‘Trial’ writer Leslie waives her right to remain silent

Bridgit Brown

What if Mammy jumped out of her television caricature and became human? Playwright Karani Marcia Leslie poses that question in “The Trial of One Short-Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae,” now playing at the BCA Plaza Theatre at Boston Center for the Arts.

The play tells the story of Victoria, the title’s “short-sighted black woman,” who decides to take two longstanding unfavorable stereotypes of black women — the jovial, asexual and servile Mammy and the hyper-sexualized and Jezebel-ish Safreeta Mae — to court for promoting what she feels are negative images that have impeded her ascension up the entertainment industry’s corporate ladder. Throughout the staged trial, Leslie takes both characters and audience through a journey of complex human emotion with compelling testimony as history confronts the present.

The first and only black female video editor at CBS, Leslie has written for stars such as Bill Cosby, Robert Townsend and the late Nell Carter, and now works as an editor for the hit CBS reality show “Survivor.” Leslie hopes that at the very least, “The Trial” will inspire “good conversation that needs to happen about the legacy of slavery.”

Leslie recently took a few moments to speak with the Banner about that legacy, as well as her inspiration, the play’s content and that interestingly long title.

|What motivated you to write plays?
I was trying to write sitcoms for television and was unable to get a nibble on any of my scripts. I think that I sat down one day and wrote about everything I felt about television and it came out in the form of a play. [“A Raisin in the Sun” writer] Lorraine Hansberry was instrumental. I love her work. I also did a lot of acting, but I was more influenced by literature and history, though I always wrote. I just never considered writing for a living, and I wasn’t aware of my development as a playwright. Things just kind of happened that way.

What inspired you to write “The Trial?”

I was seeing stereotypes on television and not really seeing myself or my family or my friends [represented in them], and hearing everybody just talking about the stereotypes over and over again, about how bad they were and laughing at them. People did have different opinions about what they meant to them, and consequently, I just voiced those opinions in different characters.
Of all the titles that you could have given this play, why did you decide on “The Trial of One Short-Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae?”
It was a working title, and I was working so fast and I had to put it up for a contest. When I was about to change it and shorten it people were like, “No, you shouldn’t. It’s good advertisement because I know what play I’m going to see now. The one with the long title.” Every city we went to, people would say the same thing, so we just left it like that. When you don’t have any money, it’s a good marketing tool.

Why did you decide to have the setting be a courtroom on a slave ship?

Actually, I started out with a courtroom, and it evolved into a slave ship over time. I chose the courtroom setting for a couple of particular reasons. One being that at the time, there were all these courtroom reality shows on television, and it seemed to be a very popular format. Also, the idea of the repression of a courtroom worked with the piece in terms of the repression that was brought about by slavery. It all just worked, and it was an easy vehicle for argumentation rather than just having friends sitting around a living room.

Other than the disclaimer that you wrote at the beginning of the play regarding not making caricatures of the characters, what advice would you give anyone interested in putting on a production of your play?

That would still be the thing I would still say, because it’s where people veered off the most when I would see productions of the play. People felt like they had to go for the laughs and I told them that it just comes right out if you seriously play the characters. It’s going to come out because the characters are saying things that people say and when people hear themselves, it becomes humorous.

What do you want the audience to feel when leaving this play?

Various feelings, but primarily, I want them to realize that there’s a lot of history that they don’t know and that has been overlooked and that it is crucial to everything that not just the country, but that the world is going through. I want them to be inspired to have a good conversation about the legacy of slavery.


Who, in your opinion, is the star of the play?
Victoria has the major turnaround. She would be the star of the play because she has the arc, it’s following her around, but Mammy usually steals the show. That’s just the way it goes. When she does begin to speak, it is so moving and usually audiences applaud and they make a lot of noise, and, of course, at the end.

Which of the female characters do you identify with the most?
I identify with the Mammy character, but that’s a hard question because I created them all and they’re all a part of me. Mammy has my middle name, but everyone thinks it’s Victoria because I work in television, and they say, “Okay, that must be you.” But there are parts of me in the defense and in Safreeta. I don’t think I can say that I don’t identify with any of them, but the fact that Mammy has the overall vision and that she sees everything reminds me of myself.

Can you talk about the ending of the play?

It’s incredible how people are moved by that ending. I’ve seen all kinds of different reactions, from people grabbing on to other people and saying that they’re moved inside. Something that they don’t even understand. It’s the same effect that I had when I saw all the names of the slave ships that I didn’t know about. I mean, you have an idea about them, but you don’t know the actual names, and I only listed about 70 of them, but there were quite a few more.

The writing is beautiful, poetic. Where did you get some of your lines? For example, the one about “looking into other people’s thread box for your own needle?”
I’m an old soul. Nobody ever said that to me, it’s just me. I do that a lot. I just come up with those kinds of phrases. My father used to say I was an old lady when I was four or five. “Old Lady” was my nickname. I don’t know where those things come from.

How have white people responded to your play?

They say some of the same things that black people say, like, “I didn’t realize.” Or, “I really never gave much thought to that.” I’ve also had some white people say things like, “It’s kind of divisive to go back and repeat that history. We should be trying to join people together.” I usually ask them, “Well, do you want us to ignore the history and live happily ever after?” I’ve gotten all types of comments from people saying that it’s a revisionist history and that I’m revising what they once knew. But this play is almost 15 years old now, and a lot has happened in terms of people’s responses over the 15 years. Nowadays, everybody is going back and looking at their ancestral legacy, so I think there’s a little more openness to it today than when I first staged it.

Can you talk about some of the difficulties that you experienced with initially getting the play staged?

Back then, all of the theaters that have done it, black theatres especially, did not want this play. They thought the title was slapstick, and most of them hadn’t even read it. They just hated it because of the title. Then there were those who didn’t feel like they needed to revisit that. White theaters would say things like, “We don’t have enough black people in our repertoire to put on a play such as this.”

When you came for the Boston reading in February, you appeared deeply moved. What feeling did you get from the Boston actors?

They really were extraordinary.And then I heard that they had only rehearsed that day, and I was stunned. Once again, it brought home some of the things that were being illustrated. And we’re going through all this craziness with the war, and I don’t think people realize how it all ties in. This is not just African American history, or black history, it’s not even American history. Slavery allowed America to become an empire, and America doesn’t like to think of itself as an empire, but that empire stretches all over the world. This is a history that has affected the entire world, and those things were on my mind at the time of that viewing of the play.

“The Trial of One Short-Sighted Black Woman Vs Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae,” written by Karani Marcia Leslie, directed by Jacqui Parker and presented by Roxbury Crossroads Theatre and Serendipity Productions, running now through June 9 at the BCA Plaza Theatre at Boston Center for the Arts. For more information, call 617-933-8600 or visit www.roxburycrossroadstheatre.com.