On the Road with Crossing the Broken Bridge
By Naomi Newman

Note: ATJT's Naomi Newman and collaborator John O'Neal have been touring their work, "Crossing the Broken Bridge", around the country since 1992. The play uses the lens of Jewish/African-American relations to examine the forces that divide and unite the human community.

It doesn't always happen this way. But occasionally it does. And then the heart sings. Neither John nor I had much excitement about the gig we were driving to. A small Minnesota town, two Catholic campuses, very few African-Americans and even fewer, if any, Jews. Why were we going there? What could we accomplish?

There was no time to wash up or change clothes. We had to rush directly from the airport to the dinner at St. John's University. Our presenter, Debbie Lehman, had arranged this kick-off event so that we could meet with the faculty members, the student advisors, and a few high school students involved in the upcoming activities of our four day residency. Oh well, it won't last long, I thought. We'll eat some dull food, smile politely, have some chit-chat, and that will be that. I couldn't have been more mistaken.

At the dinner there was a high school senior named Lea. She was an African American adopted by a while family. Her outspoken, anguished words shook the dining room and everyone's hearts. Her stories of racial torment, her obvious suffering and also her warrior spirit sounded the wake-up call that echoed through the rest of our time there. Lea described to us how time after time she, and her parents, would go to the principal of her school, to complain about the emotional abuse and disrespect that Lea had to endure.


Time after time they asked for panels, forums, discussions, something, anything, that would tackle racial issues. Nothing ever happened. There were other Black and Hispanic students at the dinner who, though less eloquent, enthusiastically seconded her story. But that night talking to us, they said that even if nothing but the discussion we were having took place it gave them hope because other adults, university teachers, John and I, were listening to her and paying attention. Much more happened. We did a workshop with about 80 students from the two local high schools.

After John and I performed some excerpts from "Bridge", we created small story circles that combined students from both schools plus high school and college faculty. They told their stories, they listened, they laughed, they cried, they reached out to each other. The next day their student advisors reported to us that the group that left our event was entirely different than the group that came. On the bus coming to the college the students from each school had stayed separated, uncommunicative.

On the way home the bus was filled with chatter as they moved up and down the aisle, breaking down their usual boundaries of schools, neighborhoods, gender and race. They talked about wanting story-telling in their classrooms. They talked about turning their stories into a theatre piece. Two nights later we did our performance of "Crossing the Broken Bridge" to a sold out audience.

Many of the high school students came - a very unusual occurrence - and brought their parents. After the performance, the students rushed to the stage, tears in their eyes, to hug us. We felt like family. In talking to Debbie Lehman almost a year later, she told me that our residency had set a new standard and tone for her whole performance series. It set an example of how theatre could be more than entertainment, how it could address volatile issues with breadth and depth. She spoke of how our time there had created bridges into the community, between the college students and her office, and between other local colleges.

"Most important though," she said, "there's no way of measuring the ripple effect of your work on the lives of the high school students. You gave them voices they did not have before."


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