for Giovanni
By Emily Wilson Wed., Aug. 24 2011 at 11:00 AM
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2011/08/jewelle_gomez_qa_waiting_for_g.php
Poet and novelist Jewelle Gomez is the author of The Gilda Stories,
about black lesbian vampires. She has spent the past few years working
on a play, Waiting for Giovanni, which is currently running at the New
Conservatory Theatre Center. It was inspired by author James Baldwin's
second novel, Giovanni's Room, about an American in Paris who has an
affair with a man he meets at a gay bar. Gomez, who knows a little
something about being told not to write about certain subjects, wanted
to explore what it might have been like for Baldwin when he published
his controversial book in 1956. We spoke with Gomez recently about the
play.
How did James Baldwin influence you and your writing?
Baldwin was one of the first African-American writers I ever read,
when I was about 15. Two things about him -- he had African American
characters and characters who were gay. The third and most important
thing probably is his use of language; it's always so fluid and rich.
It was like you could read his books and almost taste the words. That
just mesmerized me and kind of shaped how I think about writing, which
is a good thing since mostly I've been writing vampire fiction, so
having that kind of language really fit in.
There's a kind of rich vocabulary that he uses. ... and he's aware of
the power of words. It's like a poet; a poet picks very precise words
because a word has to convey a lot of meaning because there's so few
of them. I love to go back to that complex relationship with words, so
when you hear a word, you don't just hear it flat on the page or the
stage, you hear a kind of resonance, that this sequence of words was
chosen to convey an emotional response.
What was it about Giovanni's Room that led you to write Waiting for
Giovanni?
When I started writing The Gilda Stories, a number of people said,
'You really should not write a black lesbian vampire. You don't really
want to connect vampires to black people or vampires to lesbians
because that's so negative.' And my feeling was it's not going to be
the same old story.
So in thinking about Giovanni's Room, I had heard Baldwin had some
trepidation about publishing it because it's gay and took place in
France and did not have African American characters. I had dinner with
an editor who had worked with Baldwin, and when I told him I was
considering a play about Baldwin that might involve Giovanni's Room,
his eyes lit up. He said, "Oh, that was a really important book, and
people didn't want him to write it, and he got all kinds of flak for
that." Then I realized, oh yeah, this is where I'm going. It's a big
deal if you want to write something and people are telling you not to
do it. It relates to the larger world. If there's something deeply
meaningful to you in your heart, if someone tells you, "You can't do
that, you're going to screw things up if you do that," that really
hurts your heart. So I thought let me go inside his mind and imagine
what it might have been like for him in the 1950s.
Why did you want this to be a play?
I've studied and taught playwriting. I had one play produced based on
my vampire novel that toured the country and was here at the Yerba
Buena Center for the Arts. For this piece I collaborated with Harry
Waters Jr., an old friend. We worked in theater in New York in the
1980s. He was in the original production here of Angels in America.
Five or six years ago he said "I want you to write me something about
James Baldwin," and I thought he meant a monologue. So I wrote that,
and he said, "Oh, this is really lovely. Where's the rest of it?" This
is the play that came out of that. Harry has acted as the dramaturge
all along, and now he's directing it.
Why do you call it a "dream play?"
I'm going back to Strindberg, who said it's a piece based on a moment
of unreality. It's not a biographical piece even though there are
characters kind of based on real people. I'm not writing about a
particular instance where Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin had a
conversation, I'm writing about what's going on in his head. Which
gives me a lot of leeway because I can write anything I want. [laughs]
--
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