Renaissance Solos
12 Plays
by
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BIRD A new play by Laurence Holder Cast: Charlie Parker (Bird) Time: Now Set: An Apartment/Bandstand chair and table with bottle, works, glass USL. (WE HEAR THE ENDING STRAINS OF OUT OF NOWHERE AND THEN SOUND OF DEEP EARTHY LAUGHTER AS BIRD WALKS OUT OF SHADOWS LOOKING HEALTHY, CLEAN, DRESSED. HE GOES TO HIS CHAIR AND SITS DOWN HEAVILY WITH A GRUNT AND MORE LAUGHTER) BIRD: Great tune, that one. Great tune. Got lots of great tunes around. Just need players to play. I’ll sit and wait here. She’ll tell me when. (LAUGHS) When I was growing up in Kansas City -- (REACHES FOR BOTTLE AND GLASS) in Kansas, I useta see musicians all the time. They would either be coming into the house to sit and eat – a musician if he’s worth his salt at all can eat and drink – or they’d just finished and be heading off to some place to play their music. I’d just naturally be walking into my house to eat. A young musician, a young apprentice musician, aint nothing if he can’t act like he’s for real. You know. And I was a young one too. Too young to play anything, but not too young not to listen. And I guess that’s what I did best back then -- listen. That early lesson helped too. I remember my Daddy, a musician of sorts. Worked for the railroad. But one day he run off with my older brother, a half brother. Some said his mother was Italian. Every now and then I would see him, but he was always on the rails, always moving, a rough life for colored people back then. Hard for everybody especially my mother who had to take in roomers to make ends meet. Try collecting the rent sometimes, huh? (SIGHS) I remember Uncle Denzil too, he wasn’t really an uncle just someone who would spend time with us, me and my mother, whenever he was in town. I called him Uncle. Anyway after one holiday of turkey eating, drinking, and smoking too -- - I mean the man could put away a ton of food -- we were all just tired, watching the sun go down. No one was talking; we were all just listening, kind of letting the mood take hold when all of a sudden Uncle Denzil let out a cloud of dust that flattened all of us there. I mean he passed some gas, man. (HE LAUGHS) It was like a foghorn had gone off and we were all looking at the Mississippi and a steamer going downstream was honking. We jumped out of our seats and just stared at him. It was me, Uncle Denzil, and a couple of musicians who were playing for Basie, I think; we were just a sittin’ and a rockin’. Anyway Uncle Denzil just scratched himself even with all of us staring at him. He didn’t bat an eyelid. He didn’t care a nickel’s worth. He then grinned, settled back, and then we all settled back. Everything got real peaceful again. Could hear the crickets and now and then a bullfrog broke through. Just the drone of some insects. But it was too quiet for me, especially after that big bang. I tried it. I couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9 but I let out this garbage sized boom of a fart. I know it aint genteel, but there weren’t any ladies around and sometimes men do things like this for fun. Well when people heard that firecracker I had let out, I noticed their noses starting to twitch and then they began moving quickly. All of them except for me and Denzil. We just sat there like perfectly matched chairs, one big, one little, just staring and then grinning at each other, knowing the folks was moving because a tornado had just hit them. Denzil was one of the musicians, one of the better ones, always flying through KC on his way to another job. But everybody knew you could stop by Addie Parker’s and get yourself some good food, if you dropped a couple of bucks on the table. Even then it took money to make the world go around. And he kind of shined me up. When he was talking I was listening, and we would go for walks. One day Denzil took me with me. I had grown enough now to stop calling him with the surname and he knew it and I guess my mother must have said something to him about me because he starts explaining things to me, things about women and music. We went to the barbershop and I heard so many stories I seriously doubted if people could have lived them tales they were so tall, but I heard them with new definition. Snap, crackle, pop, everything coming out a new melody, a new rhythm, and laughter was harmony, baby. Yes, indeedy. Laughter.
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About the Book
From Charlie Parker to Max Roach to Valaida Snow to Monk to Contemporary MAN and Contemporary WOMAN to Zora Neale Hurston to Langston Hughes, the plays tap into the heart of Laurence Holder and worldview past and present.
About the Author
Mr. Holder is noted for writing historical, biographical plays such as Zora Neale Hurston at The American Place Theatre in 1998 starring Elizabeth Van Dyke and Joseph Edwards, directed by Wyn Handman, and When The Chickens Came Home To Roost starring Denzel Washington as Malcolm X and Kirk Kirksey as Elijah Muhammad, directed by Allie Woods, at The New Federal Theatre in 1981. Mr. Holder has won playwriting awards including the AUDELCO twice for When the Chickens Came Home To Roost and M: The Mandela Saga. For the body of his work, The National Black Theatre Festival presented him with both the OTTO for Political Theatre and The Garland Anderson Award. Mr. Holder is also noted for his experimental works including the multilingual BIRD OF PARADISE in 1972 with Ornette Coleman and the URBAN DECALOGUE in 1974 with Jacquie Berger. In addition to his work as a dramatist Mr. Holder is the author of several volumes of poetry and 7 novels. He has also acted in ZORA: WHU, which featured Yvonne Southerland as the famed novelist. He is the father of 3 children and husband to Andrea, an actress. Mr. Holder is a member of the faculty at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) where he has taught English in the SEEK Department for the past twenty-five years. The author is a native New Yorker and has watched the scene change slowly over the last sixty years. Over the last ten years he has made some astounding realizations about the nature and cause of it all, which is reflected and refracted in his work. *AUDELCO is the Audience Development Committee that acknowledges theatre excellence in African Diasporan Theatre.