'Spoonbread And Strawberry Wine' Is Both Wonderful And Wise. By Margaret Regan IT ALL GOT started, in a way, when Tennessee Williams crashed a dinner party at Norma Jean Darden's New York apartment in the 1960s. Darden was a young black actress from Newark, N.J., trying to get on the New York stage, but having more luck getting into the pages of Vogue as a Wilhelmina model. As the famous playwright dug into her smothered pork chops and succotash, she took the opportunity to ask him why he never wrote major roles for blacks. Replied Williams, "Black artists have to start doing their own works." It was time, he said, for them to tell their own stories. Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine, Darden's lovely performance piece now at Invisible Theatre, partly owes its existence to that fortuitous encounter between the writer and the starry-eyed young actress. But more importantly, it's indebted to the heartbreaks and triumphs of the many generations of Darden's family who worked their way, like Booker T. Washington, up from slavery. Into her solo story about her own search for her roots, Darden weaves in the stirring tales of her forebears: from ex-slave Grandpa Darden, who sent all 13 of his children to college and ended up having the first black high school in Wilson, North Carolina, named after him, to her mother Jean Sampson, who grew up dirt poor among migrant workers, she and her brother having been repudiated by their white father in Alabama. Developed for the American Place Theatre in New York in 1995, Darden calls the piece an offering rather than a play. Her intention was to use "theatre to come together and share our spices with each other," she tells the audience. She means that literally. Darden has built her work around old family recipes, and the fortunate theatre-goers get to chow down not only on the spoonbread of the title, but on fruit punch, spicy chicken gumbo with rice and rich chocolate brownies. (The meal within the play accounts for the higher-than-usual ticket price of $20.) And after the dinner intermission, audience members get to "offer" back their own stories. On opening night, people were so touched by Darden's personal confessions they were more than eager to share their own memories of meals and mom, of aunts' eccentricities and even of racism. Darden sets her work in a family-style kitchen, designed by IT associate director James Blair. As she talks she beats up a bowl of spoonbread batter, or sits casually on the kitchen table, or wanders over to the walls, where sepia portraits of her family members hang. Now a caterer in New York, Darden begins by telling the hilarious story of how she came to write the cookbook on which the theatrical work is based. That dinner scarfed up by Williams notwithstanding, in those days Darden was a recipe-deprived young model whose main source of food was cocktail party appetizers. Seems at one glitzy New York soirée, a British fashion editor was quizzing the then-exotic black models about their family backgrounds. All the young women made up elaborate tales of their Ethiopian-Swedish or Italian-Nigerian origins, until it came Darden's turn. Amused or provoked, she's not sure which, she declared to the snooty editor: "I must be the only nigger here." The editor, perhaps more taken aback than she let on, answered back with an apparent non sequitur: "Well then, my dear, you should write a cookbook." Strangely enough, Darden did. Egged on by some publicity cooked up by the fashion editor, she and her sister Carole got a book contract. They set out on bus journeys to the South and Midwest to collect down-home family recipes, despite such difficulties as finding an aunt who had tossed out her stove and now dined only at restaurants. They began to assemble a whole lot more than secret ingredients. Their detective work yielded up surprising discoveries like the white grandfather and new understanding of the dignity their elderly Southern aunts and uncles displayed in the face of racism. Somewhere along the way the book turned into a chronicle of family stories, illustrated with family photographs. Published in 1978, the book, with the same title as the play, became a best seller. Surely it's not often that a cookbook can be translated into a theatrical work of real emotional power, but Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine succeeds in both ways (if those tasty food samples are any indication). True, there are a few moments when the narrative seems to flag, and Darden's voice doesn't always reach the back of the theatre, but the slow spaces are helped by the work of local blues guitarist Phil Davis. On stage throughout, he delivers gritty musical punctuation to Darden's text. (On alternate nights, Amo Chip plays saxophone.) Ellis Gayles is Darden's on-stage cooking "assistant," and his presence allows for some enjoyable banter. Darden is a warm, lovable performer who doesn't shy away from the searing truths--her account of a trip to the slave departure station in Africa is chilling. But she doesn't mind tempering the sad story of black American oppression with humor and proud accounts of black successes. Her show is both wonderful and wise. Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine continues through Sunday, March 16, at Invisible Theatre, 1400 N. First Ave. Performances are at 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday. The ticket price of $20 includes a light supper. For information or reservations, call 882-9721.

		© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth