PUTNEY — For the first time, a new drama about one of the 20th century's greatest folk artists will be performed by the author herself.
In honor of February's Black History Month, Next Stage Arts Project will present on Saturday, Feb. 15, at 7:30 p.m., a staged reading of Pierce to the Soul, a one-man play about Elijah Pierce (1892-1984) written and performed by Chiquita Mullins Lee.
Pierce to the Soul tells the story of the life of the son of a former Mississippi slave who became America's foremost wood carver of 20th century folk art, according to Robert Bishop, the founding director of the Museum of American Folk Art.
Elijah Pierce's art is now shown in exhibits worldwide, and more than 300 of his woodcarvings are contained in the the world's largest collection of his work at the Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio, the city that became the artist's home for most of his life.
Yet Pierce to the Soul shows that besides being an exceptional artist, Pierce was also a preacher and a barber, seemingly disparate careers that he combined in unusual ways.
Chiquita Mullins Lee's drama focuses on Pierce's roots as an artist and the challenges he faced in the decades before he became famous in the early 1970s, when Boris Gruenwald, an Ohio State University graduate student and sculptor, discovered Pierce's art and began championing it.
Pierce was born on a farm in Baldwin, Miss., and began to carve at the age of seven. In 1920, he was issued a preacher's license.
In 1923, he moved to Columbus, and during the 1930s and 1940s, he preached throughout the Midwest and South during the summers at carnivals and fairs, when he often brought his carvings along with him to use as teaching tools.
Mullins Lee, originally from Atlanta, now lives in Columbus.
“I feel a special bond with Elijah because we are both transplanted Southerners who subsequently lived and worked in Ohio,” she says.
Mullins Lee's plays have been presented as part of the Shorts Festival 2000 and 2004 at CATCO, formerly the Contemporary American Theater Company, in Columbus. Mullins Lee has received Individual Artist Fellowships in fiction writing and play writing from the Greater Columbus Arts Council and the Ohio Arts Council (OAC), as well as a 2007 Individual Creativity Excellence Award in nonfiction from the OAC.
“I was one of those kids who wrote her first play in the fourth grade and got all my classmates to perform it,” she says. “However, I am not just a playwright. I have several novels in progress, as well as poetry, a memoir, and some other creative nonfiction.”
“I just love to write,” Mullins Lee says. “I always have.”
Initially, she did not know how to make a career out of being a writer, so she took an academic track in college, which prepared her for being a teacher.
But she never gave up writing. Only after winning several writing awards and several years of attending the International Women's Writing Guild Conference at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., did she begin to gain confidence and see there could be a place for herself in a community of woman writers.
At the conference, she connected with two other writers, and together they created a stage project based on each of their life experiences: Diary of a 12-Year-Old Girl: A Woman's Story, which is almost universally promoted simply as 12.
Chiquita co-wrote and has often performed in the three-woman show about girls on the threshold of womanhood with Jeannetta Holliman and the late Rodlyn Douglas.
Also at Skidmore, she met a woman who would turn out to be instrumental in the direction of her artistic career, Elayne Clift, a longtime columnist to The Commons.
Mullins Lee took one of Clift's workshops about humor in women's writing. “We became very close,” says Mullins Lee. “Soon we were sharing our poems and short stories, and although we never have actually collaborated on anything, she has become a huge part of my life.”
Around 2004, Geoff Nelson, the artistic director of CATCO, suggested to Mullins Lee that she write a play about Pierce's life.
As Bill Childs explains in an discussion of the origins of Pierce to the Soul at CATCO's website, Pierce became an institution in Columbus, where he was respected as a barber, a preacher, and an artist.
And since Pierce was a local man who had won international acclaim, Nelson thought that story might be interesting to explore for audiences in Central Ohio and beyond.
Although Mullins Lee initially thought of having multiple actors on stage, she soon changed her mind, and the play became a one-man performance.
Played by Alan Bomar Jones, a celebrated actor in the Ohio area, Pierce to the Soul opened to rave reviews and ran for the entire month of April 2010, as well as subsequently touring through the Ohio region.
The Next Stage performance is the first time the author herself will be performing the complete play.
“Bomar Jones was wonderful in the part and his portrayal was one of the reasons the show was such a success,” Chiquita says.
How Mullins Lee ended up playing Pierce was rather by chance.
“When we were still in development of the work, I was invited to read an excerpt at something called 'Conversation and Coffee,' sponsored by the Columbus Cultural Exchange,” she says. “This turned out to be quite successful, and I came back several times and did other sections. So when Next Stage suggested I do the entire show, I figured I had some experience to tackle it.”
She finds the task of portraying Pierce a little daunting because she is asked to perform the role of a man who became famous in his seventies.
“Pierce is both of a different gender and age than I am,” she says.
Yet she did connect with his character.
“I feel an affinity with him,” she adds. “The stories he tells are rich for me. When I was writing the play, I would get lost for hours in the wording of it.
“You see, Pierce was much more than an artist. He was a beloved figure in Ohio for his preaching, too. And his barber shop became a focal meeting place in Columbus, where people would gather to hear him tell his Bible stories and to see his work.
“He was hardly an acclaimed, world-famous artist at first, and he often gave away works of art that are worth a lot of money these days. My play tries to capture all these facets of this remarkable man.”
How does Mullins Lee find the stamina to get through an 80-minute play on stage by herself alone?
“I take a deep breath and try to connect with an audience,” she says. “I have so much respect for a good audience, who I hope will hear what I have to say, feel it, and laugh with it.
“Am I nervous? Yeah! If I weren't nervous, I would be nervous that I wasn't.”