwasher, community organizer, office worker, magazine salesman, fruit salesman, assistant karate teacher (“and I didn’t know anything about karate!”), road maintenance worker, electrician and night watchman. “My education was reading books,” he says. “Every month and a half, I’d save my money, then go and buy a bunch of books.”

More than 25 years ago, living in New York, OyamO changed his name from Charles Gordon--partly to end an ongoing confusion with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Charles Gordone. The new moniker was good-naturedly bestowed by a group of neighborhood kids, as a play on his Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, sweatshirt. Recently, the writer (who has also penned a screen adaptation of “I Am a Man”) was informed that his name actually means something in North Uganda’s Acholi language: Windy/Stormy One. He likes that. But a friend has another interpretation: “He says it means ‘black man with typewriter.’ ”

* “I Am a Man,” Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Closes June 2. $18-$22.50. (213) 663-1525.