7/9/2021 ‘Working’ director can relate to the blue-collar characters in new Dallas Theater Center production
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ARTS ENTERTAINMENT PERFORMING ARTS ‘Working’ director can relate to the blue-collar characters in new Dallas Theater Center production North Texas native Tiana Kaye Blair’s working-class background helped prepare her to bring the musical adaptation of Studs Terkel’s nonfiction classic to the stage.
Blake Hackler (right) and Christopher Llewyn Ramirez play fast-food workers in Dallas Theater Center's production of "Working: A Musical" at Strauss Square in the Dallas Arts District. Based on Studs Terkel's 1974 oral history of working-class Americans, it features real-life characters singing about their jobs and lives. (Tom Fox / Staf Photographer)
By Manuel Mendoza 6:00 AM on Jul 9, 2021
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Tiana Kaye Blair wasn’t familiar with Studs Terkel’s 1974 oral history Working or the Broadway musical it inspired. But when Dallas Theater Center offered her a chance to direct the show, the Dallas native found she easily related to its themes of thankless labor and characters just scraping by.
When she was growing up, Blair’s father worked as a heating and air-conditioning system installer. He also was a civil rights activist who sometimes faced harassment from the police. She remembers sitting on his shoulders at protests. Her mother worked for the Dallas school district and is now at Garland ISD.
“My entry point to Working was my parents,” Blair says in a phone interview between rehearsals. “I come from a blue-collar household so a lot of things in the show sounded familiar to me, like posterity being important. We didn’t have much growing up. I was told early I had to go to college to get a good job and be whatever I wanted to be.”
Dallas Theater Center's seven-member cast of "Working: A Musical" at their dress rehearsal at Strauss Square. (Tom Fox / Staf Photographer)
From housewives to hookers, miners to stonemasons, Terkel interviewed dozens of ordinary people mostly working at unglamorous jobs. Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin) and Nina Faso (Godspell) adapted the nonfiction classic into a musical, with lots of help.
The songwriters included James Taylor, Mary Rodgers, Micki Grant, and for the updated 2012 version that Dallas Theater Center is producing, Lin- Manuel Miranda.
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Working opened in Chicago in 1977 and moved a year later to Broadway. It was not a hit, running for only 36 performances despite a cast that featured Patti LuPone and Joe Mantegna. It has since been produced regionally, off-Broadway and abroad.
“It can be a hard show,” says Blair, who has been a member of the Dallas Theater Center acting company since 2016, “because audiences are used to a linear plot. For me, the through-line is the community, the American tapestry. You meet a new person every 10 minutes.”
Tiana Kaye Blair listens to suggestions before the start of Dallas Theater Center's dress rehearsal for "Working: A Musical." Blair is directing the show and is a member of the DTC acting troupe. (Tom Fox / Staf Photographer)
Her favorite is Maggie Holmes, the character who sings Grant’s “Cleanin’ Women,” describing how domestic work has been passed down through generations as the only option, a cycle that Holmes hopes will be broken by her daughter:
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They worked six days a week, all day long
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Never could get out of debt.
Those were the days when the minimum wage was anything you could get!
They was Cleaning Women without faces
Coming and going on a first name basis.
You’re talkin’ to somebody who knows... and after too many years... Lord!
I don’t wanna be in one more laundry room;
I don’t wanna pick up now another broom,
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One of these days, just wanna sleep til noon!
Coincidentally, Blair’s breakthrough role at the Theater Center, even before she finished her graduate studies at Southern Methodist University, was as the maid in The Mountaintop, a two-hander in which her character is befriended by Martin Luther King Jr. on the night before his assassination.
“It’s a meaty role,” Blair says. “The character is so robust, complicated and expressive, a Black woman we don’t get to see often. I was new, and I was nervous. I got to explore parts of myself for the first time on stage.”
Molly Searcy (center) performs a scene from Dallas Theater Center's "Working: A Musical." (Tom Fox / Staf Photographer)
Growing up in the Black church, Blair can’t remember a time when she wasn’t singing. At 13, she created a dance team at her middle school and started choreographing. At Dallas’ Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Magnet Center, she was a member of the drill team. She thought she would become a dancer.
“Performing is heavily embedded in Black culture,” Blair says. “I’ve been singing since I was knee-high to a billy goat.”
At Prairie View A&M, she caught the acting bug. Her senior year, she decided to get serious about it and applied for the graduate acting program at SMU.
She has been seen at the Theater Center in Hair, Dreamgirls, A Christmas Carol, A Winter’s Tale, Twelfth Night, Penny Candy, Steel Magnolias and In The Heights. She’s also getting tapped as a director. Last season, Second Thought Theatre hired her to helm Mlima’s Tale, which opened and then closed amid the pandemic, and she’s
scheduled to direct for the company again this year. Award Details
Dallas Theater Center's seven-member cast of "Working: A Musical" play a variety of blue-collar characters singing about their thankless jobs. (Tom Fox / Staf Photographer)
Meanwhile, Working is the Theater Center’s first fully live production since the actors’ union began easing restrictions on member theaters. The show, which opened Wednesday and runs through July 18, is being performed outdoors in the Arts District on the Strauss Square stage. In This Story Hide The show reminds Blair where she came from and how a powerfully sung song can make a difference. “It’s not about closing your eyes and singing pretty,” Dallas Theater she says. “It’s about making something move, something change around you.” Center Details VIEW MORE INFORMATION https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/performing-arts/2021/07/09/working-director-can-relate-to-the-blue-collar-characters-in-new-theater-center-production/ 3/4 7/9/2021 ‘Working’ director can relate to the blue-collar characters in new Dallas Theater Center production
Through July 18 at Strauss Square, 2403 Flora St. $27.50-$65. dallastheatercenter.org.
Sneak Peek at Rehearsals | Working: A Musical
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Manuel Mendoza, Special Contributor. Manuel Mendoza is a freelance writer and a former staf critic at The Dallas Morning News.
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