The Tallest Tree in the Forest

On Sunday evening, Karen and I attended the Guggenheim Museum's wonderful Works and Process series. This time around it featured an exploration of a proposed one-man show focused on the life of Paul Robeson called "The Tallest Tree in the Forest." The play is still being developed and will open in California in the fall, but the scenes we were privileged to view indicate it could be a very impressive production. The actor is Daniel Beaty and the director is the quite distinguished Moises Kaufman. Beaty brings a passion and an honesty to the role that should make this production a powerful addition to the theatre world.

So why this mention of a new play about Paul Robeson in this particular blog? It's all about Robeson. As the producers of the play say outright, there was a time in the 1940s when Paul Robeson was the best known Black man in the world. He was only the third African American ever to attend Rutgers University and when he graduated he was honored to be recognized as the valedictorian of his class. In addition, Robeson was a two-time All-American football player who went on to play professional football, which helped him "work his way" through Columbia Law School. By the time, he had become a lawyer, he was also acknowledged to be a powerful bass singer, known for his renditions of Negro spirituals and other songs. This ability to sing would lead to his participation in the great musical by Jerome Kern called Showboat, where he gained a kind of immortality as the person most closely identified with the tune Old Man River. He also had developed enormous talent as an actor and would go on to star in a highly celebrated production of Othello and in a series of critically acclaimed plays by Eugene O'Neill. By the late 1930s and early 1940s, he was earning at least a hundred thousands dollars year and was in demand all over the world.

But he wasn't satisfied, because in addition to the terrible abuse he endured as a Black man in an era of White supremacy, he was deeply sensitive to the pain suffered by poor and working class people everywhere he went. His social consciousness was first piqued when he was living in London and encountered Welsh miners who had marched for two weeks with very little food from Wales to London to publicize their plight. With almost no hesitation, Robeson joined their protest and began to use his own power as an entertainer to bring attention to the problems of racism and social class prejudice. His desire to entertain took a back seat to his desire to make a difference for those in need and when he praised the Soviet Union for its absence of racism, he was attacked in the United States. His stalwart support for the Soviet Union, however misguided that might have been, stemmed from his many visits there where he experienced none of the race consciousness that hounded him in the United States. Eventually, Robeson lost his passport privileges, owing to his praise for the Soviet Union's racial tolerance, and his ability to make a living as an entertainer drastically declined. He died in near-poverty in 1977, sick for his native land, but still defiant and ever resistant against the forces of bigotry and ignorance. His example of excellence and courage lives on. We still have much to learn from him.