Black Journal #65 Slate 9/6/72 Don't Play Us Cheap

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Live performance on the Black Journal set of a scene from Van Peeble's play, Don't Play Us Cheap. Joshie Jo Armstead performing the soulful Gospel song, You Cut Up the Clothes in the Closet of My Dreams.

INTERVIEW INSERT - MELVIN VAN PEEBLES.

Tony Brown 7:13
You say these are friends of yours?

Van Peebles 7:15
Yeah, they're friends of mine.

Tony Brown 7:17
Was, that actually a cockroach and a rat ensemble?

Van Peebles 7:20
Yes. Yeah.

Tony Brown 7:22
Are these characters in don't play us cheap?

Van Peebles 7:25
Well, they are characters in a lot of black people's lives rather and they are in don't play us cheap too. And I think their cousins and uncles around in the ghettos of our inner cities everywhere. You'll get pretty familiar with them

Tony Brown 7:40
Tell me this, Melvin you constantly in themes of your plays in ain't supposed to die a natural death now and don't play us cheap? In sweetback you dealing with a certain kind of black person? Is there is that deliberate?

Van Peebles 7:54
Well, I read in school that you're supposed to deal with the people, you know, and I deal with the people I know, you'll notice that in each case. There is a slight difference of age group of location. But primarily, it's the the 98% of the brothers out there in the street. You know,

Tony Brown 8:27
the scene we just saw was a party setting. And the kinds of people there are very indigenous to, I'd say the nitty gritty, average black person.

Van Peebles 8:38
Hey well, that's, you know, we have to realize, when the revolution comes 90% of the Molotov cocktails are coming out of cold up bottles, brother. I mean, that's just where's that?

Tony Brown 8:50
Tell me. I was I made a point earlier about the blackening of Broadway, the same white critics that said they had quote, mixed reviews about your first play. And now saying that Melvin van Peebles is liberated that he's able to be pro black and not anti white, he's able to say I love black people with black people without referring yea or nay to white people.

Van Peebles 9:14
Well, that's a certain time that it took to sensitize their rear end to where things were headed. ain't supposed to die a natural death got re reviewed. Along with reviewing of don't play us cheap. We will surely be the sixth longest running play on Broadway. And nothing succeeds like success brother

Tony Brown 9:39
now you opened up with ain't supposed to die a natural death. You were supposed to have folded within four weeks

Van Peebles 9:46
no, four days,

Tony Brown 9:47
four days. You did not have good audiences after the first night, which was mostly black audience I understand and gave you understand a thunderous ovation. But you did survive the next few months then black people started coming to see it how that all take place

Van Peebles 10:01
Well you see we don't have a tradition of going to theater because theater until very recently had nothing really to offer us any more than most of the other media but they were so accessible you had to go somewhere. It's only as the word spread that the pieces that I do were for us about us talking really an our true voices that people began to come in and every two came in they bring back four and five and built up a whole a whole black audience 40% of the people who've been coming to my work have never been inside a theater before. And that's an immense thing.

Tony Brown 10:48
What is it do you feel in in your place? It makes black people want to see them?

Van Peebles 10:52
Well, the they're not only black theme the seeped in our lifestyle. Technically, the use of the way I use sound the way I use color the way I use a progression of action and so forth is rooted in the black urban experience the urban experience that I know

INTERVIEW CONTINUES: MELVIN VAN PEEBLES

Tony Brown:
the the script you directed you produced it and you wrote the music

Van Peebles 15:25
for don't play us cheap I didn't

Tony Brown 15:26
to Don't play cheap

Van Peebles 15:27
I didn't direct

Tony Brown 15:28
Gilbert Moses directed ain't supposed to die a natural death but in don't play us cheap in the in the in the script in particular the devil had a little foreplay there with the young imp he was trying to get to be mean. And he was explaining evil in its purity. Would you recap that for me and explain what what you were saying when you wrote it?

Van Peebles 15:50
Oh, well what he says is that he wants to be pure and right does not work out of straight purity. There's always a little 369 in the game somewhere but evil being so corrupt from the beginning can work in a sense you can't have pure good as his words and she can't have pure good I'll take pure bad

INTERVIEW CONTINUES - MELVIN VAN PEEBLES

Van Peebles;
what I usually do in this case when I write something I lay back and don't explain it until some critic says something that I like so yeah, that's what I meant. That's what I meant. I never

Tony Brown 18:31
well let me try to read your mind in ain't supposed to die natural death. I was reminded of a of a morality play good and bad. The very last scene. That's it, okay, that what you're doing. He said put a curse on you. And the way I read it was if you are black or white, and you're not helping to alleviate the injustice in our society, then you're wrong is that we are now in in don't play us cheap. You in my estimation came out with with a devil in the form of a person and you were challenging good to overcome bad and in the end. Good one out over bad.

Van Peebles 19:08
Well, not exactly. But it happened but what's very important is the good sprang from the roots of black wharves. The these people had their game too uptight. To let the devil I'm coming on some humble and break up their good time. Which is one of the things I was trying to explain is the power that we have within our culture. Very interesting people come up now they they compare the plays it's a very serious types. They say they go for ain't supposed to die or and other people go for don't play us cheap but some people like them equally well actually. And I'm always asked the question, which one do I dig most it's like asking mother which one of her children Does she prefer? Actually I see them all And don't play us cheap and also included as part of showing black people images of themselves. And it's a little more difficult, because we've been portrayed for exploitive purposes by the man in this jolly way. So I'm naturally more cautious when you see a happy party. But um, you can be happy and have your dignity at the same time, which is one of the other things I set out to prove.

Tony Brown 20:36
I think a lot of us are very happy about the fact that your success is directly attributable to the fact that black people are supporting you, supporting you like to see you and I also read something that I like to set the record straight on, I read an article that said that the first national television exposure that you had for ain't supposed to die a natural death was on the Emmy Awards. And that's not true. It was on soul. And the first national exposure

Van Peebles 21:01
Stan did the whole thing remember what we did with uh. And we always say the

Tony Brown 21:05
That was staged in the future and Stan Layton directed. But the first national exposure getting on this one is on Black Journal, right and both Ellis Hayes love soul and I both like to feel that we are alternative institutions that will can reinforce black artists

Van Peebles 21:18
We don't really the whole point is the Tony exposure did not make the play, the play was made before and it was made by yourself by Ellis by the the Black Media. And the black people who came down and put this and he's out we have alternative communication possibilities. We have to get those the habit of using them. But here we don't need demand. The point I'm trying, I try to constantly bring out is that we have more black people in America than are in all of Scandinavia, and you can sell in the low country Holland and Belgium too. And almost as many as there in France. That's an enormous amount of people. And was that amount of people. You don't have to address yourself to the mainstream culture. Now mainstream culture can can profit from as because I'm really talking about the human situation. If someone has got a game of tight enough, just open up it's possible to really come in and flip out behind the work.

Tony Brown 22:37
you have in the last year to overuse overused word revolutionize the filmmaking industry. Now we're flooded with black oriented films and I don't think anybody can remove you as the reference point. Either a film is relatively irrelevant to blacks because it is either in some people's estimations better or worse than sweetback but that makes it a focal point now you are perhaps the man black or white on Broadway. And I just I just see your detractors falling by the wayside

Performance ends in applause. "Don't Play us Cheap" overlay cast members

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