(left to right) Leland Fowler as Drew, Libya V. Pugh as Miss Trish, and Crowe-Legacy as Sassy in This Land Was Made, directed by Taylor Reynolds.
Tori Sampson’s This Land Was Made is a steamy gumbo of history, humor, and imagination. Directed by Taylor Reynolds, it serves up a fictive account of the origins of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, Calif., in 1966. Although the play has some structural flaws, it invites one to ponder the issues that animated this revolutionary social organization—racist police brutality and economic injustice—and to consider how they still resonate today.
Ezra Knight as Mr. Far and Antoinette Crowe-Legacy as Sassy in Tori Sampson’s This Land Was Made at the Vineyard Theatre. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
The play’s narrator, Sassy (Antoinette Crowe-Legacy), is a wannabe writer and firm believer in oral tradition. “Consider me your time-traveling griot,” she confides to the audience, as she insinuates herself into the ancestral persona of a West African storyteller. Crowe-Legacy’s Sassy will step in and out of the action over the next two hours, sometimes to impart morsels of wisdom and at other times to scribble down Black history-in-the-making. Her real name is Karen, but even her mother, Miss Trish (Libya V. Pugh), the no-nonsense proprietor of the tavern, will agree that the moniker “Sassy” suits her strong-willed daughter just fine.
This Bay Area establishment, dubbed “Miss Trish’s Bar” and run by Sassy’s mother (Libya V. Pugh) serves both as a second home for the locals and as a sanctuary for any stranger passing through town. When it comes to sharp-tongued wit, Ms. Trish is second to none, particularly when it comes to reminding one of her regular male patrons that women made an equal contribution to building this country. After the jobless Drew (Leland Fowler), in a quandary as to his life’s calling but a keen follower of Muhammad Ali, brags about his grandfather’s legacy, she takes him on.
Drew: We shouldn’t have to work for nothing. Our grandfathers built this country. It’s rightfully ours.
Ms. Trish: I guess grandmothers were just counting stars and applying blush while all this country-building was going on.
Other regulars include the mechanic Mr. Far (Ezra Knight), an old family friend of Ms. Trish who acts like a stepfather to Sassy; his nephew Gene (Curtis Morlaye), a new recruit to the Black Panthers; and Troy (Matthew Griffin), an ambitious college student who’s in love with Sassy.
Hovering over the principals is the prospect of an early death. Jonathan, Sassy’s brother, has died a year earlier in Vietnam, but that doesn’t stop his girlfriend Gail (Yasha Jackson), Sassy’s vivacious best friend, from moving forward with her life. But Gene, ever since his friend was shot dead by the Oakland police, “always got Panthers to the left and right of him,” says Far. In short, no Black is safe from racist violence in Oakland.
Matthew Griffin as Troy (left) and Juan Elijah Martinez is Huey in This Land Was Made.
It's Troy’s struggle to come to terms with that racism that takes center stage. Although he persuades Sassy to marry him, their relationship changes drastically after he meets the Black Panther cofounder Huey Newton (Julian Elijah Martinez) at the tavern and joins him for an outing one October evening.
While This Land Was Made may sound depressing, it’s not. Sampson generously peppers her script with wisecracks, and her characterizations are spot-on. However, she is less successful at creating a narrative plot that has a clear, uncluttered trajectory. The structure can be exasperatingly loose, if not confusing, as the scenes gradually become more abstract. Case in point: Instead of Sampson straightforwardly dramatizing the notorious shootout scene that involved Newton and resulted in the death of Officer Frey (Oliver Palmer) on Oct. 28, 1967, she has the character Mr. Far give Sassy a transistor police radio, in which she—and the audience—can listen to a verbatim text of that day’s police report as red and white police lights bounce around the darkened stage. Although it seems unfair to single out any one actor in this fine cast, Crowe-Legacy seamlessly transitions from being the narrator to her resilient character Sassy, without missing a beat.
Reynolds and her designer, Wilson Chin, have created a vivid working-class tavern on stage: there’s a wooden floor, along with old-fashioned ceiling fans, plain tables and chairs, and walls decorated with various pictures and posters (one of the more colorful ones advertises the B.B. King orchestra), and a barber’s chair for anyone who wants an impromptu clipping of their Afro.
It’s been 57 years since Newton and Bobby Seale cofounded the Black Panthers. Sampson’s play, though it has some shortfalls, manages to show that, regardless of one’s skin color, much is to be learned from these forerunners of today’s Black Power movement.
The Vineyard Theatre production of This Land Was Made runs at the Vineyard Theatre (108 E. 15th St.) through June 25. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and at 7:30 on Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and information, visit vineyardtheatre.org or call the box office (212) 353-0303 or telecharge.com.
Playwright: Tori Sampson
Direction: Taylor Reynolds
Sets: Wilson Chin
Costumes: Dominique Fawn Hill
Lighting: Adam Honoré
Sound: Fan Zhang
