hi i'm carol and i'm carolyn and i teach high school english and i teach high school theater and while we're not producing our own shows are dealing with the drama of the drama we are out and about seeing theater all over new jersey professional shows and even community theater right and this week we got to see crumbs from the table of joy at the south came to see her company yes which is written by lynn nottage and i have to tell you it's a great story it's a man who was recently made without his two teenage daughters and he moves up from florida to brooklyn and his wife dies when his wife and his sister in law shows up and because she made a promise to i think their mother actually grandmother the grandmother that she would take care of the raise the girls and at the same time he is involved with this minister  father divine father divine and following him and the sister in law lily is a communist well she wants to be a communist but i don't know that she ever really  don't know if you ever know if she's really into it in the communist party right because you know jumping toward to the end of the play when ernestine goes to look for her where she told her the communist party was is just a bargain right  think what we haven't said is that this the place that in one nine hundred fifty eight and it deals with a lot of things that were happening you know the first thing that there's a great projection that tells us that's five years after world war world war two and it deals with you know racial issues in brooklyn and it deals with in a racial marriage the what the wife is german so then when i saw sweat who was who was what which was the play that made her not only literary success but also made her commercial success rate it was on broadway it kept getting extended and extended and extended she want to pulitzer for it  so when you when i saw the like sort of the beginning of her career this week and then the in the well i don't want to say the end but where she is now in her diary or it was it was sort of remarkable to kind of see how she is now really taken these themes of these sort of marginalized people because while you know sweat dealt with race it was not about race it was about it was about but why and while crumbs from the table of joy didn't deal with labor unions it dealt with labor yeah right so you kind of see this connection going back and forth and i i think she's incredible like i you know the the the beauty of the language the char who's narrating it but it's from her adult perspective because because as you said it was a memories of my replay right right and so she keeps coming out and telling us giving us information i need about what's happening in that moment that we just watch well and what else she does that i thought was really it's a it's part of the play but the way i thought they did it at south camden was x was really exceptional so they have it ernestina is and is obsessed with movies yes ok and all she wants to do is go to the movies so they have it so that when she comes out to break that fourth wall it's the flickering of the film and the light around her like in the movies and there are several times like the one time when more lena dietrich is standing in the area rate and she'll say and that's the way it happened and then she takes a step back and says or it should have right because and then you sort of start wondering what is what really happened what's part of her imagination and i thought i'd just thought that that for me as part of the play in the way that conny norwood directed it yes  she she is consistently telling the story and interacting with the other care great and she did such a phenomenal job at that but also understanding who this young lady is right and you know i was telling my high school kids you know you need to understand what your objective is in the scene what your relationship with the other characters are because it's never going to be the same with each person at the every moment and she did such a beautiful job with her relationship with her father with her relationship with her aunt lily you know with her relationship with her sister and and then with the start of her stepmother girl and what i what i really liked about her was she's she's the good girl right and mina who is the younger sister is sort of this is more so the sassy she and there is there was some times when we were watching it that she rolls her eyes and i laughed out loud i don't know if it was appropriate to laugh out loud but it was just sort of that where she's like sucking her teeth and rolling her eyes and i was like that's a tippett yeah a teen year old girl yeah because we see them all all the time and she she is more adventurous than up to the end of the play and then at the end of the play you sort of see this change in ernestina but up until that point you know there's there's a great line where mina is standing on the stage and she's she's popping out all of these old jazz to yeah you know all that and ernestina looks at the audience and says you know and armenia was learning the language of the streets sort of like letting us know that she was having this bravest transformation into you know they're not country or mina especially is not a country girl from pensacola florida anymore she's becoming more i you know she's interested in boys you know she's she's bright i just i thought they were terrific together one of my favorite characters you're not dying on me or i'm recovering from bronchitis three weeks of bronchitis so we're just going to just ignore my coughing and i've been ignoring it for three b i say so but when the smith who played lily you know the she comes in  when you when you first meet her i felt that she had a very disconnect to the family we're right what you learned that she'd left florida right right to come up north right  and it's the time of that well it's after the great migration but it's during that same time we're you know african american people were leaving the south because of all of these opportunities right orthe and they were going to philadelphia new york chicago and all those places so you kind of get the feeling that that's when she came up was during that time but then you see because the first i thought you know what is she doing what is she doing here why is she really here is she really here because we'll she's here because she doesn't have a place to live i'm right at the reality  find out that she doesn't have a place larry but also then suddenly you see in especially in the second act that her relationship to the two girls has changed dramatically and changed her to get hurt point i agree you i'm going to mess it up look good how you feel as long as you let's look elude long as you look good right and you know that's her she's got right there expensive suit which we find out she sells all or clothes for money later because she can afford it but  that was you know she was the character the kind of she was the glue for me see and i felt that way about ernestina like my my connection was much more to her than it was to  just what i really liked with with lily was the relationship that they had she'd end up having with kurt the wife the y adam wife the jeremy you know godfrey who is the father kind of picks up this woman on the  subway and she's lost i mean she's here she came here looking for something or our family write something and can't find them and she's lost on the subway and you know she because she's german doesn't have the understanding of the whole racial piece no not at all right and she touches him and he kind of cringes and says lady look i don't want any trouble and and then she you know instantly there's sort of this connection between them in the next thing you know he's gone for three days and he comes home and he's married to her and and you know lily is not happy that he's married to this white woman and but the two of the two women come to tolerate each other yes  you have these things like when lily says to her do you know can you can you loan me a can you give me a cigarette and you know there are all these rules in the house you can't smoke you can't drink you can't have sex like there are because father divine says you can't do all these things it has the cigarettes hidden and gert gives her the cigarette and that's that sort of understanding between these two women that their circumstances aren't really that much different right other and i did i thought that was a really interesting  this sort of well way all you have that was and then immediately the play just starts and the title of the play because what he has cookies in his pocket all the time because he works at a bakery said but their last names crumb right so it took  while to realize you know where the title was coming from well the title comes from and i wrote it because i thought it was interesting from a langston hughes play and the interesting lee enough it's the title of the play is called lucky ari and you kind of get the feeling that this family is anything but lucky right right and and so what i did i looked it up because i wanted to see where that i was i thought it did but i wasn't one hundred percent sure search they're all searching for something and you know god for he's searching for comfort for after his wife is dead you know gerda it's searching for from the nazis lily is just searching right like she's just searching and you know searching for this identity of being a city girl and ernestina is you know she she's trying to just find herself and she's the first one to graduate from high school i school and there's this whole thing than do that yeah i just that was a really the dress was on stage most of the second act yes so it almost because to me it represents their mother the mother of and that in my opinion is the director story straight conny conny norwood who directed this did such a fabulous job like fabulous job but the way they interacted with that tells you their relationship with this woman who obviously a large still a puja part of the family but is not not there present and you never really know how she dies i know you're down there so there's this sort of sometimes you think ok she just got sick and died but then there's a conversation between lily and godfrey that sort of makes it seem like there was some other reason that you know maybe i don't know she killed herself or or whatever a and there's also this sort of can't between lily and godfrey that there was a relationship between them before my impression was that he you know she maybe he like the sister lily first and then ended up marrying his his wife and that there was unfinished production of this so if in nominal cast well i got to say it again bobby and did a great job on that this is so the the space it's a small space so you have to get your tickets right away because they don't have a lot of seats but it's a small space and what they managed to do in that space is pretty amazing so that they have the units that of the home but then they brought in this piece for for the subway for the subway and then they also brought in this table for the banquet the missionary with father divine which he didn't show up and then i thought you know it gave them it gave me it as an audience member moment to watch them kind of before they were just react to what they're walking into well you know you see lily standing out there first  a taping you know and she leaves her bag out there you see godfrey coming with gert and you know there's that hesitation he's got to bring her into the house with his family you see the girls out on the stoop just well and right on the mantel piece of the fireplace but then they use projection to kind of help tell the story as well behind the set which i thought was fantastic right and  am curious to how much that was in the script right and how much that was you know on his twenty's choice because last last night it's wet or the other night it's wet there was a lot of production like you set mood and and help to kind of move the story along right in between the kind of gave background to what's happening right like that's sort of how i saw it was this background and and there was also you know the radio not allowed to play the radio on sunday you know the radio they would turn the radio on and they'd have to turn the radio off and you could hear the t v this is what i thought was really well done so there's neighbors upstairs  array and the girls want to go upstairs and watch t v with the levy's and godfrey won't let them because they're white and you know there's this sort of understanding they're like one of the only black families living in brooklyn at the time is right in that he's like i can't let you go up and you know every night and spend every night with this white family but you can hear the t v like you can hear the t v through the wall right in the apartment and i thought that that was sort of a detail that could have easily not have bright i  think in terms of the the relationship between the characters the use of the set the blocking all that the conning did was just phenomenal you know you just you felt like you were part of their life well and you and you got to know these people and you got to care about them yes so so the the the indian of the play for me was was this very or to follow her aunt lily and she gets to this address that she was given for the communist party and she kind of says to her father like it's time for me to go out and find  to this address and it's a bar and she said they all knew aunt lily but had nothing to do with the communist party and so you kind of get this understanding that lily sort of had this sort of life life you know this sort of dark life you know great and this bar and you know ernestina says you know i had a drink and they they were nice to me and she she goes out looking for herself and she ends up staying in harlem and at the end the is she comes out and she's talking about you know i could tell you that you know five years from now they you know mina gets pregnant and goes back to florida you know five years from now she had enough ice louie's body you know all that she said but i'm not going to and it sort of goes back to those times where she say well this could have happened but it didn't right so you don't know did that happen really happened it odd happen is it part of her but when she's standing there and this is when i think for me the actress became a character ok and that in this moment is when she's standing there and she said i'm for but for right now i'm just walking and refeed and riffing i'm walking and yeah and and it's sort of it was this whole right and i know that norwood shows the place she likes the these historical types of stories but really it you don't know this is this is one character's version of the story of that's the really by the end of play like ok did that all really happen or maybe not have great and this and that that was sort of when i was sitting there and she was talking about you know walking and riffing and you know in jazz riffing is when they're making it up right here no no there's no notes there's no music and they're just making it up and she's in this moment making it up as she goes now we know that she's making up what her future is going to be because she doesn't have a clue trying to find it but there's this sort of understanding was this