EL: Intensely so! This tribute is essentially much more than just of a masquerader in a folk pageant. I felt it is a direct link – a living traditional link - to my heritage. This was of immense value to an to me, a young African Caribbean in an American metropole; and I understood that heritage, perilously at risk, in the drama of Nationalism. When I first read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, that was not fiction; I knew that village, its taboos, and boundaries. Arthur Sixteen’s death seemed a modest parable of my own people's condition..

WW: Was your exposure to Black literature, at that time, also providing some heightened sense of loss, or awareness of your heritage?

EL: Absolutely! I was reading Achebe’s Things Fall Apart; Arrow of God; and Man of the People. Or, I was seeing performances of Wole Soyinka’s The King’s Horsemen, The Lion and The Jewel, The Swamp Dwellers, and Kongi’s Harvest – which became an early film in the canon of African Cinema, incidentally.

WW: Some thirty years later - What particular resonance must now be applied to produce this play? And, emphasize the ethic of the artist’s lifework, its urgency and emotional price, to build a creative work in the knowledge of the moment?

EL: Well, first, if I hadn’t written that play just then, I literally would not be here, now. Writing saved me because it required I spend all my time, in libraries, at lectures, among immigrant people of all races who were generous. So, it is an artistic and personal milepost, and a spiritual tribute - in the most exacting sense of the word to all the various agencies and traditions which must be repaid for their existences.

WW: What ‘time’ was this – socially, and politically speaking? Formulate, if you will, a social/political pedigree of artists and acitivist in the Black tradition, against whose time this play was written.

EL: The Seventies. It was a time full of artists who were also activists. I can remember meeting Harry Belafonte, Dennis Brutus, Abdullah Ibrahim, Ossie Davis, Leontyne Price. Jessye Norman, Nina Simone, Rohsahn Roland Kirk, and Amiri Baraka. Larry Neal – he was a critic/playwright from Atlanta.

Don’t forget, in my own immediate Caribbean community, there was Brock Peters, Paule Marshall, Sidney Poiter, Madge Sinclair, Geoffrey Holder, Shirley Chisholm, and Mervin Dymally. All these artists/activists demonstrated an intensity, a time of fierce engagement; and yet, with obvious vulnerabilities with regard to their lives.

WW: I bet there were many memorable dramatic works, back then?

EL: Oh, yeah! First there had been Charles Gordone’s No Place To Be Somebody, the first black playwright to win a Pulitzer prize for drama. Earlier, there had been Lorraine Hansberry’s To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie. Then, Melvin Van Peebles’ Ain’t Suppose To Die a Natural Death, among three of his concurrently running Broadway plays. Ossie Davis was on Broadway, in his play, Purlie Victorious.

Again, from my own Caribbean artistic community, there was Derek Walcott’s Remembrance, at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, and Vincent Smith’s Williams and Walker, at the American Place Theater. Of Antiguans in the theatre, there was Conrad Roberts – first leading black actor in a daytime soap, The Doctors. Gus Edwards’ play, The Offering, at the Negro Ensemble Company. (Incidentally, Sam Art Williams’ play, Eyes of the American, about a Caribbean nation at Independence. was also produced at NEC.) Eric Burton’s play, Iron Band, at the Woodie King’s Henry Street Settlement Theater; and, Anna Horseford at the Ubu Theater in Monsieur Thio’ Gnini; my brother, Robert Lake in Baraka’s The Dutchman at the Seventh Avenue Playhouse Theater, and Joe Davis in The Wine of Astonishment up in Harlem at the Roger Furman Community Theater.

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