One of the most eloquent — if not the most eloquent — orators on racism in America is James Baldwin (1924-1987). He was recognized during his life for, among other publications, The Fire Next Time and Notes of a Native Son, two non-fiction outcries, as well as six novels (Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room are two) and maybe less so for his plays, The Amen Corner and Blues for Mister Charlie. The works established him as a ubiquitous spokesman on his most frequent and profoundly considered subject.
Today, he’s regaining renewed attention — surely, it’s more than a vogue — due to the disturbing spike in the nation’s racist attitudes, attitudes that, though somewhat improved, still remain disturbing.
Only a few months ago Baldwin’s volatile 1965 Oxford Union debate with William Buckley was reenacted in Brooklyn by A.R.T./New York. During that one-hour encounter, the only partially-raised-voice Baldwin and the reptilian-tongued Buckley mooted the question “Is the American Dream at the Expense of the American Negro?”
Now Lessons in Survival: 1971, a two-hour interview between Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni, presented that year on the Soul! television series, is on stage. It arrives only after having been streamed in 2020 by a group called The Commissary. Formed as a multi-part virtual company by Marin Ireland, Peter Mark Kendall, Tyler Thomas, and Reggie D. White as the pandemic first took hold, The Commissary was committed to addressing significant political issues.
There’s no doubt that the group — which initially had actors speaking verbatim transcripts as prompted in their ears — deserves many thanks for its efforts. On the evidence of Lessons in Survival: 1971, however, the thanks come with reservations.
But first, grateful words on the interview itself. For it, Giovanni, on the left, and Baldwin, smoking consistently on the right, sit in chairs a few feet apart. The description “tête-à-tête” (head-to-head) is literally apt. Often leaning towards each other throughout 116 minutes, interviewer Giovanni and interviewee Baldwin practically bump foreheads.
Their exchange on aspects of being Black in a still-resisting country reaches as sophisticated a level as any exchange on these ideas can be hoped to attain. As the interview begins, Giovanni asks why Baldwin has spent so much time living abroad. (Paris was a second home to him.) He explains that he left his native Harlem because he wanted to be a writer and felt his homeland had little belief in black writers.
He admits he knew he couldn’t leave responsibilities to his race behind and carries on discussing them from myriad angles. With Giovanni mostly agreeing to his insights but sometimes questioning them, Baldwin talks about American English being a shared language between Blacks and whites but not necessarily the same language.
As interviewer and interviewee thread though their discourse, Baldwin drops verbal bombshells. He says — in a sentence particularly applicable this American minute — “A teacher who isn’t free to teach is not a teacher.” Speaking of artists, he revises Giovanni’s suggestion that an artist should be free to do what he wants to do. He insists that any artist is “is free to do what he has to do.”
In the shared two hours, there are few germane topics they miss. They get to Black writers they admire — Richard Wright for one, Chester Himes for another, although she holds Himes in higher regard than he does. (The Wright-Himes segment has been trimmed for the stage as has a sparky sequence wherein Baldwin uses the most commonly uttered slur more than once to make powerful statements.)
When the category of critics arises, Baldwin declares, “No white critic can judge my work.” He elaborates, although the critic composing this review will respond that a white critic surely has the freedom to speak from some sympathetic, if not fully empathetic, perspective.
The critic at hand will also respond to the live, as opposed to virtual, realization of Soul!’s program. Apparently judging that the seated Giovanni and Baldwin were fine for boob-tube purposes but need punching up in a theater, the Commissary folks, director Thomas and set designer You-Shin Chen have given themselves a challenge to make the hardly static interview their notion of stage-worthy.
Giovanni (Crystal Dickinson) and Baldwin (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) populate a sunken living room furnished with long sofas and a central low table. It’s not that Dickinson and Clemons-Hopkins aren’t capable of delivering the dialog as Giovanni and Baldwin uttered them.
It’s that they are kept on the move, constantly shifting positions (so that spectators won’t be bored?). It’s as if the original conversationalists aren’t packing enough drama in their unaffected prose. Moreover, though Dickinson sounds enough like Giovanni, the tall Clemons-Hopkins doesn’t sound like Baldwin. Also. though he might not have towered over Baldwin, he’s noticeably taller than his predecessor.
Perhaps because Baldwin had such a pronounced way of speaking (and looking, with bulging eyes, as if permanently startled by the world), Clemons-Hopkins is far from Baldwin-like. While Baldwin lights cigarettes through the Soul! hours, it’s Dickinson who indulges in non-stop cigarette-inhaling here. Why? Clemons-Hopkins drinks. Why? (Isn’t this perhaps dishonoring the two being honored?)
The verdict: Lessons in Survival: 1971 has a certain power — maybe especially for those who’ve never seen Baldwin or Giovanni — but its ultimate merit may lie in pointing the way to the actual interview available this very minute on YouTube.
