Definition Theatre's 'Black Cypress Bayou' centers a Black matriarch with secrets

My great grandmother was born and raised in central Texas. She lived into her late 90s. She had an elementary school education, due to dropping out to help the family work in the fields. She lived half her life a stones-throw away from the plantation her elders had been enslaved on before moving with her daughter to the West Coast.

One of my most vivid memories of my great grandmother is her singing. When she was stressed, or taken by joy, or someone needed prayer, she sang. No words, just a familiar hum.

At the Chicago premiere of “Black Cypress Bayou,” a play written by Kristen Adele Calhoun and staged at Definition Theatre in Hyde Park, the family drama centers a Black matriarch, Vernita Manifold, played excellently by RjW Mays. The Manifold family lives in east Texas on land that their family has inhabited since pre-emancipation. When the tensions get high — Vernita sings. Not always words. Sometimes just a gentle hum.

Part family drama and part murder mystery, Calhoun’s “Black Cypress Bayou” is packed with cultural richness, and trauma, but never feels too heavy. Instead, it feels familiar. Calhoun is a Texas native herself, and I see in her script the delicate dance between religion and superstition that I saw in my own elders.

The stage at Definition Theatre is intimate. Director Ericka Ratcliff uses every inch of the space, including an aisle to pull off the production. For the most part it works. There are moments when, depending on where you are seated, you might not see the face of the character speaking. From my vantage point, I saw everything, and there was so much to take in.

Mays deftly portrayed the matriarch, a proud woman with generations of family secrets that she selectively shares. As the plot unravels, so does her tower of secrets, leading to a conclusion where a heap of skeletons tumble out of her closet.

But the mother isn’t the only one with secrets. Each of the Manifold daughters, LadyBird and RaeMeeka, played by Michelle Renee Bester and Rita Wicks, have secrets of their own. Wicks is a force as the self-proclaimed “medicine woman” who has a side hustle selling weed. Her role is positioned as comic relief, but she also shines moments of seriousness, with a highlight being her recantation of a grisly disposal of a dead body.

The entire 90-minute production takes place deep in the Texas Bayou in a spot where the Manifold clan likes to fish. Designed by Alyssa Mohn, the sparse set included a lawn chair and a basket, but is dominated by a cypress tree. The tree, and its roots, have a contextual meaning in the plot, but the mostly bare stage allows the actors necessary room to occupy the small space without congestion.

The production moves fast but covers plenty of ground. After the richest white man in town is murdered, and Vernita appears to be framed as the culprit, the women in the Manifold family discover truths about each other, and their ancestors, while hunting for the actual killer. In the end, the audience is left with a message of forgiveness, for yourself as well as others, and the importance of letting go of trauma and moving on.

Reflecting on the depth of the production, it’s almost hard to describe it as a comedy, but there are so many laugh-out-loud moments between the lessons that it feels like a fair assessment.

For Black folks like myself with roots in the South, especially Texas, Mays' performance represents so much of what our grandmothers were like. They were strong, protective (perhaps to a fault), proud women who carried secrets so deep that they feared sharing them would unleash a pain too great for the rest of us to bear. So they carried them alone. Underneath the big laughs and gun-toting Texans, the play reminds us to let go of those secrets so our souls can heal.