Some Old Black Men Are Just Like My Dad
Although I have always enjoyed stage plays, I admit I’ve had the chance to see fairly few in my lifetime, and a number of those I experienced while living in New York City, over 20 years ago. Since the pandemic, I’ve had the chance to watch streaming versions of two theatrical performances - the addictive Hamilton, which made its online debut on Disney Plus July 3, 2020, and on January 15, 2021, a University of Michigan sponsored production of James Anthony Tyler’s Some Old Black Man (SOBM), starring the superb actors Wendell Pierce and Charlie Robinson. It’s taken me from January to June to complete my post about the performance because in trying to write the piece, I found myself having to sort out various emotions. I had to walk away from what I was writing. I needed distance. It’s complicated, but you may understand by the time you read this all the way to the end.
The morning of the SOBM performance, I happened to hear an NPR interview with Pierce during which he talked about the streaming premiere of SOBM, and how his relationship with his own father is reflected in the play. Memory, generational tensions, fear, and internalized racism all sounded like familiar, familial themes to me as Pierce explained some of the dynamics viewers would get to witness and experience between the fictional father and son during the performance. My own father - with whom I’ve maintained an often fraught relationship - will soon be 84. The older he gets, the more our relationship evolves and some of the themes of SOBM seem to emerge. By the end of Pierce’s NPR interview, I knew I had to see the play. Something told me that watching would be cathartic.
What I love about watching theatre streamed online is that every seat is front row. And as a result, every body movement, facial expression, and other piece of nuance can be easily observed and traced, which heightens the viewing experience for me. SOBM is absolutely compelling in that respect, as the interplay between Pierce’s Calvin Jones, PhD, and his character’s father, Robinson’s Donald Jones, is beautifully, sometimes achingly captured on the faces and in the body language of the actors. I was immediately drawn in to this story of an older, southern Black man, newly transplanted from the fictional Greenwall, Mississippi to Manhattan to live with his son. Both men are widowed, and the father we find out has surrendered the beloved familiarity of his home in Mississippi because of failing health and memory that render him unable to live by himself. Donald Jones seems to be about the age of my dad, who also hails from Mississippi, and the similarities between Donald and Dad are both humorous and heartbreaking.
From the first few lines of the play, it’s clear that the relationship between Calvin and his father is full of conflict. The older Jones enters the main room of the performance dressed in a blue robe, lumberjack pajamas, and corduroy house shoes, and from jump he comes across as a grumpy old dude. The way his robe is loosely tied around Donald’s waist, and the brown house shoes - which look just like ones I recently searched for online for my dad - evoke my own father. Add to that Donald’s grey hair, especially that which engulfs his chin, and his long, slender fingers, and dude basically looks like my dad. For an hour and 40 minutes, I watched Donald channel my father as he worked out his issues with his stage son, who in many ways could be me. It. Was. Wild.
Immediately in SOBM, Donald and to some extent Calvin both demonstrate unexpressed fear. Donald wants to make Calvin’s place his own, insisting on adding to the decor without asking Calvin, or consulting with him. It’s a sweet touch and piece of Donald’s own home (a brightly colored quilted throw that Calvin’s mother knitted long ago). But Calvin is quick to remind Donald whose house they’re in, and they’re off to the races. Donald rails about being an adult who is being treated like a baby by a son who doesn’t think he’s capable of making his own decisions. Calvin simply wants the respect of being treated like he is the one who should make decisions in and for his own home. What I observe is the tension that older adults experience in wanting to be fully independent, even after it’s been established that they can no longer safely live on their own.
My dad was direct and kind in telling me his wishes a few years ago; that he wants to be allowed to be independent for as long as possible. He lives by himself in his own apartment, and though he no longer drives, he occasionally goes to the grocery store so that he can cook, or purchases pre-cooked food, usually on his own. Although I am noticing that he increasingly needs my assistance for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is help processing how to do certain things without becoming confused or flustered - I respect his declared wishes, and try to give him as much autonomy as possible. Calvin Jones models how an adult child gently coerces their parent to give up some autonomy when the time comes - a time that is drawing near for my dad - for safety’s sake.
Donald, who walks slowly with the slightly stooped over gait of an octogenarian, plays the curmudgeon, insulting Calvin’s intelligence, memory, food, choice of women, profession, courses taught, and even the abode that Donald now calls home. Just about all of Donald’s ire feels like projection, because when he diminishes Calvin’s ability to remember certain details, he’s really talking about his own memory loss. And when he tells Calvin that “your house ain’t shit,” he’s really lamenting the loss of his own cherished space. As one might imagine, Calvin, in turns, meets his dad’s hostility with love, annoyance, disbelief, anger, and occasionally, an apology. But there is joy between the two men, too, and the intricate call and response of a father and son remembering good times long gone, even as they rehash old hurts and schisms.
At one point, Donald asks Calvin if he remembers a fight that Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) fought in when Calvin was a boy. Calvin joins his dad in recalling details from the fight, and unpredictably, the two begin to shadow box. “Show them your footwork!” Donald calls out to Calvin, and Calvin obliges by quickly shuffling his feet in the stye of Ali. But after laughing and enjoying this tender moment, the two fall back into a squabble about something that’s not really revealed in what’s being said, but what lies underneath. There is clearly so much between the father and son that has not been expressed or spoken over the years, and SOBM is incredible in its ability to demonstrate a variety of raw emotions in quick succession, but credibly, movingly, and sometimes hauntingly. In another scene farther along in the play, Donald reveals why he has shown disdain for Calvin’s white, dearly departed wife, who even in death is not protected from Donald’s barbs. What we learn is that Donald’s painful memories of the brutal anti-Black treatment he witnessed in his youth growing up in the Jim Crow South made him vehemently fearful of what white people might do to his Black son in a relationship with a white woman. In one of the most poignant moments in the play, Donald, in anguish, cries out to Calvin: “what made you think you could” marry a white woman? And with both men now in tears, Calvin explains how he and his wife knew the risks, and decided to love each other, and marry anyway.
The relationship between Calvin and Donald represents so many other tensions that often exist between older Black parents and their adult children: the traditions and trauma of the South versus the fast paced urbanity of the North; an emphasis of the practical versus indulgence in the intellectual; simplicity versus perceived extravagance; traditional, less healthy foods versus “rabbit food”; and everything in between.
But that’s the point of SOBM - to represent the relationship between a Black man and his adult child in such a way that we can all relate; in a way that underscores the fleeting, frail nature of life, and the need for reconciliation with our parents, and ourselves, while there is time.