Trouble in Mind

“Trouble in mind” was originally published by Alice Childress on 1955. The play was presented in the form of comedy. However, the theme it conveyed was dark. The play told the story of how Wiletta Mayer, the protagonist and a black woman, facing the racial stereotypes in the theatre world, struggles to reconcile her values and her identity with that of the characters she plays. Through this story, the author criticized the racism phenomenon in the theatre world during the author’s time. Actually, Alice Childress also experienced similar story as the protagonist. According to the note distributed by the Roy Bowen Theatre, Alice’s plays had been active in the New York stage for a while and she was the first African American woman to win the Obie Award. Throughout her career, she had suffered so many discriminations and even being forced to edit her plays in order to present her plays. With the idea of complaining the racial stereotype during her time in mind, Alice created the play “Trouble in mind”.

The version we saw was directed by Melissa Maxwell and the background setting was a Broadway theatre in NYC, 1957, according to the note. The actor for Wiletta Mayer, the protagonist, was Tameishia Peterson. She did a great job expressing the mood of a black woman who faces the stereotypes in the theatre training. At the beginning of the show, Peterson expressed her happiness since the protagonist was glad to have a job. However, the happiness didn’t last long and it was soon transferred to the struggle of developing the characteristics according to the show written by Al Manners, the show’s director and producer. As the rehearsal went on, several humor scenes happen and develop the comedy theme of “Trouble in mind”. However, these mismatches accumulated the frustration in the mind of the protagonist, and eventually the protagonist exploded her emotions. There were also many other African American cast during the show. They were all similar to Wiletta and all experienced the same feeling throughout several rehearsals. Overall, according to the attribution of the play, actors have to heavily rely on their facial and body expressions to represent the characters’ emotions. I think the casts did a great job on this.