Remembering an 'American Family'

A white woman returns to her childhood neighborhood and falls into a story about the African-American experience. Carlyle Brown was asked if this was the essence of his new play, "American Family"?

"No, that sounds too much like 'The Help,'" he said with a laugh.

Brown's play, which premieres Friday at Park Square Theatre in St. Paul, owes more to a different, smaller film -- 1964's "One Potato, Two Potato." It tells the story of a divorced white woman who marries a black man in Alabama. The woman's ex-husband has her declared an unfit mother to their child because of her interracial marriage, and takes their daughter to live with him.

Brown's play picks up the story years later. The daughter visits a park in which she played as a child, planning to meet her half-brother (the son of the white woman and her black husband). As she looks around the park, she recalls her past.

"One of the themes is about making a family," Brown said. "Because they are a trans-racial family, they have problems relating to their own issues, and then there is the outside world."

Interracial marriage was illegal in Alabama in 1964. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down the laws -- which existed in 16 states -- in 1967, ruling them unconstitutional.

Race certainly is the matrix for the play, though Brown says he doesn't set out consciously anymore to sit down and write a play about these issues.

Rather, Brown set out to write about memory's effect on people. How, when we visit a place from our past, we are stimulated deeply and we try to reassemble pieces of our past into a coherent narrative.

"Memory doesn't function as flashbacks," he said, "but as impressionable things that feel like they are happening in the moment."

Brown was dramaturg for Park Square's 2010 production of "Othello." In conversations, artistic director Richard Cook suggested Brown bring in something new for the St. Paul theater. The idea for "American Family" had been percolating for a while, so it made sense to get the story on its feet.

Relationship with Park Square

Brown is artistic director of Carlyle Brown & Company. He has written and produced dozens of plays over his 25-plus years in the Twin Cities. Cook chose him as dramaturg on "Othello" because of Brown's "The Masks of Othello: A Theatrical Essay." His one-man play, "The Fula From America: An African Journey," was a brilliant essay on his trip to West Africa. Mixed Blood Theatre produced his "Pure Confidence" in 2009, and it quickly moved to off-Broadway.

For "American Family," it seemed natural for Brown to choose longtime friend Marion McClinton (who also staged "Pure Confidence") as director. The cast included James A. Williams, Tracey Maloney, Noël Raymond, Gavin Lawrence and Megan Fischer. The future could not have looked brighter. Then Williams was chosen for a role in Athol Fugard's "My Children! My Africa" at the Signature Theatre in New York. McClinton suggested that Brown, a seasoned actor, step in as the grandfather in "American Family."

"It was just a practical choice," Brown said. "There was an actor available, he came cheap and he was the right age."

Brown is largely unfazed by the additional duties, though he did say he was looking forward to sitting back and watching the audience react to the play. He will need to do that from the inside now.

"Playwriting and acting are connected but different," he said. "I'd have to agree with David Mamet: the writer creates the action, the actor clarifies the action."

Fortunately, Brown finds great security in working with McClinton, a playwright himself.