Shining a Spotlight on Segregated Past

Their English teachers have been saying it all along: Words really can come to life in books.

But it took an actor performing a one-man play based on excerpts from Richard Wright’s anguished autobiographical novel “Black Boy” to prove it Wednesday to 100 teenagers at the Los Angeles Central Library.

Actor Michael Phillip Edwards portrayed Wright, whose sense of alienation generated a book that gave voice to other blacks living in the segregated South in the 1920s and ‘30s.

The unusual production was staged without charge by a privately financed group called Literature to Life. The emotion-filled reading, viewed by students from Marshall High School in the Los Feliz area and Dana Middle School in San Pedro, was part of a Black History Month series that is exposing Wright’s work to more than 6,500 Los Angeles-area youngsters.

Edwards, 34, of Culver City is best-known for television and theatrical film work. His own autobiographical one-man show, “Runt,” will soon be released in film version as well.

On Wednesday, Edwards kept his young audience riveted as he depicted Wright discovering prejudice for the first time and--years later in his life--discovering the power of the written word.

It was a book by H.L. Mencken that packed the punch for Wright. Using dialogue from “Black Boy,” Edwards as Wright spoke softly at first from the library’s Taper Theater stage.

“This man is fighting, fighting with words. He uses words as a weapon, uses them like a club. Could words be weapons? Yes. Here they are. Maybe I could use them,” Edwards intoned, his voice rising.

The teenagers erupted with applause at the end of Edwards’ 45-minute show. And they were eager to participate when performance coordinators Debra Piver and Pesha Rudnick invited some of them to the stage to discuss various forms of “hunger”--hunger for food, for racial identity, for books--expressed in Wright’s work.

The two actresses distributed paper and pens to the teens and invited them to sit onstage as they wrote of books, places and people who had opened their eyes. The two-hour program ended with Edwards returning to the stage to answer questions.

The Beverly Hills family that underwrites the annual $175,000 cost of Literature to Life productions wishes to remain anonymous, said Piver, 41, of Los Feliz. Four shows, each with about 15 performances, are staged at the library and two local theaters.

Youngsters from Jordan High School and Emerson and Nightingale middle schools will attend Friday’s final “Black Boy” performance. There are audience openings for this school year’s remaining shows, “The Color of Water” and “I Love America,” said Rudnick, 28, of Venice.

Those in Wednesday’s audience praised Edwards. And Wright.

“I got caught up in it. I’d like to read the book,” said Daniel Buchan, 13, of San Pedro.

Toni Adams, 17, of Atwater Village said she has read Wright’s book. But many of her high school classmates have not.

“I saw a few shocked faces around me here,” she said. “Most of us these days don’t really see segregation or racial oppression.”

Marshall High drama and language teacher Jill Diamond predicted Wednesday’s show would have a ripple effect on campus.

“I hope they go back and tell their English teachers, ‘We want to read this,’” she said.