Something's So Wright With This Playwright

Writer-Director Charles Randolph-Wright Talks About Phylicia Rashad, Race, Mom And Being 'Blue'

When the play "Blue" opened at the prestigious Arena Stage in Washington, everyone expected great things. After all, the piece was written by Charles Randolph-Wright, directed by Sheldon Epps and starred actress Phylicia Rashad.

What happened, however, far surpassed great; it was phenomenal.

Just a week into the run, the play has been extended until mid-June. "Blue" has also received an official offer to head to Broadway, and has garnered both critical praise (the Washington Post just did a full-page write-up on Randolph-Wright) and audience adulation. The tough D.C. audiences are quite literally screaming in the aisles.

It is just one more victory for a man who is proving, once and for all, that hard work, patience and perseverance do pay off.

Now meet writer, director, actor and producer Charles Randolph-Wright. Find out why his play has received such buzz and more about the man who made it all happen.

Sunday Best
We're eating breakfast at the Good Earth restaurant in the San Fernando Valley.

It's Sunday, and Los Angeles offers a sunny forecast, but Randolph-Wright has little time to enjoy it.

He must be exhausted. After leaving Washington, he has arrived in Los Angeles for a string of studio meetings. Right after our interview, he is heading to San Francisco for yet more meetings.

But Randolph-Wright must eat, and that's what we do as he tells me his story.

"L.A. taught me how to wait, how to actively wait," Randolph-Wright says.

He is talking about his decade-long stint in Los Angeles, which proved to be both a struggle and a lesson.

After appearing on Broadway in the original cast of "Dreamgirls," Randolph-Wright made his way to Los Angeles to work on his dream of performing, writing and directing.

The dream did not come easily, but looking back, Randolph-Wright says, "When there is something you know you want to do, and what you have to do, you cannot settle.

"I watch people doing jobs or doing things they didn't want to do or did not believe. And believe me, you have to take care of certain responsibilities. You can't live hand to mouth. But if you have any possibility of saying 'no,' that is what you must do. Because ultimately, it takes away from your ultimate desire."

In the end, Randolph-Wright discovered that "it's only about what you believe in; it's nothing else."

He says that there is irony to his success today.

"I was called the black David Lynch in L.A. 10 years ago," he says. "The only good reviews I would get were from the alternative papers. In the (Los Angeles) Times, I wouldn't get the attention.

Now, he notes, things are the opposite.

"The alternative papers in D.C. are the ones criticizing me," he says. "It's so bizarre how things turn around."

"I worked in theater my entire career. Because now I also do television and film, the alternative types in theater think that I think of theater as 'slumming.' And that is so untrue," he tells me. "Yes, I work in television and film, but I'm a theater artist."

Randolph-Wright's most recent television work includes producing and writing the Showtime series "Linc's" starring Pam Grier, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award this year. (Read more about Grier.)

He also co-authored the screenplays "White Chocolate" with John Leguizamo and "Homework" with Kim Coles.

Storybook Life
"I always knew I wanted to tell stories," Randolph-Wright says of his career. "They took different forms -- as a director, as a writer, as a performer."

But he credits his mother for being the driving force behind his creativity and his passion to succeed.

"My mother read 'Macbeth' to me as a baby," he says. "How can I not be doing what I'm doing?"

"Blue" pays tribute, of sorts, to his mother and his upbringing in the small town of York, S.C., near Charlotte, N.C.

Randolph-Wright tells me that "Blue" is autobiographical in many ways, but is more of an amalgamation of real-life characters.

The play tells the story of the Clark family, proprietors of a successful funeral home in small-town South Carolina. Along with Rashad, the play stars Arnold McCuller, Brandon Troy McMickens, Jewell Robinson, Randall J. Shepperd, Messeret Stroman and Michael Wiggins.

"It's about having grown up in that town. It's provincial; it's behind the times," Randolph-Wright tells me. "It's having an amazing mother that demands that you do the greatest things. Everyone who knows me and knows my family has said, 'Wow, this is your family.' This is the world of the Southern black bourgeoisie where I come from."

The play's strong mother, Peggy, played by Rashad, is reminiscent of Randolph-Wright's own mother.

"(My mother) was there opening night. During intermission she was in shock" at seeing the stage version of herself act so caustic. But by the second act, Randolph-Wright tells me, she felt redeemed.

Later, she would proudly tell reporters: "Phylicia Rashad plays me."

Primary Color
"Entertainment is so segregated," Randolph-Wright says. "(Black and white audiences) don't get to enjoy the same things because we're told we're too different."

Randolph-Wright says that people are surprised by his play because "there's no rage."

"Every black play you see, there is all this rage against white people," he says. "(In the play), we live our lives and we do what we do. We have great lives and we talk about the (white) world around us. We're not isolated. We don't blame.

"The most difficult thing to take is people criticizing the story, not how they tell it. They don't think that this is real. They don't think that a black family like this exists. That's what 'Cosby' faced when it first went on the air," Write says of the hit NBC sitcom of the '80s.

At times, even "Blue" cast members would question his approach. But Randolph-Wright would quickly ask, "If these were white characters, would you be saying that?"

The answer was inevitably "no."

On the first night, he audience was predominantly white. Randolph-Wright says maybe 85 percent of the nightly sold-out crowd of 600 was Caucasian and it surprised him.

"This play is not groundbreaking, but it's astounding to me, the reaction," Randolph-Wright tells me.

"The audience went crazy. White people were talking back to us. They were stunned."

Play It Again
"I've never been this vulnerable," Randolph-Wright says. "I couldn't sleep for this week. I've never done anything this personal."

Randolph-Wright is discussing what it's like to talk about your life in such a public way as to make a play out of it.

What does he do during the show?

"I roam. I sat for some of it and then I walked around in the back of the theater," he says.

"It's hard, it's so vulnerable, but then empowering. There are moments in the show when the audience screams and applauds."

And why do audiences relate so well to the play?

"A small Southern town is the backdrop, but what's at its core is a piece about acceptance and unconditional love," Wright says. "How do you love someone who is complicated?

"You spend all this time angry at someone because they weren't what you wanted them to be. It's so interesting, because you blame them instead of realizing that you are both to blame. When you discover that, and when you realize what that person gives you or gave you, (is when you realize) how good you are because of what that is.

Ravishing Rashad
"Her mother grew up 15 miles from my town. Her mother and my stepfather went to high school together. She knows everything about that area you could know," Randolph-Wright says of "Blue" star Rashad.

"She does things that are so subtle that only people from there would realize how completely she has this character."

How did Randolph-Wright tap Rashad for "Blue?"

"Phylicia and I've been friends. We were in 'Dreamgirls' together," Wright tells me. "After I'd finished ('Blue'), I sent it to her and we had lunch. She just got this so completely, there was no question she should do it."

He says Rashad related to the play for many reasons.

Both Rashad's mother and Peggy were very concerned with offering their children direction in life.

Then Randolph-Wright says, giving me a big smile, "How does (one mother produce both) Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad?

"Her mother is a linguist and an author. Her mother was in Houston, Texas, decided to take her three kids to Mexico."

Gonna Fly Now
We finish breakfast, and Randolph-Wright is heading home to pack for his flight to San Francisco.

For the past year, Randolph-Wright has been a scholar in residence at the famed American Conservatory Theater (ACT). His production of "Tartuffe" at the ACT won critical praise.

Currently, Wright is work-shopping a new musical called "Splinters," written by Ben Patrick Johnson. The music is being written by the band Fisher. (Read more about Johnson.)

We say goodbye and, as Randolph-Wright drives away, something he said still sticks with me.

"The greatest gift a parent can give a child is a sense of self," Randolph-Wright told me.

"I am living the life that my mother told me I could have."

Yes, indeed.

Star Grazing