Robbie McCauley

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Robbie McCauley
Born(1942-07-14)July 14, 1942
Norfolk, Virginia
DiedMay 20, 2021(2021-05-20) (aged 78)
Silver Spring, Maryland
Alma materHoward University
New York University
Occupation(s)Playwright, actress, director, professor
EmployerEmerson College
Notable workSally's Rape
Sugar
TitleProfessor emerita
SpouseEd Montgomery (1979-1996)
ChildrenJessie Montgomery

Robbie Doris McCauley (July 14, 1942 – May 20, 2021) was an American playwright, director, performer, and professor. McCauley is best known for her plays Sugar and Sally's Rape,[1] among other works that addressed racism in the United States and challenged audiences to participate in dialogue with her work. She also performed in Ntozake Shange's 1976 Broadway play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. She was professor emerita at Emerson College, teaching there from 2001 until she retired in 2013.

Early life[edit]

Robbie McCauley was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on July 14, 1942.[2] Her parents were Robert, who spent his career in the military, and Alice (Borders) McCauley, who worked in the federal government.[2] Robbie spent most of her younger years splitting time between Washington, D.C. and Columbus, Georgia. She earned her B.A. in 1963 from Howard University[3] and later an M.A. from New York University.[2]

Career[edit]

In New York, McCauley became interested in both experimental and African-American theater. In the late 1960s, she worked as an apprentice at the Negro Ensemble Company in New York City.[2] From the 1970s on she was a working playwright, director, and actress in many New York-based projects, both on and off Broadway, as well as work elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad. She performed in the ensemble of Ntozake Shange's 1976 play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf on Broadway.[4] The experience inspired her to develop work about her own life.[2] Writing in The Boston Globe, Bryan Marquand said the resulting "work repeatedly shattered the silence about issues such as race, illness, and sex."[1]

McCauley's most acclaimed work is Sally's Rape, which won an Obie Award in 1991 for best new American play and a Bessie Award for best solo performance in 1990.[1] Her other major works include Sugar and a trilogy: Mississippi Freedom, Turf and The Other Weapon, with the first segment playing at the 1993 Whitney Biennial.[5] McCauley's work deals with racism in the United States,[2] aiming to facilitate dialogues on race between races in the community.[6] She described her ambition for her work: "that people might be able to have a good time with material that's charged and uncomfortable."[7][8][9][10]

In addition to her theater work, McCauley taught at City College of New York, Hunter College, Mount Holyoke College, University of Massachusetts.[7] She joined Emerson College—becoming its first black faculty member to receive tenure without filing a discrimination suit—and taught there from 2001 to 2013 when she took professor emerita status.[1] McCauley was also a guest instructor at HB Studio.[11]

Notable works[edit]

Sally's Rape[edit]

Sally's Rape is a 45-minute performance art piece from 1991 that played at The Kitchen in New York City.[12] The show was inspired by McCauley's enslaved great-great-grandmother Sally who had a child fathered by her enslaver, the product of sexual violence.[13] In one portion of the piece, McCauley stands naked on a bench. A white woman enters and tells the audience that the bench is an auction box and encourages the audience to bid on McCauley's body—something McCauley described as a ritual intended to engage the audience with her in addressing the historical experience of African-American women who were objects of white abuse, and opening a dialogue with the audience.[14][15][16] Reviewing the show for The Village Voice, Alissa Solomon found this objective successful: "Unlike typical attempts at audience participation, we weren't being manipulated or coerced. Instead, we were being drawn into a rehearsal, practice for a bigger project that, we understood, would have to continue outside. And, thrillingly, it did. For a couple of hours after the performance, I talked about racism with friends who'd also been at the show, looking into areas I'd never before dared to open. I can't remember the last time I left a play more filled with its questions."[12] McCauley called the show a "work in progress", a play on words with the social progress she hoped to engender.[17]

Trilogy[edit]

Mississippi Freedom is the first in a trilogy of theater works that McCauley created in the 1990s that highlight race relations in the US during the '60s and '70s; this work dealt with the struggle to win voting rights. In collaboration with Arts Company as well as local artists who had personal ties to the voting rights movement, the pieces are mixed media, incorporating elements of music, audience participation, inviting viewers to stay after the show to discuss with the cast.[18] It toured around the state of Mississippi in 1992,[19] and was presented in New York at the Whitney Biennial in 1993,[5] and Texas in 1996.[20]

Turf: A Conversational Concert in Black and White, second in the trilogy, was centered around the Boston school busing controversy. After a year spent developing a show via interviews conducted around Boston, in the style of Anna Deavere Smith, Turf was performed in four different neighborhood locations around Boston in 1993.[21]

The last piece in the trilogy is titled The Other Weapon, and tells the stories of the Black Panther Party, community empowerment, and law enforcement in Los Angeles. It was shown at four locations in LA in 1994.[22]


Sugar[edit]

Sugar (debuted in 2012) is based on McCauley's life with juvenile diabetes, belatedly diagnosed in her twenties. McCauley describes as well as demonstrates (even drawing her own blood or pausing to inject insulin) the difficulties and complexities of living with diabetes as a black woman working in the theater. She connects the subject to slavery, through the image of sugar cane. Created later in her career, it also engages themes of sex and aging; "How silent are we women about sex after a certain age?" she asks.[23] The premiere performance of the piece was put on by ArtsEmerson, an organization at Emerson College, directed by Maureen Shea.[24] Reviewing the play's premier, Don Aucoin of The Boston Globe describes McCauley as "a skilled performer and raconteur who knows the subtle difference between speaking with—rather than to or at—her audience."[25]

Other works[edit]

Indian Blood, like Sally's Rape, weaves McCauley's family history into the piece, using video to allow McCauley to portray multiple characters.[14] First performed in 1987, the play is inspired by McCauley's grandfather. He was a part of the 10th Cavalry Regiment in the Spanish–American War, known as the buffalo soldiers as they also fought Native Americans.[26]

Persimmon Peel was a collaboration with fellow For Colored Girls alum Laurie Carlos, "a cryptic, often poetically allusive little work" performed in Minneapolis in 1990. The two performers, reviewed as "riveting", shared fragmentary stories and memories, building up a depiction of Black life in the United States.[27]

McCauley performed Love and Race in the United States Revisited as a work-in-progress in Hartford in 1999, soon after joining the faculty of Trinity College.[28]

McCauley performed Jazz'n Class as her part of Badass, an evening of new works with Magdalena Gómez and Kate Snodgrass, produced at Boston Playwrights' Theatre in 2015.[29] This won a IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Award for Solo Performance.[30]

Awards[edit]

Personal life[edit]

In 1979 McCauley married Ed Montgomery, a musician, and they had a daughter, composer Jessie Montgomery.[2] Early in their relationship they worked together on a short-lived project called Sedition Ensemble and later Montgomery wrote music for some of McCauley's plays.[14] They divorced in 1996.[2]

McCauley died on May 20, 2021, in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she was living with her sister Anita Henderson.[2] The cause was congestive heart failure. She was 78.[2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e Marquand, Bryan (May 27, 2021). "Playwright and performer Robbie McCauley, whose work confronted race and gender, dies at 78". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on May 30, 2021. Retrieved May 27, 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Genzlinger, Neil (May 25, 2021). "Robbie McCauley, Stage Artist Who Explored Race, Dies at 78". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on May 26, 2021. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
  3. ^ MacLeod, Bea (September 14, 1989). "Robbie McCauley: A One-Woman Powerhouse". The Ithaca Journal. p. 36. Archived from the original on May 30, 2021. Retrieved May 30, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ Shapiro, Michael (December 16, 1977). "For some, a drama of painful memories". The Courier-News. p. 15. Archived from the original on May 30, 2021. Retrieved May 30, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. ^ a b Cottingham, Laura (May 5, 1993). "The Pleasure Principled". Frieze (10). Archived from the original on January 20, 2021. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  6. ^ Becker, Becky (2000). "Robbie McCauley: A Journey toward Movement". Theatre Journal. 52 (4): 519–542. doi:10.1353/tj.2000.0100. ISSN 0192-2882. JSTOR 25068848. S2CID 194109157. Archived from the original on July 5, 2020. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
  7. ^ a b Metcalf, Steve (October 15, 1999). "LESSONS IN RACE AND LOVE". courant.com. Archived from the original on May 30, 2021. Retrieved May 30, 2021.
  8. ^ Peterson, Jane T.; Bennett, Suzanne (1997). Women Playwrights of Diversity: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. pp. 230–233. ISBN 9780313291791. Archived from the original on May 30, 2021. Retrieved November 21, 2016.
  9. ^ "An interview with performance artist and teacher Robbie McCauley / Part 1 - People's Sense of Place / In Motion Magazine". inmotionmagazine.com. Archived from the original on October 31, 2020. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
  10. ^ "An interview with performance artist and teacher Robbie McCauley / Part 2 - Resonating these stories / In Motion Magazine". inmotionmagazine.com. Archived from the original on September 11, 2019. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
  11. ^ "Robbie McCauley". hbstudio.org. Archived from the original on October 26, 2020. Retrieved March 22, 2020.
  12. ^ a b Solomon, Alisa (November 19, 1991). "How Robbie Do" (PDF). Village Voice. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 21, 2016. Retrieved November 21, 2016.
  13. ^ "A Conversation With Harvey Young about Robbie McCauley – Magda Romanska". Archived from the original on January 9, 2018. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
  14. ^ a b c Patraka, Vicki; McCauley, Robbie (1993). "Robbie McCauley: Obsessing in Public. An Interview". TDR. 37 (2): 25–55. doi:10.2307/1146248. ISSN 1054-2043. JSTOR 1146248.
  15. ^ Griffiths, Jennifer (2005). "Between Women: Trauma, Witnessing, and the Legacy of Interracial Rape in Robbie McCauley's Sally's Rape". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 26 (3): 1–23. doi:10.1353/fro.2006.0004. ISSN 0160-9009. JSTOR 4137370. S2CID 144223782.
  16. ^ Nymann, Ann E. (1999). "Sally's Rape: Robbie McCauley's Survival Art". African American Review. 33 (4): 577–587. doi:10.2307/2901338. ISSN 1062-4783. JSTOR 2901338.
  17. ^ McCauley, Robbie; Tillman, Lynne (1992). "Robbie McCauley". BOMB (41): 8–10. ISSN 0743-3204. JSTOR 40424514.
  18. ^ "Play focused on race relations". Clarion-Ledger. October 1, 1992. p. 33. Archived from the original on May 31, 2021. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  19. ^ "'Freedom' tour makes local stop". Hattiesburg American. September 21, 1992. p. 15. Archived from the original on May 31, 2021. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  20. ^ Sorenson, Edith (March 21, 1996). "Press Picks". Houston Press. Archived from the original on May 31, 2021. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  21. ^ Hartigan, Patti (February 5, 1993). "Raising the curtain on race, ethnicity". The Boston Globe. p. 27. Archived from the original on May 31, 2021. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  22. ^ Zook, Kristal Brent (March 24, 1994). "The Revolution Will Not Be ... Multimedia?". LA Weekly. p. 35. Archived from the original on May 31, 2021. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  23. ^ Aucoin, Don (January 24, 2012). "Telling her own bittersweet tale in 'Sugar'". The Boston Globe. pp. G7. Archived from the original on May 30, 2021. Retrieved May 30, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
  24. ^ "Robbie McCauley". Artists' Prospectus for the Nation. May 1, 2013. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
  25. ^ "Stage review: Robbie McCauley tells her own bittersweet tale in 'Sugar'". The Boston Globe. January 24, 2012. Archived from the original on November 21, 2016. Retrieved November 21, 2016.
  26. ^ Murray, Timothy (1994). "In Exile at Home: Tornado Breath and Unrighteous Fantasy in Robbie McCauley's "Indian Blood"". Discourse. 16 (3): 29–45. ISSN 1522-5321. JSTOR 41389332.
  27. ^ Steele, Mike (December 1, 1990). "'Persimmon Peel' -- song and story of 2 black females". Star Tribune. p. 46. Archived from the original on May 30, 2021. Retrieved May 30, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
  28. ^ Metcalf, Steve (October 15, 1999). "Lessons in Race and Love". Hartford Courant. p. 53. Archived from the original on May 30, 2021. Retrieved May 30, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
  29. ^ Byrne, Terry (March 10, 2015). "Sleeping Weazel works confront identity". The Boston Globe. pp. G3. Archived from the original on May 30, 2021. Retrieved May 30, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
  30. ^ a b "20th Annual IRNE Awards Nominees Are Announced - A.R.T.'s THE GREAT COMET, NICE WORK at Ogunquit, BILLY ELLIOT at NSMT and More!". Broadway World. March 3, 2016. Archived from the original on January 17, 2019. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  31. ^ "Alumni, faculty win big theater awards". Emerson Today. May 1, 2013. Archived from the original on September 24, 2020. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  32. ^ Walling, Suzanne. "Robbie McCauley". USA Fellows. Archived from the original on April 21, 2020. Retrieved May 30, 2021.
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