The Global Citizen is a joint project of New Voices and the American Jewish World Service (AJWS). Throughout the year, a group of former AJWS volunteers will offer their take on global justice, Judaism and international development. Opinions expressed by Global Citizen bloggers do not necessarily represent AJWS.
Winter in London had finally arrived, and I was anything but prepared. I spent my last week in England before returning home from my semester abroad freezing as I shopped for presents for family and friends and visited sights and museums that I’d missed. I decided one particularly blustery night to treat myself to a little entertainment. I’d seen advertisements around town for Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and decided rather arbitrarily to buy tickets. The reviews on the posters raved that the production, featuring an all-star, all-black cast, was one of the hottest tickets in the West End. I forwent cheap seats in the back for a pricier spot on the edge of the balcony so I could get an unobstructed view of the incredible talent starring in the production, James Earl Jones, Phyllisha Rashaad, and Sanaa Lathan, to name a few.
It was my first time seeing the play, the dramatization of a southern family’s demise. A family gathers for the head of the household, Big Daddy’s birthday. His two sons have returned home to celebrate the wealthy cotton planter’s sixty-fifth. As the evening unfolds, the happy exterior lives lead by the character is peeled back to reveal jealousy, greed, and lies that lurk below the surface.
Needless to say, the play was wonderful. Directed by Debbie Allen, the words of Tennessee Williams have proven themselves timeless. I literally sat on the edge of my seat for the duration of the show, carefully leaning over the balcony as I watched the scenes below. Beyond just a great piece of theater, the casting choices took the meaning and social commentary embedded in the piece a step further. Traditionally played by all-whites casts, the wealthy family of a cotton plantation owner was instead ironically portrayed by an all-black cast. At one point, Big Daddy describes how he came to be a plantation owner; he started off as an overseer and eventually climbed the ranks until he could afford to buy his own property. I found myself thinking about how African-Americans in our country, the descendents of former slaves, rose to wealthy—what was the story of James Earl Jones’ family, for example? As a Jewish young woman raised in upper-middle class America, what colors of people was I surrounded by? What “color†is upper class America?
During an incredibly powerful conversation with his son alcoholic son Brick, Big Daddy describes a trip he took with his wife, Big Mama, to Europe. He talks about seeing poor, barefooted children playing in the streets and guiltily reflects on his own wealth—“Y’know I could feed that country. I got money enough to feed that goddamn country.†I’m no Big Daddy, and I have far from millions in the bank, but his words describe me: I acknowledge there is poverty in the world; I have identified the problem, and I know I can be part of the solution. But what have I actually done to alleviate poverty?
Debbie Allen’s production reflects yet another social stigma related to poverty, particularly in America: who is poor? Or more importantly, what is the color of a rich and poor person’s skin? As the painful images of New Orleans evacuees show, the poorest neighborhoods in our country are minority-dominated. The play challenged these images of “rich†and “poor†by working against the race and poverty demographic.
As I walked out of the theater later that evening, I noticed a homeless man curled up trying to keep himself warm despite the cold. He was a middle-aged white man huddled in a near new North Face sleeping bag. I thought about Big Daddy and wondered if he would have had just a little change to spare.
