A few years ago I was delighted to read the autobiographical book of the famous Delany sisters, Sadie and Bessie Delany:
Having Our Say The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years. by Emily Mann, Annie Elizabeth Delany, Sarah Louise Delany, and Amy Hill Hearth (Paperback – Jan 1998)
(100)Their lovely book told of their lives from young women making their way in the world, through segregation, lynchings, racism, and sexism, the Civil Rights Movement, all the way up to their twilight years, when they still showed the sass and spiritual faith that had taken them so far in life. Bessie and Sadie both received college degrees, when many people did not even finish a high school education. (Bessie became the second Black woman to practice dentistry in New York, and Sadie became the first Black home economics teacher in a New York high school.)
The sisters were not shy in telling the world the story of their lives, even though they could not see why anyone would be interested in their lives. But, after reading their words, one cannot help but be drawn into such fascinating and interesting lives. (The sisters remained unmarried, and they both lived together, until they died—-Bessie, at 104 in 1995, and Sadie at 109, three and a half years later.) They left a marvelous legacy of remarkable lives, the essence of which still speaks to us all in how to take on the world.
Now, being presented again at the McCarter Theater Center, is the play “Having Our Say: The Delany Sister’s First 100 Years”. The play, written and directed by Emily Mann, has opened to great reviews, and the following New York Times article of the play is a wonderful review.
For those of you who are fortunate, try to go see this play.
The Delany sister’s book is a cherished memoir of their lives, and it is good to see their story on the stage.
They are truly missed.
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THEATER REVIEW: EMILY MANN’S ‘DELANY SISTERS’ BACK AT MCCARTER THEATER
By ANITA GATES
Published: September 25, 2009
Emily Mann couldn’t have planned it better. Just as the nation’s politicians and pundits are talking about race as if it were a new phenomenon and debating whether talking about it helps or hurts African-American leaders like President Obama, Ms. Mann has brought “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years” back to the McCarter Theater Center in a truly lovely production.
T Charles Erickson
IN HARMONY Lizan Mitchell, left, and Yvette Freeman portray the centenarian siblings Sadie and Bessie in “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years,” written and directed by Emily Mann.
The Delany sisters are two maiden ladies (their term) living quietly together in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and talking (although they can’t imagine why anyone would be interested) about their family and their lives, which span a century.
Sadie, a retired schoolteacher, is 103 years old. Bessie, a retired dentist, is 101. Their father was born a slave in 1858. After hearing Civil War stories at their father’s knee, the sisters lived to see Jim Crow laws, rampant lynchings, the civil rights movement, the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the battle of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. (“I know a rascal when I see one,” Bessie observes.)
The play is set in 1993, and Bessie (Yvette Freeman) predicts that the United States will have a white woman as president before a black man. “I’m a little psychic,” she explains to Sadie (Lizan Mitchell) and the audience.
That prediction is one of the newly meaningful pleasures in “Having Our Say,” which had its world premiere at the McCarter in early 1995 and moved to Broadway two months later. Ms. Mann, the McCarter’s artistic director, wrote the play and directed it, as she does again, expertly, in 2009. It’s based on an oral history of the same name by the Delanys and a journalist, Amy Hill Hearth.
Fourteen years later, the Delanys’ observations are as fresh as ever, and Ms. Freeman and Ms. Mitchell give splendid performances.
Bessie won’t put up with any nonsense. “People learn not to mess with me from Day 1,” she announces early on. Sadie is confident but a more philosophical sort. “It takes a smart woman to fall in love with a good man,” she observes.
Although they had suitors, neither sister ever married. And after living together all these years, they not only finish each other’s sentences; they finish them together in effortless harmony.
On opening night, there was an unfortunate hint of condescension at first. The predominantly white audience seemed at times to find every pronouncement a little too funny, à la “Elderly black women say the darndest things.” But as the evening proceeds, Bessie and Sadie’s dignity knocks that silliness out of theatergoers’ heads. And the women’s most personal memories remind everyone that we’re all in this together.
In the third and last act, Sadie and Bessie recall the death of their father, an educator who became the first black Episcopal bishop. Both women had been living on their own for a while, but the loss of their father was devastating. “I didn’t realize how safe I felt in the world” when he was around, Sadie recalls. Bessie wishes she had spent more time with her mother and regrets leaving the room and not being at her mother’s side when she breathed her last.
This is a handsome production with exquisitely low-key sets by Daniel Ostling and beautiful projection design by Wendall K. Harrington. Imagine a horizontal black-and-white photograph the height and width of the stage, with a cutout in the bottom center. There the action takes place. Sometimes the screen projection is a Delany family portrait, sometimes a montage of “whites only” signs, sometimes film of civil rights protests, images of the changing world the sisters knew.
Bessie died at 104 in 1995, after “Having Our Say” had been received well on Broadway. Sadie, left behind, died almost three and a half years later. She was 109.
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Other books by the Delany sisters:
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The Delany Sisters’ Book of Everyday Wisdom by Sarah Delany (Paperback – September 15, 1996)
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On My Own at 107: Reflections on Life Without Bessie by Sarah L. Delany (Paperback – February 11, 1998)
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Ann
