No Place to be Somebody

Charles Gordone's play No Place to Be Somebody(1969) recounts the happenings in a New York City bar and the past fifteen years in the life of its African American owner Johnny Williams. As part of the larger theme of the thwarted ambitions of motley bar patrons consisting of ex-convicts, hustlers, prostitutes, politicians, and artists, Johnny, rankled by a history of poor race relations, eagerly awaits the prison release of his mentor Sweets Crane to initiate a racketeering scheme and to claim a share of the organized crime market. However, after ten years of incarceration, Sweets is a reformed old man whose recidivism and “Charlie fever”are tempered by poor health and religion. Framed in all three acts by the multiple voices of Gab Gabriel, who simultaneously serves as writer, chorus, and aspiring actor in the play, No Place to Be Somebody examines the individual and communal struggle for identity and the potential destruction and regeneration this enterprise entails.

After numerous revisions and artistic and financial setbacks, No Place opened at Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre on 4 May 1969, moved to the ANTA Theatre on 30 December, and concluded a run of 903 performances Off-Broadway with a third opening at the Promenade Theatre on 20 January 1970. Distinguishing Gordone as the first African American playwright to receive the award, No Place was the first Off-Broadway play to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama (1970) and was in the same year the recipient of the Vernon Rice Award, the Drama Desk Award, and the New York and Los Angeles Critic's Circle awards. Directed by Gordone, the play made its Broadway debut on 9 September 1971 at the Morosco Theatre. Subsequently, the play has been revived by several schools and regional theaters and translated into French, German, Spanish, and Russian for productions throughout the world. Though some critics claimed that the play was too dense and that Gordone's artistic vision was unclear, No Place to Be Somebody was hailed widely as a critical success for its adept use of language, for its experimentation with varying dramatic forms, and for its candid commentary regarding racial tensions in America.

In the late 1960s and the early 1970s and at a time when there was an increased demand for racially conscious and constructive artistic production and the stage gained great significance as an arena for the exploration, negotiation, and assertion of African American identity, No Place to Be Somebody advanced the project of identity by positing what Gordone called an “American chemistry.”In a 1988 interview with Susan Harris Smith in Studies in American Drama, Gordone suggests that the formulation of identity in American society emerges from a synthesis of cultural, racial, and religious experiences. This amalgam of cultures, races, and religions, according to Gordone, had profound implications not only in expanding the parameters of African American identity, but also offered a broader understanding of the American experience and ultimately of humanity.

Bibliography

• Jean W. Ross, “”Charles Gordone,”in DLB, vol. 7, Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, ed. John MacNicholas, 1981, pp. 227–231.
• Bernard L. Peterson, Jr., Contemporary Black American Playwrights and Their Plays, 1988

Charles Leonard