Like her groundbreaking novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Hurston’s 1935 play, “Spunk,” has lively Black southern vernacular, a self-actualized heroine and witty, folk humor. But, even after that book became canonized, “Spunk” remained essentially unknown for years. That’s because, until its rediscovery in 1997, the play had languished in the Library of Congress’s drama collections.
But that only partly explains its absence. To mount a production as colorful and layered as her script envisioned, the play required not just critical will and patience but also a creative team capable of delving deeply into Hurston’s archives.
Set in the rural, segregated South, the story follows Spunk, an outsider, as he falls in love with Evalina, a married woman, and their attempts to overcome the naysayers, neighbors and even supernatural forces that try to prevent them from being together. When Hurston reimagined it as a play, she transformed it into a comedy, jettisoning its tragic elements and ending. She also incorporated folk songs, sermons and sacred practices, like a conjure ceremony.
After the prizewinning short story version of “Spunk” was published in the National Urban League’s journal, Opportunity, Hurston spent the next decade conducting extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the South and the Caribbean, under the guidance of the anthropologist Franz Boas. During this time, she recorded Black folk tales, music and cultural traditions, even documented — and at times participated in — spiritual rituals. It was those experiences that led her to revisit “Spunk” and reshape her story as a play.
“You can feel Zora trying to get at what it means to have agency and liberty in your life, and mean not to be bound by what people tell you you’re supposed to do and how you’re supposed to do it,” said Tamilla Woodard, who is directing “Spunk” at Yale Rep.
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