******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ********************
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*****************************************************************
NY Times, March 4, 2019
John O’Neal, 78, Champion of Theater in the Deep South, Dies
By Neil Genzlinger
John O’Neal, who co-founded a groundbreaking troupe that brought theater
to black audiences in the South during the civil rights era, and who
encouraged people to tell their own stories as well as listen to his,
died on Feb. 14 at his home in New Orleans. He was 78.
His daughter, Wendi Moore-O’Neal, said the cause was vascular disease.
Mr. O’Neal was still in his early 20s in 1963 when he, Doris Derby and
Gilbert Moses founded the Free Southern Theater, which presented free
productions throughout the South. The troupe often performed in small
towns to largely black audiences with little access to the theater.
Some of its productions emphasized black themes and characters; in one
of the troupe’s first shows, Ossie Davis’s “Purlie Victorious,” about a
black preacher, Mr. O’Neal played the title character. But the company
also performed works like “Waiting for Godot.”
The idea, Mr. O’Neal explained in a 1964 interview with The New York
Times, wasn’t merely to expose black audiences to theater; it was also
to get them thinking about their own stories.
“We want to strengthen communication among Southern blacks and to assert
that self-knowledge and creativity are the foundations of human
dignity,” he said. “In the South it has been very hard for a Negro to
look at and see anything but a distorted view of himself.”
To that end he encouraged audience discussion after the shows, a
practice he refined over the years.
“He noticed when they would do the talkbacks that people would just kind
of argue for their position,” his daughter said. “That meant that the
people who talked the loudest and the longest would dominate the
discussion. So he started timing people so that the time could be shared
equally. And he started noticing that if people shared stories instead
of making their argument, you wouldn’t get stuck in the conflict; you
could actually hear the connections.”
These story circles, as he called them, became a trademark technique of
his, both during the life of the Free Southern Theater, which disbanded
in 1980, and with Junebug Productions, the successor arts organization
he founded.
“Him doing theater and taking the makeup off and going out the back door
was not his style,” Carol Bebelle, executive director of the Ashé
Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans, who knew and worked with Mr. O’Neal
for years, said in a telephone interview. “He really saw the audience as
being the other part of the theatrical performance. It was: ‘We brought
something for you. Do you have something to give to us?’ ”
Mr. O’Neal would draw inspiration from those story circles to create new
work. As he put it, “You find the best stuff when you’re not looking for
it.”
A Conversation with John O'NealCreditCreditVideo by Foster Bear
John Milton O’Neal Jr. was born on Sept. 25, 1940, in Mound City, Ill.
His father was a teacher, as was his mother, Rosetta (Crenshaw) O’Neal.
In 1962 he received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and English at
Southern Illinois University. His daughter said that at the same time he
was a student at the university, his father was obtaining a master’s
degree there.
After Mr. O’Neal’s graduation his interest in civil rights issues took
him to the South, where he became an organizer for the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Georgia and Mississippi. He, Mr.
Moses (who died in 1995) and Ms. Derby started the Free Southern Theater
in Jackson, Miss., after hatching the idea over dinner.
“We were sitting at a table, the room was blue with smoke,” Mr. O’Neal
recalled in a short documentary film (he and Mr. Moses were smokers),
“and Doris said: ‘Well, if theater means anything anywhere, it should
certainly mean something here. Why don’t we start a theater?’ ”
Their original base of operation was Tougaloo College near Jackson,
though the troupe soon moved to New Orleans. It started on a shoestring.
“On tour,” The Times wrote in 1964, “the company will travel in a used
station wagon and a used pickup truck. The station wagon was a gift; the
group is seeking someone to pay for the truck.”
Mr. O’Neal liked to collaborate with other writers and theater groups to
create multicultural works, as he did on “Promise of a Love Song,” which
interwove three love stories from different cultures and was a joint
effort by Junebug, Roadside Theater of Appalachia and Pregones Theater,
a Puerto Rican company based in the Bronx.
He was perhaps best known for a character he created and performed in a
series of one-man plays: Junebug Jabbo Jones, a mythical sort of griot
who, speaking in southwestern Mississippi dialect, told homespun stories
full of humor and universal wisdom. He introduced the character in 1980
in “Don’t Start Me Talkin’ or I’ll Tell Everything I Know: Sayings From
the Life and Writings of Junebug Jabbo Jones,” and he performed the
Junebug plays all over the country, including several times in New York.
“I am a storyteller,” Junebug says in one incarnation. “Storyteller. I
say ‘storyteller’ instead of ‘liar’ because there’s a heap of difference
between a storyteller and a liar. A liar, that’s somebody who will take
and cover things over, mainly for his own private benefit. But your
storyteller, now, that’s somebody who’ll take and uncover things, so
everybody can get some good out of it.”
Mr. O’Neal’s first marriage, to Mary Felice Lovelace, ended in divorce,
as did his second, to Marilyn Norton. In addition to his daughter, a
child of his second marriage, he is survived by his wife, Bertha McNealy
O’Neal; a son from his second marriage, William; a brother, Wendell; a
sister, Pamela O’Neal Moody; a stepson, Arnold Regas; seven
grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
In the documentary, Mr. O’Neal recalled telling his father early on that
he intended to be a playwright. His father, he said, expressed
skepticism that he could make a living that way.
“I said, ‘I don’t intend to work for a living,’ ” he recalled. “ ‘I
intend to live for my work.’ ”
_________________________________________________________
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at:
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
