OyamO (Charles Gordon)

If you have a few minutes to spare, then download and listen to the playwright's words concerning the delicate balance between academics and artists as he shares them with an African American theatre class at Eastern Michigan University. (560K)

Born to Earnest Gordon, a steel worker, and Bennie Gordon, a housewife, in Elyria, Ohio in a household of six siblings.

Almost immediately moved to Lorraine, Ohio to a predominately white school system which challenged the students to excel.

Received encouragement from his sixth grade, his teacher Mrs. Crump particularly after writing and receiving and "A" on a paper concerning "your morning activities."

In high school wrote for the school paper and also wrote letters to the editor of the local newspaper arguing with different adults about different topics. Also wrote stories and poems during that period.

1962 - Graduated from Admiral King High School in Lorraine, Ohio.

After graduation from high school worked various jobs in order to earn enough money to go to college, and attended college in the Fall of 1963.

For two-and-a-half years attended Miami University at Oxford, Ohio before dropping out due to frustration with the curriculum and the conservative atmosphere.

As a U.S. Navy reservist participated in antiwar demonstrations and voter registration drives in the South. Managed to find creative means of avoiding a tour in Viet Nam.

Was a member of the Black Theatre Workshop in Harlem which was an appendage of the New Lafayette Theatre. The artistic director was Robert Macbeth and also associated were playwrights Ed Bullins and Richard Wesley.

His real name is Charles Gordon which is so similar to that of playwright, Charles Gordone (No Place to Be Somebody , 1969). "OyamO" developed from a skewed interpretation of his University of Miami-Ohio t-shirt which was coined by some Harlem youths in the late 60s. The capitalized "O" is the playwright's own touch.

Had been writing and had been published during this period. One notable publication was The Breakout (1969) printed in Woodie King and Ron Milner's Black Drama Anthology (1971).

Late 1960s - Early 1970s - Had already been produced as well as published and had won the Rockefeller Fellowship and Guggenheim Fellowship.

Returned to college and took some courses at New York University and Brooklyn College. By 1970 earned a B.A. in liberal arts from the College of New Rochelle.

1978 - Applied to and was accepted to the graduate playwriting program at Yale University upon the strength of his writings and publications. Also participated on the committee which chose Lloyd Richards as Dean of the Yale School of Drama.

1981 - His The Resurrection of Lady Lester was premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre and received favorable notices. Also presented at the University of Michigan in the early 1990s. The story dealt with Lester Young, the famous tenor saxophonist.

After his 1981 graduation from Yale, continued to write and publish. His works were also produced at various theatres including the Manhattan Theatre Club.

1980s - Taught workshops and as an adjunct professor, instructor and guest lecturer at various colleges and universities like Princeton and the College of New Rochelle.

1989 - Began teaching at the University of Michigan to eventually become an associate professor of theatre and English. He also teaches playwriting there. Is totally committed to the process of writing, even at the detriment of a social life.

1992 - Completed I Am A Man which was commissioned by the Working Theatre in New York City. Through interviews in Memphis and elsewhere, he learned that Jones had been fired after the strike ended and died in 1989 after marrying a woman who rescued him from living in his pick up. I Am A Man will open at the Meadow Brook in Rochester in February 1996 and again at the San Diego Repertory Theatre.

His Famous Orpheus was produced at the Performance Network in Ann Arbor, the Crossroads Theatre in New Jersey and will be presented again at the Karamu House in Cleveland.

Working on a film adaptation of the I Am A Man and a program for the Famous Black American Anthology series, both for Home Box Office. Stanford University and the Seattle Children's Theatre have also commissioned him to write plays.

Lives in Ypsilanti. His wife died several years ago and his children are grown and in college.

1996 - His play, Pink and Say, represents the story of two boys, one white and one black during the Civil War. The play was commissioned by the Seattle Childrens Theatre.

1998 - His most recent surreal drama, Let Me Live, has been produced at The Goodman Theatre. According to the web site at The Goodman Theatre, "OyamO's galvanizing drama Let Me Live plunges the audience into the surreal world of a 1932 Georgia prison and the brutal existence of the inhabitants of cell number 7. In a wildly dynamic style, the lives and crimes of eight black men weave in and out of the reality of the play to tell the larger story of the injustices and tragedies of the African American experience."

May 2, 1994 opened at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. March 8, 1995 opened at the Arena Stage in Washington D.C. Opened at the Trueblood Theatre on November 9, 1995 at the University of Michigan with Wallace Bridges as T.O. Jones and Joseph Moore as Swahili.

Title is taken from the strike placards worn by the striking workers. Set in Memphis in 1968, it is the story of a fairly simple, fairly idealistic union president, T.O. Jones who launches 800 sanitation worker to strike but gets swept up into events that runaway with him like a maverick tornado.

Not a play about King or the civil rights movement, but a play about an Everyman who sets out to right some wrongs, but gets in over his head. Jones is mentioned in Joan T. Beifuss' At the River I Stand.

Contributing to the conflict includes the N.A.A.C.P who want King to come down to Memphis to march, the national Union representative who want to establish a foothold in Tennessee, the black power movement who want to cast Jones as their "warrior leader," and the complacently condescending white mayor who wants the whole mess to go away.

King's presence hovers over the play through voice only or through a performer.

The cast is multicultural with its Southern black working class embodied in Jones and his wife and his friend Rev. Moore, the aspiring black middle-class as seen in the conciliatory councilman, college educated black power militants, white local liberals, do-good Episcopalian activist priest, Jewish assimilationist left wing union rep, and Yankee bourgeois black culture.

Overshadowed in all of this is T.O.'s wife and family who are apparently not as understanding about T.O.'s sacrifices as perhaps Coretta King was of Dr. King's.

A lively and frequently exhilarating argument among the various cultures. OyamO finds raging debate, often black versus black, on empowerment, public leadership, and political progress.

Comedy is found often through Jones' friend, Rev. Moore, and through the Invaders, the militant black movement. Similarly, the dialogues between proper English and Jones' ungrammatical dialect is very funny.

Setting is simple offering rapid movement through various locations around Memphis: the Beale Street bar, the Mayor's office, the small N.A.A.C.P. office, the church, the union hall, the Lorraine Motel, and the garbage laden streets. Slides reveal the history of the times as fast changing lights carry the production to successive locales.

At the play's end, King is murdered and the strikers "win" an eight-cent-an-hour raise. Although there is an upbeat ending to the play, the tone may conclude the "true ending" lies in Jones despairing epiphany which serves as an indictment of the system and the pettiness of human nature.

Speaking styles cut across class, race and geography; the make up the American voice.

"...it's great to hear so many of the speaking styles that are--across class, race and geography--the American voice."

"Instead of a polemic steeped in hindsight, much of the time OyamO delivers sardonic comedy. He is fascinated by ordinariness and how, even in the midst of revolution, most remain helplessly on the periphery. Well-meaning, uneducated--a rakish bafoon, the police chief somewhat accurately tags him-- Jones is described as "an ordinary a with an ordinary dream."

"The character of 'the Bluesman' is one which serves in a chorus-like capacity-- underscoring th emotion of the performance with his soulful tunes, while commenting and even participating in the stream of the dialogue."

"Actor Bridges plays Jones as a tainted saint given to womanizing, booze and a large ego. His decline is a terrible thing to watch. His marriage is in shambles, he lives in a motel (ironically the same motel where King is assassinated), guzzles whiskey and wonders why his homely attempts to do good have brought him to this state."

Bommer, Lawrence. '68 Strike Catches Strikers in 'I Am A Man.'" The Chicago Tribune . (April 29, 1994).

Bridges, Wallace. OyamO Interview . July 25, 1996.

Chaffin, Jessica. OyamO Strikes It Rich With 'I Am A Man.'" The Michigan Daily , p. 9 (November 10, 1995).

Cose, Ellis. "One Drop of Bloody History." Newsweek (February 13, 1995).

OyamO. I Am A Man . New York: Applause Books, 1995.

Potter, Christopher. "'I Am A Man' Revisits a Cathartic Episode in Black American History." The Ann Arbor News , C8 (November 10, 1995).

Rose, Lloyd. "'I Am A Man:' A Strike for Justice." The Washington Post. C, 1:1 (March 10, 1995).

Smith, Sid. "Bleak Comedy Uproots 'I Am A Man.'" The Chicago Tribune . (May 3, 1994).

Snyder, Jim. "Playwright With a 'Wild Side.'" The Chronicle of Higher Education , Vol. 41, #31, A6. (April 14, 1995).