Want to ease your grief with humor? Head to 'Paris' in St. Paul

For theater director Lou Bellamy, plowing back into work is not only a chance to do something he has loved all his adult life, but also a tonic for grief. In the past nine months, he unexpectedly lost his son, Lucas, and brother, Terry.

Now as the Penumbra Theatre founder reunites with longtime actor and company member Lester Purry for a production of Pearl Cleage's "What I Learned in Paris," he finds that getting a production up on its feet is a balm for weary spirits.

"Working on this show creates a family around happiness and joy rather than grief, and it just buoys the spirit," Bellamy said. "The type of theater my brother did and that I typically do is strident and hard-hitting. But this is a rom-com with depth that I think is going to lift people's spirits."

"Paris," which Bellamy also staged in Portland, Ore., before bringing it home to St. Paul, is the second Cleage show to grace a Twin Cities stage this year. "Blues for an Alabama Sky" closed at the Guthrie in March.

In both "Blues" and "Paris," the City of Lights is invoked as a beacon, a place where Black characters can go and be free. Paris has served in that role for at least a century, including for Josephine Baker, who conquered the Théatre des Champs-Elysées with La Revue Nègre, and James Baldwin, who completed his debut novel, "Go Tell It on the Mountain," there.

The surprising thing is that Cleage herself has never seen the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre or any other Parisian landmark in person.

"Isn't that something?" the playwright said by phone from Atlanta, where she lives. "I write about people going to Paris and finding themselves and being free, so people think that I've been there. Paris always has struck me as a place where Black people can create without the weight of racism on their shoulders and where people can just be themselves, which is probably such a romanticized view of the city."

The show looks at the toll, sacrifices and foibles of these characters.

"While the revolution is going on and all the politics are happening, people are getting high, having babies and breaking up," said Bellamy. "Sometimes that life is so demanding that you have to give up everything else."

Cleage knows it all too well. She worked as press secretary and speechwriter for Jackson, who was the first Black mayor of a major city in the South. Political campaigns are hotbeds of passionate, torrid affairs, she said.

"You're trying to change the world and up all night with these people, handing out fliers in neighborhoods you've never walked in before and it's dangerous," said Cleage. "Of course, people are going to fall madly in love. We don't see that story because we're trying to tell inspirational stories. But there are enough of those. I want to tell some complicated stories."

In "Paris," Eve Madison visits France and goes out for dinner by herself. At the restaurant, she sees what she thinks is a woman with wild hair, drinking wine and being exactly where she ought to be. She slowly realizes that she's looking at her own reflection in a mirror.

That theme of freedom courses through much of Cleage's literature. It's a foundational leitmotif. Cleage's take on it, in "Paris" and other works, is very specific to her own history as the Detroit-born daughter of a preacher who also was an activist.

"The piece itself grows out of my own political involvement and experience," Cleage said. "I wanted to talk about the role of women in these campaigns as we push the charismatic men forward. We love Michelle and Barack [Obama], and they played different roles in that partnership. What does it mean for women in the orbit of these charismatic men? How do they manage their new expectations and reality?"

The play also is imbued with larger questions around sacrifice and suffering, Cleage said.

When an activist like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X is killed, the widows take on new roles and often are described as noble, self-contained and brave. They become encased in their moments of grief.

But being a martyr's widow "is such a narrow space to move around in. These women were young, vibrant. There's got to be times when they wanted to say, I'm really tired of the people, can we go to the movies or sit and have a glass of wine," Cleage said.

For his part, Bellamy, who has directed "Paris" a few other times, said that he relishes how Cleage "allows the political and racial discourse to go forward without forgetting to take care of the human heart."

The production is laced with laughter and humor that can be healing.

"These are real people going through real things, and sometimes when you let Black people be, they're just hilarious," Bellamy said.