Controversy surrounds play about 1919 Omaha lynching

Bret Schulte, Senior editor, Daily Nebraskan
Issue date: 3/30/99 Section: Arts

Sen. Ernie Chambers decried it as racist and called for a boycott. The Omaha World-Herald praised it as "Pick of the Week," and audiences in Denver, New York and California leapt to their feet at every curtain call.

The play is called "Minstrel Show: The Lynching of William Brown," a retelling of the bloodcurdling 1919 Omaha lynching of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Told through the confessions of two fictional black minstrels who shared a jail cell with Brown, "Minstrel Show" sparked conflict and adoration for its portrayal of the long-neglected minstrel tradition and their interpretation of the events leading to Brown's murder.

On Sept. 28, 1919, a frenzied crowd of a few thousand people stormed the Douglas County Courthouse and dragged out the rheumatic and aging Brown, whose guilt was highly questionable. As the sacked courthouse burned in the background, the crowd dragged Brown's stripped body through the streets, hanged him from a light pole at 18th and Harney streets and riddled him with bullets.

He was finally burned on a pyre of railroad ties before army troops arrived to disperse the mob. Although not mentioned in the play, it's interesting to note that the incensed crowd had even attacked the protesting mayor and lynched him along with Brown; he was saved and resuscitated by a handful of police officers.

INTRODUCTION

Max Sparber, a Minneapolis native and current cultural editor for the Omaha weekly paper, The Reader, penned the play after only 21/2 years in the city. His first play to be professionally produced, "Minstrel Show," received wild reviews on both coasts and is being geared up for a new season in larger venues in both California and New York.

Despite the sudden flush of success, Sparber spends most of his days at The Reader, where he labors over art, film and music reviews along with assigning and editing all the paper's cultural content.

Covering Omaha's cultural scene may seem a little beneath a burgeoning playwright whose first performed work was nominated for an Oppenheimer Award, but Sparber's first love was culture coverage and at The Reader he pursues it with a rare zeal.

With a peal of calm earnestness, Sparber comfortably rattles off his mission at The Reader: "What we try to do here is open the arts up for the reader and provide a more critical voice for the reader that is both positive and negative.

"The Reader has a very active role in the arts and culture of Omaha. It offers critical analysis and critical support."

Sparber rose rapidly to the editor's desk after a year and a half as a film critic and culture reporter for the paper. He is undaunted by the fact that reviewing movies and critiquing modern art are not general activities for someone with a religious studies degree, which he acquired from the University of Minnesota in the late '80s.

At U of M, he followed up on his high school hobby of collecting and writing plays and screenplays. His first published writing appeared when he was a culture writer for the college newspaper, The Minnesota Daily.

RISING ACTION

Having graduated with creative writing never far from his mind, Sparber chose the path that so many writers follow: the one that leads to Los Angeles and the doorstep of Hollywood.

"That was when I completed my first screenplay," Sparber said. "I worked in a theatrical program started by Shelley Winters, an old-school Hollywood actress ... kind of a nutty old woman right now."

The theatrical program was designed to pull kids off the street and out of homeless shelters and get them involved in the arts: a sort of escapism and enlightenment all in one. Despite the efforts of Sparber and others, the program fell apart when many teens failed to take it seriously and an aging Winters balked at the stark realism of the company's productions.

"She obviously wasn't comfortable around these teen-agers," Sparber said. "She was a little frightened that these plays were getting a little too close to real life and so she withdrew her support."

After moving around, returning to the West Coast and then leaving California dreams behind for good, Sparber, then 27, settled in Omaha on the advice of friends and quickly got involved in the city's pop and fine culture scenes.

THE PLOT

It wasn't long before he stumbled across the story of the William Brown lynching and started transforming it into a two-man dialogue exchange between visiting minstrels from the South.

Sparber's fictional characters represent a very real period in American history, and one that is often ignored in cultural chronicles. Minstrel shows throughout the South and penetrating into the high North demonstrated the creativity and richness of the oral history tradition through theatrical shows, spontaneous comedy and elaborate storytelling. It was also a preservation of culture and means of catharsis for many black people searching for an outlet in an era of fearful discrimination.

Sparber, who wrote the play in a dialect that dropped the jaws of actors (the first cast called it "divine intervention"), wrote much of the dialogue based on what he heard growing up in a heavily black Minneapolis neighborhood. His interest in black literature and old radio shows such as "Amos 'n' Andy" helped him give final shape to his minstrel characters.

"Although it's easy to criticize the show, it featured African-American actors and the vernacular is actually accurate," Sparber said.

When he shopped his script to Omaha's Blue Barn Theater, the verdict was unanimous: Sparber knew what he was writing about.

TAKING THE STAGE

David Lewis, a long-time local talent in Omaha theater, starred as one of the minstrels in the plays' first run at the Blue Barn Theater.

"I think he's one of the most brilliant playwrights I've ever known," was his first comment on Sparber. Lewis credits him with writing the "role of a lifetime," which he plans to pursue by starring in, producing and directing the show in California, where he now lives.

Having earned standing ovations for the show's first opening in Carmel, Calif., Lewis said, Sparber helped reclaim minstrel heritage as a source of pride.

"The way (Sparber) was able to capture the essence of these characters that has long been a source of embarrassment, anger and humiliation gave them a dignity and intelligence that people don't assign whenever they come across images of minstrel actors.

"He was able to capture them as intelligent people with souls, passion for their art and with social consciences."

The marriage of a minstrel show with one of the darkest, most horrifying moments in Omaha's history seems not only bizarre but even a corruption of the evil nature of the crime.

But this was in fact the greatest triumph of "Minstrel Show" - not the accolades nor the awards - but the telling of the story itself, as exposed through the voices of black entertainers witnessing the racist hysteria of a mob lynching. It was a story so personal to the actors of the cast that in repeated performances in New York they broke into tears.

Director Rob Urbinati headed the production at Queen's Theater in the Park in January and February. The show became one of the theater's biggest hits, ("a cash cow," according to Urbinati) and is scheduled to be recast for a bigger opening later in the year.

"The actors found it very tough to remove themselves from the anger and the anguish of the lynching," he said.

The unscripted emotion worked for the audiences as well as the reviewers who, according to Urbinati, didn't just write good reviews but ones that "were over the top."

Urbinati said the critic from Newsday was so impressed, he took it upon himself to nominate the play for the prestigious Oppenheimer Award.

ENCORES

While critics glowed and audiences wept, Urbinati and Sparber remained unsatisfied. The play was supposed to be told from the perspective of minstrels, i.e. entertainers who are giving this testimony before a committee in their own unique flavor of storytelling. The earnest emotions of the actors changed the focus of the play to the tragedy rather than Sparber's original mix of minstrel humor as a means of coping.

"The actors were amazing," Urbinati said. "But here's the truth with them: What's so distinct about the play is the angle of the characters and the fact that they are just ordinary guys.

"Their concern is that he is moaning and groaning and keeping them awake. The characters are not necessarily sympathetic to the man who is being lynched."

In future productions, (plans for which are already under way) Urbinati hopes to cast actors who can bring more life to the nuances of the roles as written by Sparber.

Not that the playwright finds his subject matter funny. Sparber's sensitivity to the blight of racism and the celebration of black history is what has garnered his play such respect among audiences of all colors.

DENOUEMENT

When Sen. Chambers denounced the play, he hadn't even seen it; instead he declined free tickets and a written invitation to the Blue Barn Theater performance.

Of course, the controversy only fueled the play's popularity and turned Sparber into a hero of sorts among some people for the bravery of turning the tragic event into one accessible, enjoyable and enlightening.

While "Minstrel Show: The Lynching of William Brown" faces a bright and even profitable future, Sparber hasn't made grandiose plans as a playwright. In fact, he hasn't started work yet on any new projects for the stage. But Sparber has already made his mark by confronting racism and crafting entertainment into a means of catharsis and historical preservation.

As Sparber explains, his play is not about racism and it's not about the idea that lynching is a horrible crime. Those are obvious.

"I think racism has been confronted to death," he said. "My take on racism is simple: I think it's bad, and I don't understand it very well.

"The play was very much an attempt to try to understand history through using art. As minstrels (the characters) are more than just humorous entertainment; in some ways they are repositories for cultural experiences."

As Sparber has proven, so are playwrights, when they can turn a tragedy into a lesson, and a forgotten culture into standing ovations.