Director Yolanda Franklin has the highest praise for UCSD Theatre and Dance alumna Zora Howard’s play “Stew,” which was a 2021 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
“It’s almost like a modern-day ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’” Franklin said, likening Howard’s story about a Black family to the Broadway classic written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959. “I think she (Howard) has done a wonderful job of capturing the language style and the family dynamics of the African American experience.”
Common Ground Theatre, for which Franklin is executive artistic director, and Scripps Ranch Theatre are co-producing a staging of “Stew” that opens Saturday at Scripps Ranch Theatre.
Yolanda Franklin, executive artistic director of Common Ground Theatre, directs the coproduction “Stew” at Scripps Ranch Theatre.
(Courtesy photo)
The setting is a kitchen, where among the women in the Tucker family, Mama presides over the cooking and everything else.
“This is absolutely her place,” said Franklin, “and this is the stew she’s made for years and years.”
That’s the backdrop for an intertwining mixture of Tucker family complications that concern Mama Portia, teenage daughter Nelly, older daughter Lillian and Lillian’s own daughter Lil’ Mama, the tween-age grandchild.
“You see family cycles repeated,” explained Franklin. “You see someone wanting to break the cycle — something that happens in a lot of families. There are quite a few moments when it comes to a head for these women: ‘Where do I go from here?’”
The rivalries, the fight for status, the protecting of secrets are all universal within families, Franklin said.
“Anyone can sit in the audience and see their family there or someone they know,” she said. “That goes beyond color. It’s a human condition.”
So is the mother-daughter relationship, which is so central to “Stew.”
Franklin recalled another professional and personal experience from nine years ago, in a different play and as an actor.
She co-starred in a production of Marsha Norman’s one-act drama “’night Mother” at since-closed Ion Theatre in Hillcrest. She played a grown daughter who announces to her mother that she plans to commit suicide. Franklin gave one performance during the show’s run with her real-life mother in the audience.
Looking back on that experience and her commitment to the role, Franklin said she’s been able to work with her “Stew” cast on authentically playing their characters, something that goes beyond preproduction table readings.
“I like to do one-on-ones with the actors,” she said. “I love to break bread, to have a conversation with their characters and how they inter-relate.”
On the subject of conversations, there will be audience talkbacks during the run of “Stew” after Friday night performances. Communicating, after all, may be the underlying message of this play.
“You need to conversate, not just be on remote every day and missing opportunities to have real conversations,” said Franklin of the lessons inherent in Howard’s play. “You never know what someone may be going through in your own home. If you’re already doing that, great. But there’s always a connection that we can do better, especially when it comes to parent and child or sibling and sibling.
“That type of communication, in and of itself, is not always easy.”
‘Stew’
When: Previews at 7:30 p.m. tonight and 2 p.m. Saturday. Opens at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and runs through April 21. 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays; plus 2 p.m. April 20.
Where: Scripps Ranch Theatre, Alliant International University campus, 9783 Avenue of Nations, San Diego
Tickets: $29-$49
Phone: (858) 578-7728
Online: scrippsranchtheatre.org
Coddon is a freelance writer.