Alice Childress's Trouble in Mind

A Metadramatic Exploration of Integrity and Racial Identity

The concept of metatheatre, or metadrama, has been widely discussed and has been applied to the structures of many scripts, particularly during the last twenty years. Lionel Abel formalized this examination of self-reflexive plays in 1963, adding the word "metatheatre" to the vocabulary of many scholars and dramatists, and since then, a variety of literary theorists and theatre critics have addressed the peculiar elements within and challenges presented by this type of theatre. Among the people who have circulated ideas about metadrama are June Schlueter and Bruce Wilshire, who have examined the correlation between dramatic role and identity (Lovrod 497). In her article "The Rise of Metadrama and the Fall of the Omniscient Observer," Marie Lovrod reports that Wilshire uses "the theatre's examples of metadramatic role-playing to philosophically examine identity formation" (497). Metatheatre does provide an excellent opportunity to reveal the fluidity of identity and to look psychologically at how people integrate different parts of themselves into a whole, and in her stage play Trouble in Mind, Alice Childress takes full advantage of that opportunity. Childress combines the traditional play-within-a-play structure with the more subtle metatheatrical aspect of role playing to produce an intriguing exploration of integrity and racial identity.

According to Richard Hornby's paradigm for metadramatic structure in Drama, Metadrama and Perception, Childress's Trouble in Mind is an inset drama, a play where the outer drama is more important than the inner play, rather than a framed drama, whose innermost play becomes the central focus (35). Although the action and characters in Chaos in Belleville are integral to the ensuing action of the outer drama, Childress directs the audience's attention to the outer layer of characters and their discussions and conflict. The inner play is left more underdeveloped than the outer, since the rehearsal of Chaos serves mainly to fuel arguments among and eventually provoke passionate outbursts from the characters in the outer drama. Chaos in Belleville needs to be shadowy, not only to direct attention to the outer play, but so that the audience can side with Wiletta when she in the end criticizes Chaos's emptiness, its stereotypical characters, and its ignorant portrayal of black people. Childress therefore takes traditional metadramatic structure and uses it to her advantage, prompting the audience to question the portrayal of blacks by white writers in the "real" world of theatre, quite challenging for white viewers in the mid-1950's when the play premiered. These challenges did not go unnoticed. When New York Times critic Arthur Gelb reviewed the play, he said that Childress had "some witty and penetrating things to say" about the scarcity of parts for African American actors and the compromises these actors were often forced to make even when they finally did become a member of a cast (Brown-Guillory 32). Childress's use of metadrama to spark among theatregoers a different way of looking at the business of theatre is, although hardly new, remarkable in its commentary of the black experience with drama, and in particular the limitations imposed upon African American women actresses and playwrights.

If Trouble in Mind were only metatheatrical in its structure, the implications of this structure would go little beyond gimmick, and would not fully reveal how compromising one's artistic integrity can deny racial identity. Fortunately, Childress weaves a variety of other metadramatical devices into her script, some of which are so subtle it is difficult to distinguish between them. Among these devices is an element that Hornby labels role playing. A character who plays a role within a play, according to Hornby's differentiation, is not the same as a character who plays a part in a play. For instance, when Wiletta plays Ruby, she is playing a part, but when she feigns admiration for Ted Bronson's script by saying that he "knows art, knows it" (Childress 495), she is playing a role. When Sheldon plays the old servant, he is playing a part, but his acceptance of "low" parts and his deference to white people are prerequisites for the role that he plays "to survive . . . to eat . . . to breathe," and that he defends as "common sense" instead of "tommin'" . . ." (509).

Childress uses the role playing aspect of metadrama to explore the roles that white culture forces upon African Americans, and to address the double consciousness that results when these roles come into conflict with the African American's core identity. The black characters in the play have to choose either to compromise themselves and subvert their true identities or to shed the roles--and parts--they have been forced to play and risk being rejected by the white theatre community. At different points in the play, the characters make different choices, and these choices they make reveal whether they will be able to value artistic and personal integrity over monetary gain and fame or whether they will continue to cater to pressure by whites.

Almost immediately after she meets fledgling new black actor John, Wiletta, Childress's black heroine of "expansive personality," gives him information about the underlying prejudices of the theatre world much as a director would help an actor define his part before beginning rehearsals. She is conceptualizing his role, telling him what he should and should not be, priming John on how to "act" and "improvise" with white people. "Sometimes they laugh," she says, and "you're supposed to look serious, other times they serious, you're supposed to laugh. . . White folks can't stand unhappy Negroes . . . so laugh, laugh when it ain't funny at all" (488).

Wiletta urges John to lie about both his schooling and experience, warning him not to mention that he has been to college and suggesting that he pretend he was in the last revival of Porgy and Bess. She explains that white men like Mr. Manners want their black actors and actresses "to be naturals . . . you know, just born with the gift," not to have been educated" (Childress 487). This emphasis on being "natural" uncovers the racist idea that African Americans are closer to animals, and therefore "act" on instinct. The idea that a black man could have learned the craft of acting and developed his talents in a scholastic setting is appalling to someone who wants to believe that everything African Americans do results from passionate drives that the blacks themselves fail to understand. By advising John to hide his educational background, Wiletta is denying him the chance to assert himself as an individual who utilizes himself much more by studying the art of acting than by simply demonstrating animalistic passion.

Wiletta knows that playing up to the white people in the company diminishes her self worth and continues the pattern of subjugation of the black race, but she feels she has little alternative. She sees her options as painfully limited to either becoming a "yes woman," in order to continue to appear in plays, or taking a stance and losing her job. She encourages John to make the same choice she has made, and teaches him that "you either do it (become a yes man) and stay" in the theatre business, or "you don't do it and get out" (488).

Not only does Wiletta play the role of a director in her relationship to John, she also plays the part of Ruby in the inner drama, a stereotypical "mammy" figure. In many ways Wiletta as Ruby echos the Wiletta who is acting as John's director, and the Wiletta who emerges later on in the outer play. Wiletta's attitude towards John, for instance, is colored by shades of a maternal relationship. After all, Wiletta did go to school with Estelle, John's mother, and he is certainly young enough to be her son. Like a mother, Wiletta sizes John up at the beginning and tells him he looks smart, too smart to become involved in theatre. She has chosen her path, and has frequently encountered snags of various kinds, and therefore does not want John to have to suffer the kind of life she has lived, so she suggests to him that he find high paying positions outside of theatre. It is particularly ironic, then, of Childress, to make Wiletta so opposed to the idea of the stereotypical black matriarch, since Wiletta does have characteristics of the black matriarch, although she is much too complex to be reduced to a stereotype herself.

Childress uses the complexity of Wiletta's character to reveal a thinking and changing woman who "slowly reveals herself as a Harriet Tubman of the theater," according to Samuel Hay in "Alice Childress's Dramatic Structure," reversing her advice to John as well as her position on how to fight racism: "Childress pulls off Wiletta's grinning mask and makes her confront Manners not by openly attacking him but by prodding him into a racist outburst" (122-123). Wiletta, thus, sheds the role she has been playing to Manners for so many years, and in doing so, risks losing her part, too, and even her whole career as an actress. Indeed, when the two-act version of Trouble in Mind ends, the audience assumes that Wiletta will probably lose the part of Ruby, and one can speculate that Manners will tarnish her name when she goes looking for other parts, under other white directors, as well. Childress apparently attempted to make the ending of the play more positive by adding a third act at one point during her revision process, an act during which Wiletta threatens to relay Manners' racial outbursts to the press, forcing him to apologize to her and keep her in the cast (Hay 124). This actually does not seem that positive, however, because the whole point of the two-act version is that blacks should sacrifice prestige and monetary gain in order to preserve their integrity, and Wiletta is thus able to deal with her double-consciousness and turn it into something that works for her, integrating her selves, the roles she has been playing into the more powerful role of activist. If Wiletta threatens Manners with the possibility that she will go public, she will gain a certain amount of power, since the dynamics of her relationship with Manners will inevitably change. This revision, however, seems only a temporary solution to the "problem" of the negative ending, because the third act becomes an ending in which Wiletta will still be compromised because she also must apologize to Manners. Furthermore, Wiletta's loss of the part of Ruby is crucial. If she does not lose the part, there is no cost, and Childress needs to show the cost of maintaining one's integrity, particularly as an African American individual.

During the play, Wiletta moves towards integrating her selves into an African American woman who will no longer be resigned to degradation and embarrassment in order to survive professionally. Sheldon Forrester and John Nevins demonstrate examples of African American men who move in different directions in response to challenges to their racial identities. Again, Childress uses the metadramatic technique of role playing to explore the two different approaches that these men take to working as black men in a white world. Sheldon remains fairly fixed throughout Trouble in Mind, never able to shed the role of pandering to whites, always supporting Mr. Manners, many times so blatantly that he is nauseating. John, however, enters the cast questioning the advice Wiletta gives him, asking whether she and Sheldon are being "Uncle Tommish," and showing reluctance to play this role of flatterer and admirer of Manners.

When he first appears on the stage, Sheldon immediately assumes the role of diplomat, peacemaker, keeper of the status quo. He calls Bill O'Wray "awful nice" (Childress 490), and urges his fellow black cast members to "keep peace" and not argue: "Last thing I was in, the folks fought and argued so, the man said he'd never do a colored show again. . . and he didn't!" (491) The warning implicit in Sheldon's anecdote is that Millie, John, and Wiletta should refrain from dissent, especially from showing disdain for a director or script, or risk Mr. Manners making the same decision that Sheldon's other director did.

Sheldon assumes his role of flatterer when Mr. Manners first enters the stage, and continues to play this role throughout the play. He agrees with every choice Manners makes, acts concerned about Manners' health, and intercedes for Manners at difficult moments. He doesn't object to Carrie using the word "darkies," and even after he has told his own story about seeing a lynching, he defends Mr. Manners as being genteel, not barbaric, thus insinuating that Mr. Manners is on the side of African Americans:

MANNERS: When I hear of barbarism. . . I feel so wretched, so guilty.

SHELDON: Don't feel that way. You wouldn't kill nobody and do 'em like

that . . . would you? (528).

The addition of the question "Would you?" at the end of Sheldon's defense suggests that he might be questioning a little himself whether Manners would or not be able to kill someone, and of course, in particular, a black person. In Their Place on the Stage, Brown-Guillory contends that when Sheldon first relates the "poignant" story about the lynching, he is stepping out of character, out of the role he has played thus far, in order for Childress to let his story connect the inner and outer layers of the plays to each other and to connect both layers to the outside world, where lynching has been a reality in the past, and sadly enough, a more recent past than most of us would like to admit. I contend that Sheldon does let his mask slip during the story, but that he quickly puts another role on--the role of storyteller. However, when Sheldon begins to defend Manners, he steps back into the role of white supporter/flatterer and then lets his mask slip a second time, sliding just enough out of the role for Manners to catch the implication of the question "Would you?" and respond with a vehement denial. Sheldon then assumes his mask once again, nodding, deferring, saying "That's what I know," which causes Bill to rest his hand on Sheldon's shoulder. Sheldon is weaving himself in and out of the fabric of the white community, or at least trying to do so by playing this role of white supporter, but whether Manners and Bill really care about him at all remains to be seen. Both men seem more concerned that Sheldon's speech will turn the cast against them and seem annoyed by the time the story has taken up, rather than acknowledging Sheldon's flattery and feigned concern.

Unfortunately, Sheldon sees what little superficial ground he has gained as positive, and as an assurance that the status quo he has become so comfortable with will not be unbalanced, and he will continue to have a job. Even at the end of the play, when Wiletta and John have capitulated and revolted against Manners, Sheldon is more concerned with survival than with artistic integrity, promising to memorize the first act of Chaos, giving as explanation that "I still owe the doctor money . . . and I can't lift no heavy boxes or be scrubbin' no floors" (540).

John, however, becomes more and more unsettled by the role he has been forced to play. He lies by default about being in Porgy and Bess; he does not dispute Wiletta when she tells Sheldon that he was one of the young members of the cast, and then continues to "play" along by letting Sheldon relay the lie to Mr. Manners. John does not like this artificiality, but he allows himself to be drawn into it for awhile, even going further than Sheldon in supporting the white writer's use of the word "darkie." Sheldon only says he cannot object, but gives John the opportunity to answer for the artistic sensibilities of black people, telling Manners "you better ask him, he's more artistic than I am." John plays his part perfectly here, again divorcing the racism in the script from the racism that exists in his "real" world of theatre, and our "real" world as a whole, a bit of metadrama that is extremely complex and well used:

JOHN: No, I don't object. I don't like the word but it is used, it's a slice of life. Let's face it, Judy wouldn't use it, Mr. Manners wouldn't. . .

MANNERS: (Very pleased with John's answer) Call me Al, everybody.

Al's good enough, Johnny.

JOHN: Al wouldn't say it but Carrie would. (499)

As the previous exchange indicates, by the time Manners interrupts, John has already said exactly the right thing to endear him to Manners, albeit in an extremely superficial way. Still, had this superficial bond continued beyond the play's end, "Johnny" could be almost sure that "Al" would give him a good recommendation to other directors and would consider hiring him again. Note Childress's use here of the nicknames. Manners is assuming a different role with John and asking John to play this role, too, and these roles are even complete with new names.

John, however, is able to break free from his role of "Johnny" by the end of the play, and, as Elizabeth Brown asserts in her 1980 dissertation, comes into his manhood.

Furious at Manners' comparison between him, a young black man, and Manners' son, a young white man, John realizes that his "racial pride means more to him than success in a play that degrades blacks" (Brown 78). He finally brings himself to say "They can write what they want but we don't have to do it" (Childress 539), even though this means that he has to worry whether he will get another job or not, and has to ask "How do you go about putting in a notice?" (538).

What makes the play additionally interesting is that the white characters also play roles, and also are given the decision whether to drop their masks or not. In the heat of argument, Mr. Manners, like Wiletta and John, finally does choose to drop his mask and reveal the racist he has been trying to hide throughout the play. His racial outbursts are then judged by both the audience and the other characters.

In the beginning of the play, Manners plays the role of sympathizer with the cause of African Americans. He may, in fact, think that he is not a racist; he may believe

the role that he has assumed. He likes to think of Ted Bronson's script as ahead of its time, truly radical, and he thinks that it will make a good statement for black America. Unfortunately, Manners is not really concerned about the play's message at all for its own sake, but for the monetary gain of directing a play that the white public will perceive as controversial, challenging, and liberating. Manners uses the African American experience to appeal to white people and increase his popularity; the black members of his cast are simply the pawns that he uses to make this appeal, and he must placate them by feigning sympathy so that he can utilize them to his full advantage.

According to Brown-Guillory, Manners represents the worst of patriarchal America, humiliating both blacks and women (62). When he finds out that Judy is a Yale graduate, he reduces her name--and her role in his eyes--to "Yale." From that point on, he sees Judy not as an actress of potential, but as a threat to him and his own education. Because of this fear he must undermine her in any way he can, even if that means insulting her intelligence and knowledge by marching her up, down, and across the stage to learn terminology. To Wiletta and Millie, he simply coos the way a mother or father would to a baby, seeming affectionate, complimentary, and referring to times he has worked with Wiletta in the past. He thinks they are stupid enough to fall for this, and that they will find him sincere. Of course, they do seem to find him sincere, because after all, they are also playing roles of their own. So Childress's play consists of a series of roles within roles, characters changing identities like they would coats or hats to manipulate other characters and to achieve personal gain.

Manners's mask slips, though, when Wiletta finally prompts him into his final racial outburst. By this point he is so angry at the loss of time and the implications she is making towards him, that he has no control over his anger. Like her, he becomes so furious that he slings aside the role of sympathizer to the African American cause and reveals what a racist he really is. "Whites!" he shouts at Wiletta. You think we belong to one great, grand fraternity?" (Childress 536) Manners tries unsuccessfully to argue that he has had almost as many difficulties in life as she as a black woman has had, failing to acknowledge the automatic upper hand that he has by being a white man. The argument he gives is frighteningly similar to arguments that the "angry white male" are making today, some forty years after the first production of Trouble in Mind. As if this weren't enough, Childress drives her point in even more, when Manners tells Wiletta not to compare herself to him: "What goes for my son doesn't necessarily go for yours! Don't compare him (Points to John) . . . with three strikes against him . . . with my son, they've got nothing in common . . . not a Goddamn thing!" Here Manners lets the whole cast know how racist he is by blurting out that John is less of a person than his own son, denying his humanity by saying that there is no link between them (537).

By the use of metadrama, Alice Childress discusses the identity crises that African Americans are forced to have when they play roles that are not authentic to them and degrade their race. Childress's message specifically to black actors and actresses is clear: if they want to prosper and sometimes even survive in the theatre business, they have to accept roles that "characterize them as exotic or half-human creatures," but they must ultimately unify themselves with other African American artists and decline those roles they feel inaccurate portrayals of the race in order to promote change in the theatre world and in the "real" world (Brown-Guillory 31).

To the white community, Childress's point is also clear. White America must not pretend to know the African American experience. Childress calls for white people to accept the black experience as part of their own history, to come to terms with it, and to acknowledge the racism or biases within themselves. It is only after white people become aware of their prejudices that they can begin to understand a small part of what it feels like to be a minority and most importantly, to respect African Americans in their struggle to gain equal footing. White America must accept that the race as a whole is culpable of a history of lynching, degradation, and of seeing black people as less than human. In Trouble in Mind, Manners denies the racism within himself in order to pretend to be a supporter of the African American cause and use black people to make an artistic and professional gain. By having Manners represent the worst of white America, Childress shows white people where they must not be--what they must not do.

Artistic expression has the power to change public perception, and by Trouble in Mind, Childress encourages African American thespians to realize their artistic power and to force change upon the dramatic community by refusing to be exploited. In her essay "Knowing the Human Condition," Alice Childress extends her challenge to include playwrights specifically, saying that "culturally ignoring those who are poor, lost and/or rebellious" will in no way enhance the image of African Americans (9-10). Childress then broadens her essay to give the same challenge to all black thespians that Trouble in Mind gives symbolically: "I sincerely wish that writers, actors, directors, and audiences will begin to view Black characters with the same human interest shown for Hamlet, 'the melancholy Dane.'" If thespians and audiences alike begin to see black characters three-dimensionally, see them as complex human beings, perhaps when they walk off stage or out of the auditorium, they will understand more about the "real" life African Americans, the "real" life white Americans, and the relationship between the two. This is metadrama at its best--using the techniques of the play-within-a-play and role playing to comment on the roles we all play, as scholars, teachers, writers, mothers, daughters, fathers, and sons, and so on. The list of roles we take on in life is endless, but Childress urges us not to separate our true identities--or our integrity--from any of them.