With the warm weather, I’ve been invited to more than the usual number of events. At A Day in Our Village on June 7, I had double duty working tables with the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park and the Oak Park International Film Festival. The festival, scheduled for September 19 and 20 at the Oak Park Public Library, is a free event featuring local filmmakers and subjects. The festival is seeking entries by Aug. 1. This year’s theme is “Fact & Faith.”
On, June 12, I attended a book signing at the Art Institute of Chicago, moderated by former Oak Parker Dorrie Wilson. Dorrie is tour manager for Bonnie Greer, an expatriate American writer living in Europe. Chicago-native Greer studied with David Mamet before moving to New York to study at the Actors Studio with Elia Kazan. She regularly contributes articles to several publications, as well as offering commentary on TV and radio. Her latest play, “Marilyn and Ella,” will be moving to the West End this year. With Dorrie moderating a lively discussion about what American ex-pats run from and run to, both talked about “new-found freedoms, particularly for black-American artists amid more culturally sensitized European audiences.”
Greer also told a riveting story about the “roles” female artists play. “Few people know that Marilyn Monroe, a brilliant, progressive woman who used her sex appeal to solicit information from horny government agents during the 1950s … also used her celebrity on behalf of her idol, singer Ella Fitzgerald, to get the Black singer to be able to play a week at the segregated ‘color bar’ called ‘Macondo.'” Apparently, Monroe told the club owner if he allowed Fitzgerald to sing, Monroe would sit in the front row and bring lots of press attention to the club. “It worked,” Greer said. “White women as well as women artists of color have often had to play roles in white male-dominated cultural venues.”
The same night, I visited another book signing at Oak Park’s Afri-Ware book store that featured famous nutrition writer Queen Afua, telling the capacity crowd secrets to good eating. She’s author of Heal Thyself for Health and Longevity, as well as other books she sold that night.
Down the street from Afri-Ware was opening night for Oak Park Festival Theatre’s newest play, “5th of July” by Lanford Wilson. It’s his acclaimed sequel to “Talley’s Folly.” In this play, the Talley family and their activist friends share disillusionment with America over an unpopular war. It’s a lovely play with a multicultural cast and a great story on a timely issue we need to ponder.
On June 13, I participated in a new series designed to bridge the cultural gap along the Austin-Oak Park border when I was part of panel of Chicago-area writers at the Sankofa Cultural Center. This event featured the Journal’s own Arlene Jones, the author-publisher of “Billion Dollar Winner,” which tells the story of a West Side activist winning the lottery. All of these events made this cultural warrior feel like a winner.
Stan West, an Oak Parker for 16 years, is a former foreign correspondent for Pacific News Service. He is an author, educator, filmmaker and human rights activist. But his favorite job, he says, is being a parent.