MINSTREL SHOW
Or The Lynching Of William Brown

Minstrel Show or The Lynching of William Brown
By Max Sparber
Directed by Rob Urbinati
With Kelcey Watson and Spencer S. Barros
Production Stage Manger: Rose Riccardi
Sets: Quinn Stone
Lights: Jill Nagle
Costumes: Patricia E. Doherty
Sound: Jessica Paz
Properties: Jessica Parks
Lumia Theatre, New Jersey Rep, Long Branch, NJ

Transfixed With a Horror, a Play Doesn’t Flinch

The image is seared in the memory: A man hangs from a tree, a noose around his neck, his body mutilated. In the foreground, onlookers, some with children in tow, mill around in grim satisfaction.

Audiences at “Minstrel Show, or the Lynching of William Brown,” Max Sparber’s disturbing 1998 theater piece now on stage at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, do not actually see this scene. They are forced to conjure it while hearing the shockingly graphic reminiscences of a black minstrel performer who watched it happen in 1919. He and his vaudeville partner were prisoners in the Douglas County Courthouse in Omaha as William Brown was dragged out of the burning building to his death.

Mr. Sparber has taken a shameful, little-noted event in American history and fashioned a raw, gripping work. He has woven two strands of storytelling artfully and seamlessly into a striking tapestry. The first is that of the minstrels, fictional characters struggling to find a niche as performers in a world defined by racism. Performing “Tableaux of Negro Life” in blackface before a black audience, they shuffle and shimmy through their version of the “yahoo song,” learned while both men were imprisoned at the Parchman Farm penitentiary simply for being black. The ditty secretly disparages white folks.

The second strand in the drama is taken from an actual event: the killing of William Brown, an innocent man accused of raping a 19-year-old white woman named Agnes Loebeck. In a savage riot, a mob of as many as 5,000 grabbed the terrified prisoner from the courthouse and then shot, castrated, lynched and burned him before dragging his body through the streets. One rioter and a bystander, both white, were also killed, and the mayor of Omaha was strung up and nearly murdered after he attempted to maintain law and order.

Spencer Scott Barros and Kelcey Watson offer wrenching portraits as the performers, who describe themselves as “witnesses to history,” their mission “to tell it, to teach it.” Comrades in high jinks as well as misery, they play off each other’s characters with near-perfect teamwork. The final scene, directed with no holds barred by Rob Urbinati, is almost unbearable to watch in its explicit description of the horror.

Quinn K. Stone, the set designer, has effectively replicated the burned-out room in the courthouse where the men viewed the lynching. Jill Nagle’s lighting, suggesting the rising flames of the fire, turns up the heat when needed.

“Minstrel Show” is not, to be sure, a comfortable evening’s entertainment. Recent protests about the theater’s use of blackface images in its advertising attest to the work’s power to provoke controversy. But it is a play that bears unrelenting witness, a crucial part of the search for truth.

“Minstrel Show, or the Lynching of William Brown” is at the New Jersey Repertory Company, 179 Broadway, Long Branch, through Oct. 28. Information: (732) 229-3166 or at www.njrep.org.

Naomi Siegel, New York Times
Published: October 14, 2007

'Minstrel Show' targets racism

Needless to say, it's the second part of his title that Max Sparber wants us to notice.

The playwright didn't simply call his arresting drama "Minstrel Show," but "Minstrel Show, or The Lynching of William Brown."

True, every now and then, Spencer Scott Barros and Kelcey Watson, in portraying two early 20th-century African-American entertainers, do come out with an a capella riff or a few high-kicking steps. Most of the time, though, in the 85-minute play at New Jersey Repertory in Long Branch, these two accomplished actors face the audience and tell what their characters witnessed. And while they're fictional, Sparber is giving them his take on a true story that happened to one William Brown on a September night in Omaha in 1919.

Though the second part of the title tells us that Sparber has already divulged his ending, the play offers riveting and harrowing surprises. Better still, director Rob Urbinati's strong production creates a mood that makes an audience pay rapt attention.

Because Barros and Watson are two black minstrels, they must respectively endure the demeaning names of Yas-Yas and Sho-Nuff. Worse, though, in the regrettable tradition of the minstrel show, they wear blackface. How fascinating, though, to see that make-up somehow makes them behave as caricatures. Once they take it off and thoroughly wipe their faces clean, they revert to become intelligent human beings

The story begins when they return to the Douglas County Courthouse, where Brown had been taken for allegedly raping Agnes Lobeck, a 19-year-old white laundry worker. Yas-Yas and Sho-Nuff were also brought there by the authorities as a cautionary measure.

As Yas-Yas dourly notes, "In Omaha, it's a crime for a Negro to be beaten in the street" -- leaving us to infer that once a black man is behind closed doors, it's unofficially acceptable for him to endure a merciless thrashing.

Both men point out that Brown was afflicted with terrible rheumatism, and each believes him incapable of forcing a healthy young woman into any compromising position. When the story gets too intense even for them, they interrupt themselves to recall a seemingly happy-go-lucky song of the era. Each tune's lyric, though, paints the black man as a scoundrel, thief or sexual wastrel.

The implication is that the average minstrel show's songlist informed its audiences that the black man was to be feared and certainly not trusted. Sparber reminds us that the amount of harm these so-called innocent songs dispensed may well have been considerable.

That's why, once the men finish a song and are proud of themselves for remembering the lyrics, they suddenly stop smiling, it ain't funny at all. Soon Sho-Nuff is telling a parable about a monkey, a lion and a sultan that has a much more compelling message about race relations.

It's at this point in the show, at the halfway mark, that all opportunities for laughter come to a stop. Sparber's play now concentrates on the lesson that hatred begets more hatred, and what began that night in Omaha was destined to be an unwieldy and unrelenting tragedy. Just when a theatergoer assumes that he's heard the worst part of the story, Sparber manages to find more atrocities.

They may have all been right there in Omaha city records, but Sparber, Urbinati, Barros and Watson have forged them into one compelling theater piece.

Peter Filichia, New Jersey Star-Ledger Staff
Sunday September 30, 2007

Minstrel Show or the Lynching of William Brown

Unsettling and compelling, Max Sparber's "Minstrel Show or the Lynching of William Brown" re-creates a harrowing true story about the 1919 lynching of a jailed black man, as seen through the eyes of a couple of fictional song-and-dance men. The season opener for New Jersey Repertory Company begins on a light note with a couple of knockabout minstrel comics singing "yahoo" songs from the cotton fields, then quickly turns into a graphic narrative of angry crowd hysteria.

In Omaha, Neb., amid the broken glass and debris of a ravaged county courthouse, two traveling African-American entertainers recount the mob violence they witnessed that ultimately took the lives of a half-dozen innocent spectators. Target of the collective fury was William Brown, who was accused of molesting a 19-year-old white girl.

The two-hander begins with Sho-Nuff (Kelcey Watson) and Yas-Yas (Spencer Scott Barros) illustrating the origins of the minstrel show, when white entertainers blackened their faces with burnt cork. Subsequently, even black artists had to coat themselves with shoe polish.

Through their narrative, the minstrel entertainers, who traveled the country singing and dancing in "coon shows" or "Tableaux of Negro Life," tell of their arrest for disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct, after a dozen hooded men beat several black members in their audience.

They witnessed the violence from their jail cell. Sho-Nuff graphically describes the mob mentality of the 5,000 rioters who stormed the Douglas County Courthouse, broke the windows and battered down the oak door to gain access to the unfortunate 40-year-old prisoner Brown, who was awaiting trial.

The "end men" are skillfully realized by Watson and Barros. One can very nearly see the mindless violence as described in Barros' chilling panoramic description of the lynching and murder. The narrative is given a sense of cinematic urgency in Rob Urbinati's taut, rhythmic staging of playwright Sparber's engrossing historical document, which resonates with unflinching horror.

The play continues to draw controversy as black members of the Long Branch community raised objections to the original poster and newspaper ad that showed cartoonish figures of minstrel performers standing near a hangman's noose. The vintage image of the entertainers was subsequently pulled from the ads.

Robert L. Daniels, Variety
October 2, 2007

Tableaus of life and death in Long Branch

Show a single image to several different audiences and you're often likely to get a wide range of reactions.

That's been the case with the play on display at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch — a play in which the opening moments have drawn responses including gasps of horror, easy laughter and tense, fidgety silence.

Of course, when the image in question involves a pair of black actors in burnt-cork blackface, with painted-on white lips and the raggedy regalia of old-time minstrelsy, a reaction of some kind is pretty much in order. Before the production had completed a single dress rehearsal, a number of people in the greater Long Branch community reacted with displeasure to the show's promotional materials, resulting in posters and ads being withdrawn from circulation.

The show, however, does go on at NJ Rep — in this case, "Minstrel Show, or the Lynching of William Brown." Opening on the anniversary of the real-life incident referred to in the title, the intimate yet impactful play by Max Sparber receives a rare East Coast revival in the city that once hosted the largest Ku Klux Klan gathering in American history.

The lynching of "the Negro William Brown" — a rheumatism sufferer who was accused of molesting a 19-year-old white woman — took place not in the deep South but in 1919 Omaha, Neb. It was an event noted for its ferocity, its scale — as many as 5,000 white Omahans were said to have been involved — and the fact that the mob not only torched the county courthouse, but very nearly succeeded in lynching the mayor as well.

In Sparber's 1998 script, William Brown never appears on the stage, nor are the events of that late September night re-enacted by a cast of thousands. It's the wake of the riot, and there in the charred and battered Douglas County Courthouse (another detail-intensive piece of work by the talented set designer Quinn K. Stone), the playwright has appointed a pair of nameless, fictional characters to tell — "to teach" — a very real story.

Under the direction of Rob Urbinatii, actors Spencer Scott Barros and Kelcey Watson play a pair of traveling minstrel showmen who, like many black performers of their day, make their living by rendering "tableaus of Negro life" in blackface. When the two men are detained (for purposes of testifying in the official "investigation") in the same cell that had been occupied by Brown, they review their experiences as witnesses to the terrible occurrences — and do some soul-searching as to the choices that they've made to survive in this time and place.

Despite the title, there actually is very little of a traditional "Mr. Bones"-style minstrel show on display. Having both done time at the "Parchment Farm" workhouse camp, the entertainers deliver a set of songs that originated in prison settings. We get a taste of what sort of show these characters would have put on for a black audience, including such proto-rap "toasts" as "The Signifying Monkey," along with "yahoo" songs (a format that poked fun at rural whites) and an "Amen Corner" skit involving a fiery brimstone preacher with a slick, craps-shooting congregant.

Although this marks the first time that director and cast have worked together, all three have a history with this "Show." Omaha native Watson co-starred in the play's first public showing at the Douglas Courthouse, and Urbanski has now visited this script six times.

Consequently, what could come off as preachy or didactic in lesser hands is instead invested with a mastery of the material that extends from the "complex syncopations" of the prison songs, to the voice artistry of the comic bits. Still, it's in the red meat of the story — the real-time retelling of the events leading up to the lynching and its appalling aftermath — that the actors operate on all cylinders, with their enthralling descriptions, characterizations and pantomimes abetted by Jill Nagle's lighting and the sound effects of Jessica Paz.

Given that the actors address the audience throughout, Sparber's play comes off more like a presentation than a dramatic work — a very compelling history lesson, in this case, and one (thanks to the dream-team assembled by NJ Rep) that should register well with school-age audiences and others who tend not to make a habit of the theater.

STORY CHAT ON THE WEB: Visit www.app.com and click on this story in Entertainment to discuss "Minstrel Show, or the Lynching of William Brown.”

Tom Chesek, Asbury Park Press
October 2, 2007

Controversial Minstrel Show
Setting Off Sparks in Red Bank

Fact - In Omaha, Nebraska in September 1919, Agnes Loebeck, a 19-year-old white woman, reported that she was stuck up and then sexually molested by a black man while returning home with her boyfriend. The following day, Will Brown, a 41-year-old packinghouse worker who was crippled with severe arthritis and lived with a white woman, was arrested as a suspect. Loebeck tentatively identified this unlikely perpetrator as her attacker. Brown was taken to the Douglas County Courthouse followed by a mob which had surrounded Loebeck's house. Over the course of many hours, the white mob surrounding the courthouse grew to number an estimated 5,000 people. The race riot precipitated by this mob was particularly ugly and resulted in the deaths of two white men among the mob, the attempted lynching of Omaha's mayor (who was cut down by police and barely escaped with his life), the setting afire of the courthouse, and the delivery of Brown to a celebratory mob which beat him mercilessly, shot him repeatedly (reportedly the actual cause of his death), strung his body up on a pole, and then set his body afire and tied it to a car which dragged it through the streets.

Fiction – On the evening that the mob was growing outside the courthouse, two black minstrel show actors were assaulted in an alley while trying to escape a dozen ruffians who had invaded their show and commenced to beat everyone in sight with baseball bats and wooden planks. Police rousted the ruffians, but then proceeded to arrest the bloodied minstrels on charges of disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct. Brought to the courthouse and placed in a cell with Will Brown, the minstrels became witness to the horrifying mob murder. A few days later, these black men in cork blackface were rousted mid-performance and dragged back to the courthouse to testify before a committee investigating the riot.

As Minstrel Show, or The Lynching of Willie Brown begins, these minstrels, Sho-Nuff and Yas-Yas, are entering the hearing room at Douglas County Courthouse where the ad hoc committee is gathered to hear their testimony as to the riot and lynching. Understandably distrustful and cautious, Sho-Nuff and Yas-Yas try to distract us by performing bits and songs from their minstrel show act. However, over the next 85 minutes, we will see them gain strength and self confidence as they remove the cork from their faces and increasingly less reluctantly relate from their perspective the harrowing Omaha riot of 1919.

It is certainly of value to recall this tragedy of our history (and this was only one of close to two dozen disgraceful race riots which occurred during this dreadful year in our racial history) and it is well and harrowingly told in this account by Max Sparber. Still, these events are as powerfully and even more fully recounted in the available photographs and historic accounts of the era. However, it is in the transformation of Sho-Nuff and Yas-Yas from self-demeaning traveling actors scuffling to make a living to proud men determined to be witnesses and teachers, educating their people as to the horrible events that they have seen that provides the inspiration and theatrical catharsis that gives Minstrel Show its distinction.

Although the actors' names appear without any notation of their roles in the program, the characters are identified by their minstrel show routine names in Max Sparber's script. These names should be restored as playwright Sparber's subtle distinctions between them do not prevent the minstrels from at first appearing to be interchangeable stock figures. However, director Rob Urbinati and his fine cast, Spencer Scott Barros (Yas-Yas) and Kelcey Watson (Sho-Nuff), successfully convey their two distinct personalities.

Barros' Yas-Yas is clearly more confrontational and dissatisfied with his lot. Very early on, he removes the cork from his face, and his body language displays a combativeness which exceeds that of his words. Watson's Sho-Nuff has a touch more down home slurring dialect in his line readings, and, for a longer time, his body language remains obsequious. When their narrative of the riot emerges, Yas-Yas does most of the witnessing at first. However, when their story reaches the moment when Yas-Yas is knocked unconscious, the telling of the narrative falls to Sho-Nuff. In witnessing to the committee, Watson's Sho-Nuff, who has finally removed the cork from his face, assumes a dignity and sense of purpose which stands as an early exemplar of the determination that marked the burgeoning civil rights movement of the 1950s and beyond.

Director Rob Urbinati directed the first production of Minstrel Show in 1998 in the rotunda of the Douglas County Courthouse, the actual scene of the events depicted in the play. Quinn K. Stone's minimal set successfully sets the scene of the fire-distressed courthouse. The evocative, ratty minstrel show costumes are by Patricia E. Doherty. The sound design, complete with dramatic reverberation effects, is by Jessica Paz.

At the conclusion, Yas-Yas and Sho-Nuff decide that their act needs "refashioning."

we witnesses to history ...

we want that history told ...

and we want it told right

Well, author Max Sparber, director Rob Urbinati and actors Spencer Scott Burros and Kelcey Watson are telling it right at Long Branch's New Jersey Rep.

Sho nuff.

Sidebar: It's not every day that a play sets off a controversy in a New Jersey shore community, but credit the adventuresome New Jersey Repertory with becoming mired in one, with its New Jersey premiere of Max Sparber's Minstrel Show, or The Lynching of William Brown. It should be noted that, when this play was first produced in 1998 in the rotunda of the Douglas County Courthouse in Omaha, Nebraska where the tragic historic events depicted actually occurred, it also induced some controversy (with a local State Senator calling for a boycott by the African-American community). However, that production received strong critical support and enjoyed an extended sold-out run there. It has since had several additional productions around the country, including a limited engagement in Manhattan's East Village and Queens Plays in the Park. The most widely publicized part of the Long Branch controversy was reserved by the poster design for this production. It depicted the disturbing, almost surrealistically distorted image of two performers in black face. Notably, this artwork has been used by other theatres around the country without incident. It clearly did not suggest a high hearted minstrel show. "Hurtful" and "insulting" were among the comments of members of Long Branch's black community. After meeting with community leaders, NJ Rep producer Gabe Barabas withdrew the artwork from all of the theatre's materials. It is notable that this artwork has been used by other theatres around the country without incident. Additionally, the community leaders were invited to a dress rehearsal of the play. According to the account of a local newspaper, five members accepted the invitation, and three are quoted as objecting to the production. Three of them were deeply offended. One of these two, along with a third person, questioned what purpose could be served by presenting the play. "Why now, and why in Long Branch at this time?". It is worth noting that this individual stated that she could recall the Ku Klux Klan marching in Long Branch and local segregation, including that of movie theatres.

Sadly, the Klan has continued to be active in New Jersey within the last decade. I respectfully submit to those who object to this production that this is reason enough to establish the need for plays such as Minstrel Show. - BR

Bob Rendell, Talkin Broadway