THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 7, 1995 TAG: 9507070596
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KARA OGLETREE, CAMPUS CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 125 lines
MAKING IT BIG IN the theater world takes years, sometimes decades. But Jerome Hairston, a James Madison University student from Yorktown entering his sophomore year, has already written two Off-Broadway plays.
Sitting cross-legged on his bed in his dorm room last semester, surrounded by splashy posters celebrating jazz musicians and contemporary plays, Hairston spoke philosophically of the thrill of having his plays produced professionally.
``It's exciting; I'm not going to lie,'' the 20-year-old said. ``But it's really all about writing the play, the joy of creation. You have to have perspective on that.''
And writing plays is what Hairston has done since he was a 15-year-old. It started with a playwriting assignment at school. Hairston already had an inclination for writing, and he discovered theater was the best way to express himself.
Hairston has already written seven plays. His first, ``A Trip Down the Caramel Road,'' was an autobiographical look at the sensitive subject of biracial families.
Hairston is half-black, half-Korean; his main character is half-white, half-black. Hairston used a crucial scene from his own past: the time he happened to overhear his white friends cracking racial jokes.
The scene shatters the character's illusions about his friends. ``Being labeled leads him to analyze where he fits into the high school social hierarchy and, in a larger sense, where in this country,'' Hairston said.
``This play was like therapy for me. In personal terms, it was a big step. As a play, I'm not that proud of it. When I look back on it, it was really, really awful. Kind of like `Afterschool Special' stuff, really cheesy,'' Hairston said with a laugh.
Nevertheless, the play was among those chosen to be developed in a statewide Virginia workshop. Performances of the play were staged at the now-defunct Studio Theater of Richmond. But it wasn't a breeze for Hairston.
During a rehearsal, the director turned to him and said, ``This is really boring.''
``At first I was crushed,'' Hairston said, ``but I went home and rewrote the whole play. I learned my first lesson: Show, don't tell.''
This acquired technique helped Hairston write his next play, ``Live From the Edge of Oblivion.'' Gesturing as if to encompass all of society's problems, Hairston described the play as a theatrical collage about denied opportunities and the corrosion of the American dream.
``The question is: `How does this oppression become internalized?' It's little things like stereotypical commercials that cease to be entertainment and become very detrimental,'' Hairston said.
To ground such an ethereal concept, Hairston created the central figure of a student writing an essay and let the structure of his essay provide the framework for the play.
The message was the gnawing dehumanization felt by some blacks. ``Human life is not really valued,'' he said. ``The things valued are money and upward mobility, which blacks are afraid to gain.''
``Live From the Edge of Oblivion'' won the statewide competition sponsored by Theater of Virginia in 1993. But he didn't stop there. Hairston entered the 1993 national Young Playwrights Festival held annually by Young Playwrights Inc., which produces plays by writers under 18.
His play was chosen to be staged Off-Broadway, complete with a professional crew. ``Live From the Edge of Oblivion'' opened in September 1993 at Playwrights Horizon in New York and ran for about a month.
Sheri Goldhirsch, artistic director of Young Playwrights Inc., said: ``There's an undeniable voice (in Hairston's writing). He tries to take a slightly different look at something we may have seen before.
``Sitting in rehearsal, I've seen him take out the pencil and start crossing out lines. He's really serious about learning his craft.''
The 1994 Young Playwrights Festival gave Hairston the chance to live up to his reputation, this time with ``The Love of Bullets,' which paints a love story between a drug dealer and a drug addict.
Audiences rarely see blacks in human situations, he said. He wanted to show them engaging in romance and intimacy, rather than the dehumanized violence in which they are often depicted.
Ultimately, the characters disappoint each other by epitomizing the drug-related roles they swore to put behind them, Hairston said.
But the play's end is positive. ``Their love transcends to this much more spiritual level,'' he said. ``It's a strange Romeo and Juliet quality.''
At the play's opening night at New York's Joseph Papp Public Theater, Hairston experienced one of the most significant moments in his life. His hero George Wolfe - who directed the acclaimed play ``Angels in America'' - was in the audience.
Wolfe told him afterward, ``That was amazing; keep writing,'' and then removed the medallion he was wearing around his neck and pressed it into Hairston's hand before disappearing into the crowd.
``I was floating on air,'' Hairston said. ``He handed it to me as a gesture of passing on to the next generation of playwrights.''
At the ripe old age of 20, Hairston can no longer work with Young Playwrights Inc., but that hasn't put the brakes on his career. The Papp Public Theater has granted him a development commission to write another play.
He recently finished the play, ``Carriage,'' a family drama set in a trailer park in a fictional Oklahoma town. ``As one character puts it, it's about family ties that strangle, about forgiveness and moving ahead,'' Hairston said.
His past successes haven't made him overconfident. He just sent the play to his agent, and says ``I'm a little nervous, because I'm still waiting on the verdict.''
At JMU, Hairston majors in theater. ``You don't have to be just a theater major to be a playwright. You have to fill up your head with things to write about,'' Hairston said with a shrug of his shoulders.
He said he doesn't have many problems balancing schoolwork with writing. ``You have a lot of free time; it just depends what you do with it,'' Hairston said.
On campus, he's also a member of the Promised Land Coalition, which promotes multiculturalism and racial harmony. The group staged a reading of ``Live From the Edge of Oblivion'' at a center for black youths in Harrisonburg last year.
Hairston has no doubts what he'll do after graduation: ``My career is slowly starting to happen. This is what I'm going to do with my life.''
Goldhirsch said, ``I think that we're going to be hearing his name in the future quite often and quite soon. He has a future in the theater.'' MEMO: Kara Ogletree is entering her junior year at James Madison University.
She is majoring in mass communications. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/Staff
JMU's Jerome Hairston of Yorktown, who has written seven plays, has
already had two of his works produced Off-Broadway.
by CNB