“In His Own Voice: Negro Begins to Speak for Himself on Stage,” proclaimed the headline of a 1962 New York Times think piece analyzing “an indisputable trend” in American theater. Though black life had been ripe material for dramas and musicals, the stories had usually been written by whites; but a promising pair of new productions–Ossie Davis’s comedy Purlie Victorious and an off-Broadway musical called Fly Blackbird–found “the Negro serv[ing] notice that he is through being patronized by the theatre. . . . The trend is still modest, but it surely will grow in fervor and dimension.”
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“I always knew what I wanted to do,” says Grant, a graduate of Englewood High School. But when she was starting out there was little opportunity in Chicago for an aspiring actor, except for community theater groups like the Center Aisle Players, a south-side troupe that Grant joined in her teens. “We did standard light fare–Hay Fever, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Tender Trap. It was fun, but I knew I had to leave Chicago if I was serious. I couldn’t have made a living. When I left they must have thought, “She’s nuts–she’s taking this thing seriously,”‘ she says with her soft, throaty burble of a laugh.
Today Grant’s known principally for her writing; she penned several of the spunkiest numbers in Working, the Studs Terkel-inspired musical that premiered in 1977 at the Goodman Theatre and is frequently revived at community theaters around the country, and she continues to write new works for regional and children’s theaters. But, she says, “Occasionally I come out of my cocoon” as an actor. “I don’t want to get out of acting altogether. I pick and choose where I’m going to expend that kind of energy.” When a playwright asked her to perform in a reading of a new script at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, she agreed; in the audience was the McCarter’s artistic director, Emily Mann, who had scripted and directed the Broadway hit Having Our Say. Knowing that the show’s producers, Camille Cosby and Judith Rutherford James, were looking for actors for the Chicago company, Mann recommended Grant, who was hired as standby for one of the play’s two leads. When the show was extended in May, Grant stepped into the role full-time; she’ll stay with the production when it embarks on a national tour this fall.
Having Our Say runs through August 4 at the Briar Street Theatre, 3133 N. Halsted; for tickets and information, call 348-4000.
