Jackie Taylor, artistic director and founder of the Black Ensemble Theatre, has always wanted to play the role of Mama in Lorraine Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin in the Sun.” She’s giving herself that opportunity in her new one-woman show, “Jackie Taylor’s Out Here on My Own,” opening Sunday.
Taylor has been told that she was too young or too small to play Mama, she says, so she has decided to “show the depth of what an actress can do.”
In the show Taylor will excerpt roles from plays in which she has performed and some that are new for her. Characters she will portray include Medea, a tragic character described by Euripides and others; Blanche DuBois from Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire;” Shakespeare’s Cleopatra; Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” and Hansberry’s Mama. Among the most enjoyable for her, she says, is the role of Blanche in “Streetcar,” a role she played in 1986 and 1989 productions. Most challenging among the new is Hedda Gabler, a character fraught with tragic contradictions.
All the characters she will include, Taylor says, are strong women, and yet each displays a weakness. One message these characters can deliver today is that “when we are not allowed by our society or culture to control and define our roles, then our destiny can be fatal,” she says. “We do not all fit into society’s image of what our roles should be.”
An example of that fatal weakness, Taylor says, is Medea’s loss of her powers after losing the love of Jason, whom she had helped to obtain the Golden Fleece. Bringing Medea’s situation to the level of a contemporary problem, Taylor says: “We are still fighting that image of not being defined outside the relationship with a man.”
“Jackie Taylor’s Out Here on My Own,” performed with music and dance, will begin at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Hull House Theater, 4520 N. Beacon St., Chicago, Ill. Future performances will be at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 4 p.m. Sundays through Jan. 2, 1994. Tickets are $15. Call 312-769-4451.
