Having Our Say, Briar Street Theatre. Living long is the best revenge, if you live as well as the life-loving, resilient Delany sisters. And Emily Mann’s wonderful 1995 play, adapted from Amy Hill Hearth’s biography Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years, is a theatrical gem, a Broadway hit and a sure success in Chicago (where it’s also staged by Mann). In their Mount Vernon, New York, home these delightfully hospitable centenarian sisters regale us with their memories: their father was a slave, their mother a crusader, and family friends included Booker T. Washington, Paul Robeson, and Eleanor Roosevelt–the one white person they respected. Sadie (a former high school teacher) and Bessie (a former dentist who died last year at 104) together convey a century of living of which anyone would be proud.
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Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Dan Rest.
