Just a Special Stop on Her Journey

We could dance around it for a few politically correct paragraphs, or just get to it. The answer is yes. Shirley Jo Finney was chosen to direct Pearl Cleage’s play “Flyin’ West,” currently at the Pasadena Playhouse, because she is a black woman.

There are other reasons, of course. Talent, experience, education, a resume that’s a mile long, including recent directing credits at prestigious regional theaters including New Jersey’s Crossroads Theatre, Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, Los Angeles Actors Theatre (“The Meeting”) and the Mark Taper Forum (“From the Mississippi Delta,” as part of its literary cabaret series in 1990).

But even Pasadena Playhouse artistic director Sheldon Epps--who asked Finney to direct Cleage’s historical drama, the story of four female homesteaders who migrated west to the all-black town of Nicodemus, Kan., after the Civil War--acknowledges that he tapped Finney in part because of race and gender. In the play, the four women bond while fighting to ensure that the land they own and farm is not taken over by white land speculators.

“I have personally fought my entire career not to be thought of as a black director, but as a director who has the good fortune also to be a black man,” Epps said in a recent conversation. “And I have been lucky enough to achieve that, and would offer that opportunity to a director of any color.

“[But] as much as I try to restrict myself from those kinds of ‘shoulds,’ I would certainly say that I believed, and this has been proven, that there would be a great value in having a woman, and particularly a black woman, address this material. There are deeply personal and spiritual things that I think can be brought to the play by a black woman, and by this black woman.”

Epps predicts that the next time Finney directs at Pasadena Playhouse, it will be a project not specific to race and gender. And in a conversation with Finney on the top floor of a cozy tea-and-coffee house nearby the theater, surely one could talk about something else. But that approach would eliminate the more fascinating things this actor-turned-director has to say about this play and her craft.

Also, no matter how determined you are to blast gender stereotypes, most men just don’t sit around over raspberry leaf tea on a rainy day, talking about ancestral rituals, spirituality and “the journey,” and how the female cycle creates an unbreakable bond with the cyclical forces of nature. Then again, most women don’t either--which helps explain why Epps chose this particular woman.

Plus, there’s just something about Finney--a warm, high-energy woman in her 40s--that screams “earth mother” (she is the divorced former stepmother of two girls). In a public place, people listen in on the conversation, walk up to her, make themselves part of the discussion. That’s another reason Epps chose her. “She has a real ability to draw even strangers to herself and take a profound interest in them,” he said.

Finney is proud to have made the transition from being perceived as a frustrated actor dabbling in directing to being seen first as a director. She jokes that she used to write “actor,” then “director-actor,” then “actor-director,” then, finally, “director” in the space marked “profession” on her income tax forms.

“I love actors, and I love that process of bringing people who are strangers together, to work for a common purpose,” she says of directing. “I love creating an atmosphere where you feel comfortable enough to share who you are, to create. And then you go within to give the best you can give.

“That, to me, is orgasmic--that is one of my purposes, to allow someone to be the best that they can be.”

Finney admits that actors are sometimes surprised by the route Finney takes to get there. “When I work, I work in a metaphysical realm, where the cast and I take each character and go through the death, resurrection and burial of each character,” she says. “It’s like every time you have a thought--let go of an old way--you have a death, a new consciousness, and a new idea is formed.”

Finney acknowledges that she has struggled against being pegged for work with African American or women’s themes, but she calls the chance to direct one of Cleage’s plays “a gift.”’ Cleage, a columnist for the Atlanta Tribune, also wrote “Blues for an Alabama Sky,” performed at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in 1998 in a production of Black Artists Network Development and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Cleage also wrote the play “Bourbon at the Border” and three books, including the current best-selling novel “What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day.” “Like I told Sheldon, it’s a gift, it’s home,” she says. “One of the reasons it struck me is that my family comes from Oklahoma--they migrated from Louisiana, Alabama and Arkansas, when that was called the great Indian territory.” Finney is a native Californian who holds a bachelor’s degree from Sacramento State and a master’s degree in theater from UCLA. She is also an alumna of the American Film Institute’s Director Workshop for Women and dreams of directing an independent film. This evening, she is headed to her first writers’ workshop--the next chapter, she says, in her artistic journey.

“And my mother, being a Southern woman, would always tell us: ‘Love the land. A man will always leave you or die or whatever, but you will always have the land,’ ” she says. “That was a mantra she always said, because, just like in the play, part of the legacy is to build a foundation of independence and empowerment [to eliminate] the identity crisis, or the inferiority complex or all those things that tell you to be subservient and withdrawn, and instead start saying: ‘I am, I can, I will.’ ”

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As much as Finney identifies with the women in the play, however, she also has a special connection with the villain of the piece, who happens to be a man--Frank (portrayed by Tony Colitti), married to the youngest of the women, is biracial, a fish out of water who rejects his black ancestry with tragic results. At a recent performance, the character’s appearance onstage drew boos and hisses.

“I was trying to find some humanity in him,” Finney says. “Frank, poor Frank, he is such a tragedy. Frank believes that he is not embraced by any world; we have children right now who are feeling displaced--what do you do with that anger, that rage? He can be embraced and loved, but he doesn’t want to. And that’s part of me, too.

“I have, basically, always been ‘the first African American.’ My family was the first African American family to move into the neighborhood that I integrated, and then I had to go to the elementary school there--so I’ve always done that. At UCLA, I was the first African American to be in their MFA program. In some of the theaters I’ve worked in, I’ve been the first to come into that environment.

“How do you break out of the box, and where do you fit in society? How do we maintain the tradition of a tribe and still transcend our own humanity? It’s a question that I love exploring, because in my life I’ve been the only one. That is the beauty of Pearl’s play--she sets it in history, but deals with contemporary issues.”

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“FLYIN’ WEST,” Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave. Dates: Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays 5 and 9 p.m.; Sundays 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 21. Prices: $13.50-$42.50. Phone: (800) 233-3123.