In “Queens Girl in the World,” now playing at Everyman Theatre, the remarkable Dawn Ursula plays a precocious 12-year old African-American girl in the summer of 1962 who’s transferred from a neighborhood public school to a progressive private school in Greenwich Village and naturally has to cope with all kinds of cultural change.
She has to learn many new words,she informs us, like “transcendental” and “homosexual” and “oy vey.”
She has a father who’s a doctor anda mother who’s got big dreams for her child. They live in a middle classneighborhood where all the whites have moved away, presumably including all ofthe era’s liberals who talked a good game on integration but panicked when thefirst blacks actually showed up.
The parents want to take advantageof whatever doors whites have started opening for blacks in this post-war civilrights era. So the daughter, named Jacqueline Marie Butler, has to make thetransition that leaves her wondering, like so many Americans of then and now: Wheredo I fit in culturally?
Jacqueline leaves behind a blackboyfriend from the neighborhood and takes up with a Jewish boy from school. Sheleaves behind a black girlfriend from the neighborhood and has sleep-overs atJewish girlfriends’ houses.
And she’s left wondering if she’sbehaving certain ways “just to please my white friends.”
Caleen Sinnette Jennings’ script is a delight. The evening pulses along on wings of laughter and pathos. But it’s Dawn Ursula’s solo performance that will take your breath away — with her energy, her ability to switch between multiple characters in the beat of a heart, and the sheer range of her emotions.
[Read Jmore‘s interview with “Queens Girl” director Paige Hernandez here.]
There’s joy and laughter here, but heartache, too. We live through the era’s assassinations all over again: John Kennedy and Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. It’s the last one that convinces the parents it’s time to leave America.
Fortunately, we can find out wherethey’re headed in a sister play at Everyman, also written by Jennings, runningsimultaneously to “Queens Girl in the World.” It’s called “Queens Girl inAfrica” and it stars Erika Rose as Jacqueline.
The plays are set more than half acentury ago. But the emotions, the cultural anxieties, and the coming-of-agehilarity, are as fresh as today’s.
“Queens Girl in the World” and “Queens Girl in Africa” are playing in repertory through June 23 at Everyman Theatre, 315 West Fayette St., 410-752-2208. A third “Queens Girl” installment, “Queens Girl — Black in the Green Mountains,” is set for Everyman’s 2019/2020 season.
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