I Saw the Sign: An interview with Zooman and the Sign director Johnnie Hobbs Jr.

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I Saw the Sign: An interview with Zooman and the Sign director Johnnie Hobbs Jr.

POSTED: Friday, July 31, 2009, 3:45 PM

Zooman and the Sign, Fri., July 31, 10 a.m., $10, 8 p.m., $20; Sat.-Sun., Aug. 1-2, 8 p.m., $20; Freedom Theatre, 1346 N. Broad St, 215-978-8497, freedomtheatre.org.

Freedom Theatre's performance of Charles Fuller's play, Zooman and the Sign, tackles the disintegration of the urban community through the lens of a wanton murder and its subsequent effects. At the play's heart is a call to awareness that asks the 'audience' to examine and redress all social ills that hold us back.

I spoke with director Johnnie Hobbs Jr., who performed in the first Philadelphia performance of Zooman in 1982 and has been with Freedom for 30 years, about the power of the play and its unflinching look at social issues in America's inner cities.

City Paper: The conflict inherent in Zooman and the Sign is indicative of the battle between those wanting to improve America's inner cities and those standing in the way of change, either through apathy or counterproductive behavior.
Johnnie Hobbs Jr.: Most certainly. There's a ready interplay here that spills over into real life, as inspired by late-'70s Philadelphia that unfortunately carries over into the present. Our most impoverished neighborhoods are faced with a plethora of problems from the proliferation of guns and drugs to the failings of the educational and judicial systems to the sheer fact that we live in a very violent society.

CP: In the play, we certainly get to see what Zooman is, but how does it deal with the why behind his character?
JH: Zooman asks, 'Why am I the way I am?' while directly confronting the audience. He shifts the focus. 'A child ain't supposed to be out on that stoop in the middle of the night,' he says [of the girl he kills] in a moment of reprobation that expands the blame from just this one individual. He asks us to be responsible for our neighborhoods while stating that the family has decayed. When the family structure breaks down, we're left defenseless. The play wants to heal that, while ' and this underscores the poignancy of Fuller's work ' also exploring Zooman's demise, potential as a leader (unfulfilled), and making us see what part we play in this construction/deconstruction. We see where the culpability lies, with the family structure trying to reconcile itself and heal ' remember the victim's family is divided at the play's beginning ' and that's what the sign does.

CP: How has the play been received so far?
JH:Right off the bat, with our short preview run and our opening on Thursday, we received powerful feedback. Several people have been filled with an emotional salt. One gentleman had to leave crying. He said he was a police officer who worked with children like Zooman and just broke down.

CP: Did you have any responses from anyone who directly related with Zooman?
JH:The last two nights we had two different halfway houses come in. Passing me they said things like, 'Aw man, we have to get Zooman off the street.' In other words, he needs help or he needs to leave the community. That ' he's either going to get help or he's going to go away through incarceration or death, and the play tackles that issue. Think about the therapeutic value. I can tell when they leave they're going back to the halfway house and they're discussing it after weighing the impact of it in their minds.

CP: They're seeing their own fate along with examining their lives.
JH: Definitely. Talking to them and seeing the effect, their reaction is a testament to their perception and their sense of themselves. Without a doubt it stays with them and that's a good thing. Someone or something has to be the reservoir for them to rehabilitate themselves and deal with their issues and problems.

CP: It's no revelation that not enough is done to prevent recidivism.
JH: People who work in social services ' police officers, teachers ' this speaks to those people and the task at hand with the hope that they fully embrace their responsibility, whether it's dealing with offenders or helping to prevent someone from becoming an offender in the first place.

CP: Sure, but there's no money in prevention.
JH: It's an old saying ' 'you're part of the solution or part of the problem.' You can put up a blind eye but it's impossible to escape. We're all affected by economics and politics. Zooman says, 'If you don't deal with me now, you'll deal with me later.' We've got to deal with our politicians, the proliferation of guns, and the laws that allow such a spike in sales through straw purchases. Arts, politics, social services, recreational services, education ' it's all part of the community, with each element being just one of the mechanisms. We have to have families, supervision, a sense of right and wrong that will help us survive.

CP: So what of reactions from those within the troubled neighborhoods who live in the shadow of people like Zooman?
JH: It's hard to get them to come into the theater. I don't know if they feel it's not for them. We try for a varied audience, but we want people directly from these communities. When we get them in, a transition, a change occurs ' an epiphany ' but we have to get them in.

CP: The lessons of the play extend to everyone within troubled neighborhoods, regardless of color, with the same issues always applying. Just now I recalled the beating death outside Citizens Bank Park that has three Fishtowners as suspects.
JH: Yeah, the same thought as I would have in any other case went through my mind seeing it on the news. Where were the parents? The upbringing? The education?

CP: There is a fear to give voice and address the underlying causes in depressed urban black communities, and this trepidation exists for both black and white people. With a backlash directed against Bill Cosby and Barack Obama for their criticisms of urban black America, politicians and citizens of all colors are thrown into the unproductive cycle of merely calling for more police/more school funding/more spending that doesn't try to solve the myriad factors that underscore urban decay.
JH: The truth is not always a pleasant thing. Bill Cosby or Obama or anyone who has a strong eye for our social ills speaks to what needs to be said. We need more plays that so doggedly pursue answers while inspiring the audience. There is a delicate balance where you can't say this or that because you're white or because you're black but [the reality] is there and you can see it, but we have to be brave enough to face it. I want the play to bridge that gap. ' The thing we want to do is produce change. You have to be a strong person to be in the arts. You have to tell the truth. You have to be brave. Historically, the artists are first to die, since they're the ones putting it before our eyes.

CP: And the play is fine source material for such boldness.
JH: Charles Fuller has designed a play to hit you in the stomach. You double over and realize something has happened. In that doubling over there's a gestalt, an impact that says, 'Oh my God, this is what's happening to me.'

CP: Does the power of such a socially charged play come with nerve-wracking pressure, or does the confluence of art and social responsibility make the art that much more accessible?
JH: It is incalculable ' what I have at stake in this emotionally. My involvement says that I am inseparable from the experience. So [as a director and teacher] how do I mentor others to teach, direct, act, and commit themselves in the right way? And that commitment leads to a high degree of risk. I think of Michelangelo's risk lying on his back painting the Sistine Chapel. Not knowing is a very exciting place to be ' there's the possibility for discovery, with vulnerability at the heart of our work as artists. It means there's empathy there. You're listening, you're not putting a blind eye up to things. There's thought there. Actors are in a position to have that experience. They have to take themselves further and indeed, it's scary. It's the truth we find in that place and that's what we have to share.

CP: How does the legacy of Freedom Theatre conflate with the goals of the play?
JH: Many of the things I do are an echo of what founder John E. Allen Jr. taught me. Both he and Robert Leslie worked to establish the theater and left us with a strong legacy [Allen having passed away in 1992]. Their philosophy was predicated on a profession based on giving something back to the community and making something viable that will last. Not just a theater, but an institution, so we take great pride in that since it's something that will live well beyond us.

Zooman and the Sign, Fri., July 31, 10 a.m., $10, 8 p.m., $20; Sat.-Sun., Aug. 1-2, 8 p.m., $20; Freedom Theatre, 1346 N. Broad St, 215-978-8497, freedomtheatre.org.

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