Defining the Heroic: Characterization in Alice Childress'

Trouble in Mind

Lynn Hanson
FrancisMarion University

In her drive to portray the reciprocal influences of America's

diversity in ethnicity, gender, class, and age, playwright Alice
Childress defies and conflates the taxonomic characterizations that
scholarly works try to impose on her characters, works such as
Elizabeth Brown's Six Female Black Playwrights: Images of Blacks
in Plays and Patricia Sweeney's Women in Southern Literature.
These critical works and others do not accurately account for the
heroines in Childress' plays who cross boundaries of classification
to repeat, reverse, and conflate stereotypical images of young and
old women, blacks and whites. In Trouble In Mind, 1Childress
achieves her complex characterizations through the meta dramatic
device of the play within a play, presenting actors of the 1950s
Broadway theatre who must portray stock figures in an Old South
drama. Ironically, the conflation of elements that creates the con-
flict in Childress' dramas also provides the resolution.
The underlying tension that drives the action of Trouble in
Mind is the tension between group unity and individual integrity.
Although racial strife is the most obvious conflict, Childress' play
develops far more than a simple stratified black-against-white
motif, realistically portraying the complexities of a diverse society.
Alliances form and break within the groups of men and women,
young and old, educated and uneducated as characters resist
stereotyping based on any schema.
In the primary plot line of Trouble in Mind, a group of black
and white actors are rehearsing for a Broadway play, entitled
Chaos in Belleville. Al Manners, the director, claims that Chaos is
a progressive play designed to promote the cause of equal civil
rights. But when rehearsal begins, the actors quickly see that the
script relies heavily on the same, tired, polarized roles they've
played before: in particular, submissive, weak, or ignorant actions
for blacks and smug, self-righteous, leading roles for whites.
In an effort to establish unity among the African American

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actors before their rehearsal begins, Wiletta coaches John on how
to get along in the white man's theatre. Sheldon, another older
black actor, agrees with Wiletta and claims her methods are not
"Tommin'" but common sense. Additionally, both Wiletta and
Millie warn John against close association with Judy, the only
white female in the cast. Although Wiletta and Millie compete
with one another for the most youthful appearance, they form a
coalition of two black women who will not accept Judy because
she is young and white. In the cast's initial meeting, Judy and
John are disadvantaged by their lack of experience, but their aca-
demic degrees gain them acceptance with the white actors without
hard-won experience. But when Sheldon objects that John's rela-
tionships are none of Millie's business, the unity of the group is
broken. John resists their advice, makes friends with Judy, and
aligns himself quickly with Al Manners, the white director of the
play, Chaos in Belleville.Although John is temporarily drawn to
the power base of whites, their false unity is exposedby internal
bickering. This opening scene exemplifies the tensions Childress
manipulates between whites and blacks, men and women, individ-
uals and groups.
The resulting chaos in the rehearsal hall parallels the conflict of
the play within the play and challengesthe social hierarchy of the
Broadway environment. In fact, eachmemberof the company
comesunder scrutiny as they repeat Old South roles, reverse them,
swap them, and sometimes merge them. In doing so, Childress'
complex characters defy classification.
Yet scholars-interested in classifying imagesin literature-
have tried. For example, in Elizabeth Brown's scholarly work
(1980) on African-American characters in plays by African-
American playwrights, she defines four representations of black
womanhood: the "evolving black woman" is a "survivor" who,
despite vulnerabilities, unreciprocated love, or "a series of trials
and errors, realizesher potential as a black woman"and goeson
"with the business of living." She is resilient, "self-respecting, self-
sufficient, [and] assertive" (108-109) as her focus becomes "taking
care of herself" (121). Cut from the same cloth, but with a differ-
ent impetus and goal, Brown's black matriarch is concerned with
"taking care of her family's needs" (121). She is fiercelyprotective
14
of her children, often sacrificing herself to prepare them to live in a
violent and racist world [She is] a woman faced with harsh
responsibilities, which she accepts and carries out to the fullest of
her powers (122). Brown's upholder of racial pride is a woman
who "willingly go[es] beyond 'self' and family to improv[e] life for
[African-Americans]" (142). Brown's single negative image is the
"black woman as destroyer of racial pride" (106).
Although Brown cites Alice Childress' character Wiletta Mayer
as an example of the upholder of racial pride, she is, however, an
amalgam of all three of Brown's positive images. As an evolving
black woman, Wiletta seeks to advance her own career and oppor-
tunities on the stage. As a voice for the black matriarch, she seeks
to replace the stereotype of the simple, subservient mammy with
the intelligence and loyalty of black mothers who struggle to pro-
tect their children in a racist world (168-169). As upholder of her
race, she protests the characterizations and actions of the play
within the play, points out the illogic, and loudly objects "I'm sick
of people signifyin' we got no sense" (171).
Willetta's complexity supports Savas Patsalidis' argument in
"The (Im)possibilities of the (black) Female Self," that Childress
and other playwrights of the second wave of feminism 2supply
American theatre "with unique images of Black women and their
struggle for survival and re-definition" (303). Self-definition is
precisely Willeta's goal.
Because Childress develops the device of the play within a play
and Wiletta embodies a role in both, her character is complexly
layered with the stereotype she is assigned to play in Chaos and
her efforts to cast it off in Trouble. For example, Wiletta adopts a
"Jemima" persona in her interactions with Al Manners. She feigns
worry for his unhealthy stress levels, saying, "Go on! Go 'way!
Ain't speakin' to you! He [Manners] won't eat, he won't sleep, he's
just terrible! I'm mad with you" (143). In these moments, Wiletta
plays concerned black mammy to Manners' "master" and she
plays matriarchal advisor to the stage novice John. In addition,
when Manners seeks her opinion on the word "darkie" in the
script of Chaos she answers, "Lord, have mercy, don't ask me
'cause I don't know..."', which is a line she resents speaking as
Ruby. But her awareness of her inadvertent slip is immediate.
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 According to Childress' stage directions, Wiletta "stops short" and
is "disturbed that she's repeating the exact line the author indicat-
ed" for Ruby in Chaos (147). Still later, she improvises actions for
Ruby that radically change the script of the play.
Because of her rebellion, scholar Patricia Sweeney places
Wiletta-and other Childress heroines-in a category with "freed
black women," an unsatisfactory classification that defines any
African American female character by her relation to slavery, even
characters like Wiletta, whose setting is almost a century after
Emancipation (she is middle-aged in 1957). Although Sweeney's
taxonomy reflects the stereotypes within southern literature and
the surviving separatism of the 1980s, more recent scholarship
argues that segregated classifications can serve a better purpose,
that is, to acknowledge the unique experiences of minorities and
allow African-American women to locate their identities in models
of themselves, not in socially-accepted images of white women. As
Elsa Barkley Brown has written, "Being a woman is...not
extractable from the context in which one is a woman-[from]
race, class, time, and place" (300).
Unlike earlier scholars, such as Mary Louise Anderson and
Trudier Harris, 3who identify the black matriarch as a one-dimen-
sional character, Elizabeth Brown asserts that many literary charac-
terizations-such as those found in Childress' work-rescue these
African American women from reductions to mere types (123-
124). Brown concurs with Glenda Dickerson who proposes in her
article, "A Womanist Attitude in African-American Theatre," that
the archetypes for African-American women must come from the
stories.. .of the common people that reflect "the Black experience
in America" (180).
Ultimately, Wiletta's experience includes dropping the
"Jemima" facade (167) and asserting the truth she really believes-
a truth Manners has asked for in her performance but doesn't real-
ly want. When she requests time to discuss her character's actions,
Manners puts her off by saying "Darling, don't think. You're
great until you start thinking Don't tell it, you're beautiful"
(157). Later she confronts Manners for his condescension:
You don't ever listen to me. You hear the others but not me.
And it's 'cause of the school. 'Cause they know about justi
16
fyin' and the. . . antagonist. . . I never studied that, so you
don't want to hear me (163)
But as a pupil, Wiletta has surpassed the "master," identifying the
inconsistencies in his theories and attempting to rectify and move
beyond them. Like Elizabeth Brown's "evolving black woman"
and "upholder of the race," she will relentlessly continue her
efforts until she and Manners can see the same truth.
Nevertheless, Wiletta's rebellion during rehearsal disenfranchis-
es her, moving her outside any of the available systems of alliance.
Because the criteria for unity among each group (black and white,
men and women, young and old, educated and uneducated) is con-
tinually forming and disintegrating, Wiletta is ostracized from
them all.
Like Wiletta, Judy Sears suffers a similar dilemma. The only
white female in Trouble in Mind, she plays Carrie in Chaos in
Belleville. Her character is a young, white woman of privilege,
pampered by the servants who shelter her from the harsh realities
of racial tension and violence. Judy, like Carrie, pretends to be
worldly and liberal, but she is inexperienced and naive, a novice in
dealing with forces she knows little or nothing about. As the
female lead in Chaos, she is an amalgam of characteristics assigned
to the Belle and Lady in Sweeney's catalog of Southern characters.
Like Sweeney's Belle, she is "beautiful, mannered, flirtatious, and
often shallow," but in the absence of a mother in the play within
the play, she becomes the "idealized" Lady, "chaste, compassion-
ate, caring, and often.. .in charge of a large household of blacks
and whites" (ix). Although Judy disapproves of her character's
superior behavior and teary-eyed sentimentality, her similarity to
Carrie prompts Wiletta and Millie to rebuff her friendliness. Yet
in her need for unity with the other women in the cast, Judy
breaks her role as Carrie and accidentally joins in the black
women's "chorus" in Chaos as they exclaim and moan "back-up"
to Sam's prayer (160). When Manners and Bill convey swift disap-
proval for her inadvertent crossover, they mirror Millie and
Wiletta's repeated rejections of Judy throughout Act I. So Judy
alters the sincerity with which she plays the role of Carrie and
shifts to a "reserved kindness, rather than real involvement" (160),
manifesting the smugness she dislikes in her character but needs to
17
 adopt to avoid the disapproval of her peers. As the tensions
mount, her functions in both plays become harder to negotiate,
just as they are for Wiletta.
The patterns that develop among the women are also repeated
in the men. At the beginning of Act II, the white males on stage
present the picture of unity as Bill O'Wray delivers Renard's speech
on moderation (which is meaningless drivel). But conflict erupts
when Manners chastises Bill for avoiding the black cast members
at lunch. Manners also verbally attacks Eddie and blames him for
everything from technical accidents to disrupting negotiations with
his ex-wife.
Ironically, the characters' words and deeds often reinforce the
prevalent stereotypes they resist. For example, Manners is like
Renard, the white landowner in Chaos, believing he plays a role of
beneficence, when in fact he lives out the unthinking insensitivity
of a privileged person in power. He fancies himself a progressive
director willing to take unconventional risks for the sake of teach-
ing the ills of racism, but he repeats the common behaviors of the
self-superior, self-congratulatory white liberal who merely masks
his racism with rhetoric. And he responds just as characteristically
when his omniscience is questioned and threatened. He tyrannizes
the powerless stage manager and Henry the Irish doorman for
offenses as small as buying jelly doughnuts instead of Danish.
In addition, John, the only African American actor with a col-
lege education, resists advice from the experienced Sheldon.
According to Elizabeth Brown's taxonomy (77-78), John Nevins is
the "black youth in search of his manhood," but he also displays
symptoms of the "black assimilationist," another contemporary
type Brown defines (79-87). In John's efforts to distance himself
from the older black actors, he falls into the very role he sought to
avoid. He becomes the inadvertent "Tom" that he despises in
Sheldon, laughing at Manners' jokes, adopting his ideology, and
appropriating his "manners." In fact, through most of the play,
John is co-opted into the league of whites.
The tension between group unity and individual integrity
increases as characters struggle to alter the stereotypes. Unity
occurs as long as each character behaves according to the pre-
scribed stratifications of race, gender, age, education, and position.
18
But when individual characters rebel against the constraints of lim-
ited roles and behaviors, conflict erupts anew.
For example, Wiletta's position among the various factions
alters as the other members of the cast grow weary of her objec-
tions to the script and simply want to get on with rehearsal. The
pressure to conform is greatest when Wiletta's "own" people in the
theatre, like Job's "own" people in Chaos, "won't help [her]"
(169). After all, they need their jobs.
Nevertheless, Wiletta's loyalty to self and race prompt her to
play her role as Ruby with realistic integrity, as a thinking, feeling,
experienced woman who fears for her son's life. As Ruby, she
struggles to pull Job off his knees to escape the white mob, and
complains, "The writer wants the damn white man to be the
hero-and I'm the villain" (169). In this moment, she conflates her
roles in the two plays, an overlay that also conflates the plotlines
of Trouble in Mind and Chaos.
The crux of the play occurs in the final scene of Trouble in
Mind, when Wiletta begins to recite the 133 Psalm, a grand pas-
sage from the Bible that encapsulates the theme of the play:
"Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together
in unity." She has longed for her grand moment on the stage, and
she gets it. But her witness is an audience of one, a has-been door-
man who remembers her singing in Brownskin Melody.4
Nevertheless, in this moment, she ~ grand, doing justice to the
passage, achieving her personal goal-at least on one level-to
stand forth at her best in the theater. But she has also stood forth
at her best in her attempts to persuade Manners to work for hon-
est portrayals of African-Americans on stage.
As Wiletta ends the Bible passage about unity, Henry turns on
the applause machine, a diegetical action that signals the live audi-
ence of Trouble in Mind to applaud as well. As they do, the virtu-
al action of the play is superimposed on the actual reality of the
theatre, just as the virtual reality of Chaos in Belleville has been
superimposed on the virtual reality of Trouble in Mind. In doing
so, Childress makes it possible for audience members to internalize
the tensions of the play, particularly those dealing with stereotypes.
In an interview almost one year before her death in 1994,
Childress relates an experience in which she, like Wiletta, found
19
 her voice compromised by the theatre. In the first production of
Trouble in Mind at Greenwich Mews (1955), the producers want-
ed her to rewrite the ending "to show a positive image to the pub-
lic of blacks and whites working together" (Playwright's Art 53).
In the revised ending, all the actors, black and white, "came
together and walked out on the show" en masse (Childress 52).
Although Childress felt compelled to compromise at the time,
like her character Wiletta, she ultimately rejected the producers'
ending because, as she said, it wasn't believable. Childress
explains: "Producers want things solved" (Playwright's Art 61).
They want shows that try to make "a positive, balanced state-
ment" that "'we're getting along'" (Playwright's Art 64). But "this
is the problem. Society is getting more and more divided because
we lie about the situation" (64). She believes drama should show
"the controversy of life, the contradictions in history"
(Playwright's Art 67) and "go right to the root of the subject"
(Playwright's Art 64).
Interestingly, reviewers criticized the "clap-trap" ending
(Playwright's Art 52) and Childress changed it back to the original
for publication in 1971 and again for a production in London
(1992) with one difference: Al Manners, the director of Chaos,
witnesses Wiletta's final speech about the rightness of unity.
However, the end of the play does not indicate whether Wiletta
will persuade Manners to change the script. The conflicts go unre-
solved within the white power structure of American theatre, the
arena that symbolizes Wiletta's world.
This open ending is a significant feature of Childress' realism.
Scholar Patricia Schroeder argues that despite the anti-realism sen-
timents of many feminist theorists, Alice Childress uses her realistic
plays as "agent[s] of social change" (333), a purpose that stands as
the defining characteristic of materialist feminism. In her defense
of Childress' technique in Wine in the Wilderness, Schroeder
asserts, "the fact that the play exemplifies well-crafted realism does
not diminish the materialist-feminist nature of the work or detract
from its political message" (333-334) about the impact of inter-
secting "social, racial, and gender roles" (326). In her own
defense, Childress explains, "I write what I see, hear, and feel. I
think this is the only realism some fear" (Playwright's Art 67).
20
In Trouble in Mind, as in other plays, Childress realistically por-
trays the complex situational tensions of our diverse culture, artic-
ulating the unspeakable complexities of bitter tensions, made more
complex by the layers of time, tradition, and inversion. Through
the juxtaposition of the characters' roles in the plays Chaos and
Trouble, Childress repeats established patterns, breaks them,
reverses them, and merges the various type classifications into
characters that personify the potential for development and
change. By conflating the social roles of young and old, black and
white, male and female, educated and uneducated, Childress' hero-
ines defy strict categorization.
For Childress, tossing characters into the mix-and leaving
them there-is as much resolution as realism allows. Her heroine
is a common woman who embodies old and new, past and present,
tradition and innovation; and who confronts cultural obstacles to
her autonomy and identity. The tensions among the cast concern-
ing race, class, gender, age, and education remain unresolved.
Unlike Manners' effort in producing Chaos in Belleville, Childress'
play does not pretend to solve complex problems simply by exist-
ing. Trouble in Mind depicts the conflicts compassionately, while
revealing the raw ugliness behind stereotyped facades, and ends
realistically, not with an answer to unite all groups, but with one
individual's solid hope.
Notes
1 Trouble in Mind won an Obie Award in 1955 as the best orig-
inal off-Broadwayplay of the year. All referencesto the text are to
Childress' script published in Black Theatre.
20ther playwrights include Lorraine Hansberry, Ntozake
Shange,and Adrienne Kennedy.
3 Other scholars who have analyzed the perpetual stereotyping
of black characters include Sterling Brown, Donald Bogle,Jeanne-
Marie Miller,and Michele Wallace.
4 The published text of Trouble in Mind in Lindsay Patterson's
Black Theatre (1971) has Childress' original ending in which only
Henry the doorman sees her closing recitation. The revision in
21
 which Manners also witnesses Wiletta's recitation was written
for the London production in October 1992.
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