‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ Excels  

Pasadena, CA (News4usonline) – Going to see Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is helping yourself to a good dose of live theater, great acting and having a dash of feel-good music to calm your nerves. 

For several weeks, the live stage production made its home at the A Noise Within Theatre in Pasadena, California. 

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is one of those productions you have to see up close and in person. Live theater brings another dynamic to such a stage play like August Wilson’s take on a group of musicians talking the day away on the ills of society at that particular time. 

And at this moment, it was 1927. The scene is a live recording session for blues singer Ma Rainey. There is an ongoing verbal tit-for-tat that plays out between the band members throughout the recording session. 

Yes, the center of the recording session hones in on the larger-than-life personality of Ma Rainey. However, the true storyline centers on her band members and their outtake on just about every subject under the sun, including race, self-dignity and who gets and holds control of intellectual property. 

In the case of Black artists, that was, especially during that time period, a rarity. 

“American history is filled with examples of Black artists whose work was celebrated while they themselves were exploited,” notes director Gregg T. Daniel. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom asks how someone holds onto dignity, resilience and self-worth when their art is treated as a commodity.” 

The clash between Ma Rainey and her white producers over the commodity of intellectual property ownership is a fascinating, storyline twist as it shows the battle for intellectual property rights is a constant tug-o-war that performing artists, even until this day, must contend with.   

At the center of all this back-and-forth banter is the contentious dialogue that plays out between the band members. In the cycle of Wilson’s noted plays, the playwright centers the conversation heavily on and around Black men. 

If you go through his extraordinary body of work, more than anyone, Wilson’s focus is on the Black man and all of his complexities, strengths and weaknesses. Wilson has 10 plays in his backpocket, including the well-noted Fences and Gem of the Ocean. 

Each of his plays stand on their own merit, but the commonality that binds them all together is Wilson’s meticulous and nuanced view on Black men. Under the direction of Daniel, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a perfect illustration of this dynamic. 

And to maximize the storytelling of Wilson, Daniel uses a number of actors (four) who are well-embraced in the work of the legendary playwright. Kai A. Ealy, Bert Emmett, Alex Morris and Gerald C. Rivers bring their familiarity of Wilson to the stage in this production. 

And that matters a lot, Daniel said.  

“It’s like a rep company — the returning actors understand Wilson’s rhythms and musicality, so they teach newcomers what the Wilsonian world requires,” Daniel explains. “When veterans speak the language, you can feel a cadence and musicality at the table. This play is itself a musical composition in its dialogue. Characters represent musical parts: the character of Levee is a counter-melody to Ma.” 

There’s always got to be one dissenter in the bunch. A rubble-rouser who chooses to go the pathway of the lone wolf instead of being a team player. That would be the hotshot trumpeter Levee, played by Jamar Gilbert. 

In the film, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, starring Viola Davis, it was the late Chadwick Boseman who played Levee. Sure, Levee is part of the band, but then again he is not. Levee wants to do his own thing. He becomes self-absorbed in his own ideology.  

He sees the future (whatever that is) and it doesn’t include being up under Ma Rainey and her musical crew. As a bragging Levee unveils his ambitious plans to other band members, differences of opinions spill over. 

Resentment enters the picture. Before the end of the recording session comes to a close, the tension in the group goes from being a slow-burn facade to a well-lit inferno. 

Ma Rainey is almost oblivious to all of this infighting among her band members as she concentrates on her own self-indulgence and the fight to keep her music.What you have here is competing agendas with one group of people. 

What that translates into is self-implosion. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a history lesson on race, struggle and acceptance.     

Lead Art/Cover Image: Amber Liekhus Photo by Craig Schwartz