By Darlene Donloe
Contributing Writer
WESTWOOD — At 76, LaTanya Richardson-Jackson is hitting her stride. There’s no talk of retirement.
“Slow down for what?” she asked.
Witty, defiant and personable, Richardson Jackson remains one of Hollywood’s most formidable dual threats — a Tony-nominated (“A Raisin in the Sun’ and ‘Purpose”) actress and a respected producer and director trusted by the August Wilson estate, Pearl Cleage, the American Theater Wing and others.
She’s not just in demand. She’s setting the standard.
This summer, she’s directing the Los Angeles premiere of Pearl Cleage’s “Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessl Gorgeous,” running through July 12 at the Geffen Playhouse in association with Black Rebirth Collective.
The show is described as a sharp-witted, soulful comedy about art, activism and aging on your own terms, steered by a woman (Richardson Jackson) who knows all three intimately.
The cast — Denise Burse, Olivia Washington, Deborah Joy Winans, and Charlayne Woodard — unites four acclaimed Black actresses whose combined work forms a masterclass in American theater and television.
The play, unmistakably, is a Richardson Jackson joint: honest, funny, dense with ideas, and rooted in what she calls “my relationship to God.”
“Claiming joy is related to my relationship to God,” she says, in her immediately likable, wicked witty way of hers. “It’s how I assume my life every day because I am connected to a source that I know provides in abundance to me. The play is part of what I do occupationally, but my life is centered around my connection in the universe to a God who is more than enough.”
Richardson Jackson, and Cleage go back to their college days together at Spelman. So when Cleage asked her to direct “Angry, Raucous” there wasn’t much to deliberate.
“I would have directed it anyway if I had the time to do it because it was Pearl, who is a friend of mine, and I know how she writes and I know what she writes and how invested she is in our culture,” said Richardson Jackson, whose credits include “U.S. Marshals,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Malcolm X” and more. “It was a no-brainer. I’m gonna do it.”
Once she read it, the question became craft, not commitment.
“It became, how do I get her intention across in the best way to influence a large number of people. So can I do that? I said, yes I can,” said Richardson Jackson, the first woman to direct an August Wilson play on Broadway. “It’s a very dense play. She’s got themes in this play that we’re grappling with — with aging, with legacy, with seeing a younger generation, with not being judgmental, with knowing that, being appreciated in a different country, of having to live outside, of coming home, can you come home again?
“There’s a lot that’s there. It all deals with our willingness to accept aging and to accept that it’s our responsibility to teach as we leave.”
Richardson Jackson, the wife of Samuel L. Jackson, is one of those rare artists who move between acting and directing without apology.
She won a Tony nomination for “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway and directed “The Piano Lesson” revival that starred her husband and John David Washington.
Cleage’s play is funny. But Richardson Jackson and the cast — Burse, Washington, Winans, Woodard — refused to sand down its edges to protect the joke.
“We did that by telling the truth,” she says of balancing laughs with the message. “We can’t control the laughter. We ride it. We’re not trying to control.”
Her directing style, she says, “is honest and the truth.”
“I tried to find how I relate to this from my culture,” she said. “What does this mean to me? I try to get that point of view across while I’m grappling with the intentionality of the playwright.”
Knowing Cleage didn’t change the process — it deepened the responsibility.
“It doesn’t change,” Richardson Jackson said. “We went to Spelman together, so I know her like that. I know her family. I know her. My responsibility to her is so huge that, were it someone else, I would feel the same responsibility.
“Whatever I’m directing, I feel responsible for it and respectful of the person who wrote it,” she added. “I always want to see what I can bring to the table.”
Ask Richardson Jackson what she likes about theater, and she doesn’t hesitate.
“It gave me life,” she said. “Being able to perform and engage with a group that becomes like family when you’re working. Theater is alive. It has always excited me. Film seems more of a foreign thing, something I enjoy.”
She believes in its power precisely because it’s live.
“I think they go hand in hand, and I do think theater has that kind of power,” she said when asked if theater shifts how people think or feel. “It’s a mega influential tool because you get to sit with it in a live way. That’s not a film. You have to engage differently than you do when you’re watching a movie because the person is there in front of you. It’s powerful.”
The audience matters, too.
“When you show up to the theater, that means you want to be there,” she said. “There’s a desire. So your investment is big. And what you get — even if it’s just for fun, which is encouraging in its own way — is a story that shifts you.
“With Pearl’s play, we’re trying to be effective in how we think about legacy, aging, the younger generation, and our responsibility to it,” Richardson Jackson added. “And as women, because it’s for women, I’m invested in Black women in this country seeing our worth, and being shameless about it.”
Richardson Jackson is vice chair of the American Theater Wing, which means she sees a lot of plays.
The rule: “If I’m directing or acting in it in my head, then I’m not enjoying it. I love sitting down and disappearing.”
With “Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous,” disappearance isn’t the goal. Transmission is.
“I’ll be happy if they decide that whoever they have been and what they have earned legacy-wise, it’s worth sharing with a younger generation,” she said of what she hopes audiences take away. “Come see the show because it’s good and it’s a good time. It’s a shamelessly good time.”
“Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous,” is at the Gil Cates Theater of the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, and 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays through July 12.
Information: 310 208-2028.
Darlene Donloe is a freelance reporter for Wave Newspapers who covers South Los Angeles. She can be reached at ddonloe@gmail.com.
