"A breakthrough for Calvin" is what Professor Debra Freeberg is calling the February production of "The Piano Lesson."

"This is really a landmark thing that is happening," she said. "This is the first play with an all African-American cast that is part of the regular season playbills. And it's probably about time."

The production is being performed as part of Freeberg's interim course on theater which is being co-taught with Harvey Johnson, professor of theater and speech at Geneva College in Pennsylvania.

"Harvey is an African-American with a lot of experience in theater as well as an incredible mission of the integration of faith into a discipline. He also is a great actor and will play one of the two older male roles. The other is being played by Michael Travis, [former director of multicultural student development at Calvin]."

"The Piano Lesson," by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning August Wilson, provides a compelling look into the history of blacks in America.

"It illustrates the choices that African Americans have been forced to make," said Freeberg. "Do I cut myself off from the past for a future? It's about a person finding out who they really are and what it takes to be a whole person."

In the play Wilson poignantly and powerfully illustrates the conflict between a brother and sister who fight over a symbol of their family's past. Do they sell an ornately carved upright piano, engraved with the story of their family from slavery to freedom or do they sell it to purchase land upon which their family once was slaves?

"The reason why this is important to me," said Calvin senior Jena Cooksey, who plays the leading female role, "is because it is an opportunity for me to do something that is exclusively made for me. I am an African-American woman and I play an African-American woman. That is something I can be comfortable with. In fact, I have the advantage because as a person of color, I am the person who needs to play this role."
In addition, Cooksey said, her character is someone she really identifies with.

"I identify with her symbolic issues of keeping family together," she said, "and the whole idea of destroying things that have kept her family oppressed. That is something I can really relate to and that doesn't always happen in a role."

The play, which will be performed Jan. 31-Feb.2 and Feb. 7-9, has a strong message for all audiences, said Freeberg.

"It deals with issues that are exclusive to African-Americans but it can speak to the whole human experience," she said. "The message is about the incredible need for God in the midst of incredible brokenness. It's about the search for self and identity and the dignity of a human being.

"As a white woman, I'm on a road to explore this with the cast. I'm going to be learning from them all interim."

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