The word “Shakespearean” gets thrown around a bit when describing lives and events. In the case of Purvis Young, it fits..
The Miami artist, who died at 67 in 2010, lived a life both triumphal and tragic. Raised in Miami’s Overtown, he developed an interest in art while locked up as a teenager in Florida’s notorious state prison at Raiford for breaking and entering.
Returning to Miami, he began poring over art books at the public library and then creating his own work.
He worked with found materials and often donated paints. Today, his works can be found in some of the world’s most prestigious galleries. His first gallery, famously, was the Good Bread Alley neighborhood of Overtown, where he painted murals on houses slated for demolition in the name of “urban renewal.”
Now that story will be told in the three-act play “Purvis Young: Othello of Overtown.” Co-written by Clare Vickery, founder of the Fort Lauderdale-based Grace Arts Center, and Summer Hill Seven, currently the artist in residence at New Jersey’s Stockton University, the play uses dialogue from Shakespeare’s “Othello” as well as a live pianist and opera singer.
Andre Gainey plays Purvis Young; Aidan Higgs is the pianist and Anieyla Wells-Miller sings operatic interpretations.
The work is slated to get its official run in April; Fort Lauderdale and Miami venues will be announced in February. Before that, however, there are free readings at two South Florida public libraries. In Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, Oct. 16 and in Miami on Saturday, Oct. 19.
For Vickery, the library readings offer an opportunity for “conceptual exposure” — letting an audience see not just the work, but the entire bold idea. And it’s no coincidence that the events are being held in libraries. In addition to providing the space where Young educated himself about art, the Miami-Dade Public Library System also gave the artist some of his early mural commissions and helped him make connections with big galleries.
“This reading is really a workshop not only to explore this concept of sharing Purvis art in the early years, how the library really supported him even in all the impediments.,” says Vickery, who knew Young personally.
Seven never met Young but he says he became familiar with his work shortly before Young’s death.
“What I brought to it was my familiarity with the play ‘Othello,’ ” he says. “That’s what hooked me when I met Clare.”
As Seven began studying Young’s life, he found a man in whose mouth the words of Othello would sit comfortably. Othello knew the destruction of war; Young knew a community decimated by an interstate and the Miami of the 1980 Arthur McDuffie riots. In Young’s work — using found materials, taking the literal trash from around him and creating something beautiful — Seven saw the “indomitable spirit that is committed to art and is committed to making beauty of destruction.”
He saw something beautiful. Shakespearean, even.
“He builds a wall from these found materials that he paints on,” says Seven. “It’s a one-of-a-kind story. Once I learned that, I had a lot of meat to wrap the words of Othello around. The language kind of fell into place. I’m folding these events that Purvis had to be grappling with as a young man into the language of Othello. We’re taking Shakespeare’s actual words and applying them to a different situation … seeing how universal this language is.”
“It’s kind of my own life,” he says. “I’m a Black man of a certain age. In terms of the path, if you will, of a Black man surviving Americanism as Malcolm X described it — he said ‘I’m not an American, I’m a victim of Americanism.’ I could personally relate to Purvis’ journey.”
Does Seven get a writing credit? Well, some guy named William Shakespeare wrote the words. But that shared experience, that understanding, that’s what he feels he brings.
“I can’t take credit too much because it’s Shakespeare’s language,” he says. “If I can take credit for one thing, it would be for arguing for the perspective of Black manhood in this context.”
Shakespearean reinterpretation with live opera singing and piano is a bold choice. Seeing it performed for the first time should be exhilarating for the playwrights.
“It’s probably why I still do this,” says Seven.. “I’m as curious as anybody how this will be received. I have an idea of what my vision for my contribution is — that’s why I became a writer, I just put it on the page and we can get rid of the parts that other people don’t agree on, but I just have to get all the images in my mind on the page and black and white and you can say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ “
Seven calls it the science of writing and of theater.
“You put some things in this beaker and that beaker and if it explodes, great. To some extent all theater is experimental. But I think if it ever is applicable, these are the circumstances where it is completely experimental. We’re going to blow up some minds, get people to look at art in a way that matters and touches them in a way they haven’t been before.”
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “Purvis Young: Othello of Overtown”
WHERE: Broward County Main Library, 100 S. Andrews Ave., Fort Lauderdale, and
Miami Dade Public Library System Main Library, 101 W. Flagler St., Miami
WHEN: 6:15 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 16 (Fort Lauderdale) and 2 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 19 (Miami)
TICKETS: Free but registration required. Register at http://eventbrite.com for the Fort Lauderdale reading and http://mdpls.org for Miami.
INFORMATION: Call (954) 816-332 and
http://graceartscenter.org
