Diamonds were more than a girl’s best friend on Saturday evening, Nov. 11; they were an eye-blinding crowd-pleaser. WSSU’s Friends of the Library continued its annual tradition by presenting a stunning eveningof entertainment to benefit C.G. O’Kelly library.
The musical theater and dinner benefit was an eventful evening complete with a three course buffet in McNeil Banquet Hall, and the premier of “Black diamonds: A family portrait.” Every year, the benefit has a different theme and this year’s was the unique focus of Dr. Mae Rodney, director of Library Services who wrote”Black Diamonds,” script inspired by a compilation of oral histories, which were told to Rodney by her mother over many years. “This is any person’s story,” Rodney said. In her case, the McMannen-Glenn family history covers so many generations, situations and women that Rodney opted to select five characters who dramatize a small aspect of their complicated lives.Rodney described the script as “women sharing experiences and family values with their daughters”.
“It is like looking at five generations through five different pairs of eyes,” Rodney explained. The cast who captured those five life perspectives in stellar performances consisted of WSSU students LaShunda Booker, Halbert Richardson, Tosha Dillard, Nichola Lumpkin, Audrey Kelly and alumnus Sandra Amos.Because the family’s history begins before the Civil War, tearful and joyful words, as well as old and new images, were utilized to portray the stories of five strong matriarchs. The central theme for each tale emphasized the strong work ethic that each woman passed from one generation to the next. The list of characters included: Sara (Booker), the family; Lucy (Amos), Sara’s baby girl; Mary (Dillard) Lucy’s daughter and Sara’s granddaughter who attends college; India (Lumpkin), Mary’s oldest daughter; Lucy’s granddaughter and Sara’s great granddaughter and Baby Black Diamond (Kelly) also India’s last child, Mary’s granddaughter, Lucy’s great granddaughter and Sara’s great- granddaughter who represents the modern day professional black woman. Baby Black Diamond was based on Rodney, specifically when her grandmother came to visit her during the summer of 1961 at the age of 14. “Grandma Mary came to stay at my house [and] she whipped me into shape, but did not lay a hand on me,” Rodney said. “She made me realize ‘do your work’ and then play. That is the story that transformed me and the one I live by,” she added.
Rodney was able to transcend an important lesson through a common line repeated by Booker’s character, Sara: “don’t trust the men who work in the field, don’t trust the men in the big house and definitely don’t let them near you and yours.” It became the repetitive lesson for the evening, which Grice explained “the story remains the same…don’t trust the man.” A lesson which implies that strong, self-motivated women shape their families and the future by teaching children about life and that although the methods changed among generations, the goal remained the same: to transform unpolished gems into “Black Diamonds.”
Prior to the animated-filled evening, Rodney predicted that the songs chosen would help project each story. In the same vein, Sophia Grice, the play’s director, said “music ties it all together.” That became obvious, especially when the sound of jubilant voices echoing black spirituals flooded the auditorium.
Like a contagious ‘bug’, each lyric mushroomed from mouth to mouth in the audience. Priscilla Blackwell, Frederick Roundtree, Dorothy Stafford and Michael Sutton made up the chorale ensemble. The music was composed of standard hymns; spirituals and rock ‘n’ roll songs that transported the audience through one extended family’s three-century journey. “It is a wonderful story that Dr. Rodney wrote,” Grice said. “I am hoping to do it at other venues, [in order] to share the stories.” Despite the generational gap, the common theme and the selection of music made the five women’s stories”everybody’s story”.