Home by Samm-Art Williams (1978)

TW: Incest (Kissing Cousins)

 

SYNOPSIS

            We meet Cephus in the 1950s as a Black hormone addled teenager pursuing Pattie Mae. His world starts going downhill when Pattie Mae goes North for school. He would say that’s when God took his vacation to Miami. Cephus’s father and uncle die leaving him to tend the fields alone and the bills to start piling up. Then news arrives that not only has Pattie Mae decided to not return to the South, she has gotten married. Cephus is then drafted and refuses the call based on “thou shall not kill.” Cephus won’t be welcomed home as a deserter and his farm has been sold to cover his debt, so he decides to go North. It’s 1971 and he gets a job in a factory and shacks up with a cokehead lady. Discovering Cephus is an ex-con, his boss fires him and his lady leaves him. He’s offered all kinds of drugs, turning instead to alcoholism before finally deciding to return to home. The deserters are nationally forgiven and his farm has been bought with the deed in his name by none other than Pattie Mae who has since gotten divorced and has been waiting on Cephus to return so they can pick up where they left off. Cephus sees this as God’s return from Miami.

 

CHARACTERS

Cephus Miles – Young Southern farmer who moves to the North. Character is portrayed as a teenager, early 20s, 35, and 40, Black

Woman One/Pattie Mae Wells – Young Southern woman who is the girlfriend of Cephus Miles. Woman One, in addition to portraying Pattie Mae Wells, portrays several male and female characters with an age range from the teens to forty, Black

Woman Two – Portrays several male and female characters ranging in age from the teens to forty, Black

 

POTENTIAL MONOLOGUES

            Cephus spends a large portion of the show addressing the audience directly, literally monologuing. Play’s opening has Cephus addressing the rumors that have spread about him and defending himself as a Christian. There’s even a bit where he tries to call out to God like he’s on the phone with God’s secretary. Soon after he has another monologue that’s like a love letter to the earth his family cultivates. He’s got a few more monologues with similar tones throughout the play.

            A lot of the play is set up with Cephus explaining his character and his life through anecdotes. Some would make better monologues than others. There’s one about gambling on the Sabbath, his time as an assistant to a bootlegger, how Ike lost his arm from a prank, how Cephus started fooling with his cousin, how he gets his money back after lending it to a man that only speaks “Indian,” Herbert surviving a semi driving over his head, and lastly Cephus’s confusion returning to an integrated North Carolina after 20-30 years away. Loads and loads of Cephus monologues to choose from of varying qualities.

            Pattie Mae has one good monologue moment herself. It’s a comedic one about when she gets religion. Literally she feels the Holy Ghost’s presence and starts shouting only for Miss Lula to threaten her for shouting before Miss Lula got the chance to. Pattie Mae runs out of the church away from Miss Lula, but the congregation thinks it’s the Holy Ghost running through her.

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

            It took a moment for me to get into the swing of this play, but by the end I found a way to enjoy it. Being a Georgia native, it was easy to hear Cephus’s anecdotes as the stories told around a family reunion. We get to travel through Cephus’s life as he grows into a man and must make hard decisions. There’s a bit of a juxtaposition between the opening where Cephus declares himself a Christian man that gave his life to God and the first half of the play that’s mostly all the decidedly unchristian things that he enjoyed as a youth. I don’t think Cephus would have claimed to be pious until the draft came. He sinned, but he wasn’t a murderer. His imprisonment and the way he’s treated after his release strained his relationship with God, but it doesn’t seem like he ever stopped looking. The final line of the play is Cephus being satisfied that God finally came back home from his vacation in Miami.