Artistic director Timothy Nelson talks with playwright Sybil R. Williams about the banned radical reality show and Williams‘ women-centered response.
By Timothy Nelson, IN Series artistic director
In 1936, with the radical idea that a uniquely American new form of theater could unite artists and journalists to promote grassroots social action, dramatizing real-time world events with no adornment, the “Living Newspapers” were launched with the play Ethiopia by Arthur Arent. While the Living Newspapers, in their brief appearance on the American stage, went on to create famed and important works of social theater, Ethiopia itself was never staged. The play deals with the Italian aggression in Ethiopia between 1934 and 1936, the moral failure of global governing bodies to respond, and, with dramatic prescience, the darkening clouds of World War II arising from this conflict. The play’s creators wanted to end their piece with text from a speech made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose administration quickly and effectively banned the premiere of the new work. IN Series’ world premiere of the work, almost 90 years later, was almost thwarted again by the withdrawal of federal support from the National Endowment for the Arts on Friday, May 2. This time, however, the show will go on with the incredible work of local actors, musicians, visual artists, and creatives, as IN Series opens its new production and closes out its 2024/25 season of works banned at the time of their inception. Of course, none of us could have known in planning this season how resonant its theme would become as it progressed.
Along with the original 1936 Living Newspaper is a new play by Sybil R. Williams, playwright, scholar, and director of African American and African Diasporic Studies at American University. In her responsive play, Williams explores the same history from a very different place — one that opens to the many women involved in the fight for Ethiopian freedom, the Black Americans actively allied with their African brothers and sister, and a form of poetic storytelling that opens up the themes of the piece to a broader understanding of human history. At the heart of this piece is the life of Mayme Richardson, a real opera singer who traveled to Ethiopia to sing for Emperor Haile Selassie and then became an activist leader for the Ethiopian cause. Both pieces are tied together with a musical score by DC jazz composer and pianist Janelle Gill. I recently took a break from staging rehearsals of Ethiopia to chat with Williams about this project, its historic and human significance, and her original play.
Timothy Nelson: You brought me this idea for a project around Arthur Arent’s play during the height of the COVID pandemic. It was a piece and subject entirely new to me, but one I know you’d been living with for many years. How did you first encounter this work, and what drew you to its themes in a way that also compelled you to write a response?
Sybil R. Williams: Yes, thanks for that question! I remember hearing — overhearing really — a conversation that seemed to suggest that African Americans were not interested in international politics. I immediately thought about the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936, and the overwhelming response of African Americans as they hurried to the aid of the Emperor and his country. Ethiopia rallied African Americans in a way that had lasting consequences.
What, for you, is the significance of the Living Newspapers then as historic works, and now as potentially model forms of social storytelling?
Ethiopia, like all Living Newspapers, is a form of visual storytelling. With the continued development of film, video, and other forms of visual media, theater can function like other forms of popular media, allowing for the possibility of engaging audiences who would not normally attend the theater. The Living Newspaper was a tool used by the Federal Theatre Project to report the latest headlines and issues of the day in a way that was certainly provocative but also, quite frankly, partisan. The Living Newspapers had a clear political position with each issue they presented.
It seems to me that this entire project, staging both the world premiere of Arthur Arent’s first Living Newspaper, Ethiopia, as well as your contemporary response, is in some way about righting historical wrongs. What do you think about that?
I am not sure that a play can do that! Would that it could! We can, however, make a statement about how history cannot be rewritten or erased. History — like truth — will always make its way to the light. But what I want to do is what I imagine the first Living Newspapers wanted to do — and that is inspire audiences to take action by providing them with an informed opinion.
In your play in particular, it seems you aren’t so much countering and critiquing the work of Arent but illuminating it. I think of your play as a text that, in what it says but also how it says it, is augmenting and filling out the original 1936 play. What histories, themes, threads were you seeking to spin out and weave more fully in your new play?
Again, thank you for that question! This is really a first draft, and there are many threads that I am still weaving. I have found, almost inadvertently, that I am telling the stories of women. I am telling the story of Mayme Richardson, Empress Menen, and other Rastafari women, Dr. Deena Beresford, Gaamang Gloria Sims, and others who so graciously allowed me to interview them.
The script of Arthur Arent’s Ethiopia is full of indications of the role of music. We can only imagine how music was centered in the intended performance of the work. And, you know, of course, that in making a new text for IN Series, music would again want to be centered. How does music fold into your dramaturgic thinking in creating this new work? How does music become its own layer of storytelling?
For me, the music functions as another language. It extends the dialogue — much like a musical, characters sing because they are so full that is the only way they can express themselves. Music also functions as memory; it is how characters are transported. Their memories live as music.
Of course, you discovered a musical thread that brings almost everything into a union with the life and work of Mayme Richardson. Can you say how you found her, what we know about her life, and what she has come to mean for you?
It is true that resistance can and often does yield great beauty, and this is evident in the music and activism of Mayme Richardson. Initially, I thought I invented Mayme, but in talking with Dr. Jake Homiak of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, I learned about her life and contribution to Rastafari. I also reached out to Dr. Giulia Bonacci, whose research includes the first Rastafari to repatriate to Ethiopia, in a book titled Exodus!: Heirs and Pioneers, Rastafari Return to Ethiopia. She was very encouraging, and I do hope to continue to learn about Mayme Richardson.
Arthur Arent’s curation of real speeches, news headlines, and quotes from the time we call Ethiopia has shattering contemporary resonance with the global political landscape and the moment in which we find ourselves today. It is less about the history of Italy’s aggression in Africa, but more about how the world powers, which of course were white world powers, failed to respond. Your play opens this history up to show how the Black world, all over the world, did respond and continues to be in resonance with that moment. Can you speak to this pan-African energy that is both historic and contemporary, and feels both political, but also deeply spiritual?
I think art points the way for African people throughout the Diaspora to forge a path back to Africa by recovering parts of ourselves that have been lost to colonialism, slavery, Jim Crow, etc. In fact, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson says it best, “The purpose of Black art in the ‘New World’ is to restore a Black Universe and to reestablish Black humanity which includes: recovering Africa; to entertain the world including white audiences while liberating Black audiences, to generate a political vocabulary specific to the circumstances of existence in America….”
This work is so rich, impossible to convey simply or shortly, as it should be. That said, what do you feel we’ve left unsaid for the moment?
Again, there are so many women’s voices that I still want to illuminate. But I thank IN Series and the amazing cast of Ethiopia for pointing the way forward.
Running Time: Approximately two hours, including an intermission.
Ethiopia plays May 16 to 18, 2025, presented by IN Series performing at 340 Maple Drive (DC Waterfront/Wharf), Washington, DC. Purchase tickets (reserved seating, $72; general-rear, $49; student, $35) online.
Ethiopia also plays May 30 to June 1, 2025, at the Baltimore Theatre Project
45 W Preston St, Baltimore, MD. Tickets (general admission, $30; student, $20) are available online.
Ethiopia
A Living Newspaper by Arthur Arent
A New Play by Sybil R. Williams
With New Music by Janelle Gill
Directed by Timothy Nelson
Music Direction by Janelle Gill
Designed by Tsedaye Makonnen, Adrienne Gaither, Kathryn Kawecki
Lights by Alberto Segarra
Costumes by Rakell Foye
Projections by Hailey LaRoe
FEATURING
Marvin Wayne Allen III
Ezinne Elele
Elise Jenkins
Madison Norwood
Shana Oshiro
Daniel J. Smith
Nakia Verner
MUSICIANS
African drums and instruments led by Jabari Exum