A group of Black laundresses prepares to strike in Kelundra Smith’s The Wash (photo by Hollis King)
THE WASH
WP Theater
2162 Broadway at 76th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 29, $30-$45
www.newfederaltheatre.com
The real Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike of 1881 is the setting of Kelundra Smith’s moving if earnest The Wash, making its New York premiere at the WP Theater. A production of Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theatre, the fictionalized story is an account of one of first workers’ strikes in American history, all too often left out of our national narrative. Smith powerfully reclaims Black history, as well as her own; the seven characters all carry the names of Smith’s actual female ancestors and family members.
The play begins as a kind of symphony, as five Black women go about their business, washing and drying white people’s clothes using buckets, irons, and washboards, in front of two movable walls onto which are projected colorful abstract images that evoke the work of Georgia-born African American artist Alma Thomas.
The walls are soon spun around to reveal the inside of a double barrel shotgun house where the women gather to clean, gossip, and share their personal stories. The home is rented by Anna (Eunice Woods), a practical widow who runs a sort of workers’ cooperative, washing laundry collected from white Atlanta households. Anna wants to make sure everyone working there gets paid, although their clients aren’t paying them, evading their bills and paying in beans and rice instead of cash. Among the women is Anna’s closest friend, the god-fearing Jeanie (Bianca LaVerne Jones), who lives upstairs. Anna dreams of having her own bakery where she can sell her honeycomb cornbread and Jeanie’s “oh my” pies.
Jeanie: We been over this a thousand times. We ain’t answerin’ to white folks. We done got us a system. We only gots to talk to dem when we pick up they dirty clothes and drop off the clean ones. Dey pissed about it.
Anna: War been over almost twenty years. We oughta be past dis by now.
Jeanie: Dem crackers just killed the president. It ain’t over to dem.
Anna: It’s getting worse. I don’t know how much longer we can go on like this. No mo rice, beans, and hand-me-downs.
Jeanie has just found out that her son and daughter-in-law are going to have a baby, so she needs to make enough money to afford a bus ticket to Rochester. Thomasine (Margaret Odette), who has four young children, is married to an abusive husband. The newly married and madly in love Charity (Alicia Pilgrim) is looking forward to having kids. And Jewel (Kerry Warren) is in college, where she is very good friends with another woman student. The women are fed up with doors being slammed in their faces when they ask for payment, so they start considering striking, and a heated discussion ensues.
Anna: What else are we gonna to do? We tried waiting. We tried asking. We supposed to go the police?
Charity: They’ll arrest us for callin ’em.
Jewel: We wouldn’t be the first. Remember a few years ago in Galveston and Jackson? They did it.
Thomasine: They tried that here last year and the year before. Police pulled washerwomen’s hair out in the street.
Charity: But this a new day. Mrs. Anna say the Cotton Expo comin’.
Jewel: Plus, after they stole the election from that Negro alderman last year, I think folks will hear us out.
Anna: Jeanie, we did say —
Jeanie: We was just talkin’.
Anna: That’s the problem. It’s a lot of talkin’ ’round here, but now it’s time to demand. No pay, no wash.
Jeanie: Strike? If we ain’t workin’, how we gonna pay the property tax?
Thomasine: I got four kids comin’ up like dandelions. Somethin’ is better than nothin’.
The real Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike of 1881 inspired play making NYC premiere at WP Theater (photo by Hollis King)
Anna: Something ain’t paying my property taxes. Matter of fact, we not even gettin’ something. We’re gettin’ anythang, and that’s worse. If we can set our own rates, I can pay my taxes ’fore the law come.
Jeanie: Think about this, Anna. What good it’ll do if we strike? It’s plenty of washerwomen in this city. Folk’ll take dey laundry to somebody else, and we’ll have a stain on us.
Jewel: She’s right. It’ll only work if everyone does it. We have to get more women to join us.
Jeanie: More womens? This Atlanta. Dem crackers will have us swingin’ from a Georgia pine.
Jewel: Times are changing. Negroes comin’ up around here.
They gather in a church basement, where they establish their makeshift headquarters for the strike, forming a union called the Washing Society. They are surprised and suspicious when Mozelle (Rebecca Haden), a single white mother, shows up, offering to help get the white laundry women in Castleberry to join the fight. As the number of strikers increases dramatically and the newspapers pick up the story, Anna, Jeanie, Thomasine, Charity, and Jewel reexamine what they want out of their lives, as individuals and as Black women.
The Wash is the conclusion of Smith’s Reconstruction Trilogy, following The Vote and The Knot. She and director Awoye Timpo (In Old Age, Good Grief) build a heartwarming portrait of community among the women, six unique characters who come together while facing their complicated personal situations. The narrative becomes repetitive, and the continual turning around of Jason Ardizzone-West’s set is time consuming and grows a bit tedious; perhaps the play would benefit from being streamlined from 135 minutes with intermission to a more concise 90 minutes without a break.
Gail Cooper-Hecht’s period costumes capture the look of the time, while Belynda M’baye’s wide-ranging props fill the shelves of Anna’s kitchen and workspace. Abhita Austin’s projections include shots of actual newspaper articles weighing in on the strike. Choreographers Adesola Osakalumi and Jill Vallery create scenes with movement that are like dances, all lit by Victor En Yu Tan, achieving what Smith explains in the script: “This play is meant to move like the wind; it’s gentle and breezy in some moments and swift and sharp in others.”
Pulling no punches, The Wash might wear its heart on its sleeve, but it tells an important, little-known story in a way that makes it relevant today, rather than just another episode from America’s shameful past.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]