CITIZEN JAMES,
or The Young Man Without a Country
by Kyle Bass, author of POSSESSING HARRIET
Part of a FREE EVENT at Rotary Park in Cape May, 12:30 – 4:00 PM
Saturday June 22, 2024
1:00 PM - The Eddie Morgan Trio
2:30 PM - Staged Reading, CITIZEN JAMES
RESERVE through Eventbrite
Saturday June 22, 2024
1:00 PM - The Eddie Morgan Trio
2:30 PM - Staged Reading, CITIZEN JAMES
RESERVE through Eventbrite
It’s November 11, 1948, the night 24-year old James Baldwin leaves America for Europe.
But the time is now . . . Young James is an unknown aspiring "Negro" writer who has yet to write and publish his first novel. He awaits his flight, having just left his family with the news of his decision to flee America for refuge in Paris. He speaks no French. He has a one-way ticket and $40 in his pocket.
Witness James Baldwin (played by James Alton) as he decides he must do something to save himself from the violent reality of racist America in 1948, a decision that sets him on the path to becoming one of the world's most brilliant writers, and a powerful and a prophetic voice of the Civil Rights era and beyond. More than a one-man show, Citizen James, or The Young Man Without a Country is a bridge that connects the past to our now.
But the time is now . . . Young James is an unknown aspiring "Negro" writer who has yet to write and publish his first novel. He awaits his flight, having just left his family with the news of his decision to flee America for refuge in Paris. He speaks no French. He has a one-way ticket and $40 in his pocket.
Witness James Baldwin (played by James Alton) as he decides he must do something to save himself from the violent reality of racist America in 1948, a decision that sets him on the path to becoming one of the world's most brilliant writers, and a powerful and a prophetic voice of the Civil Rights era and beyond. More than a one-man show, Citizen James, or The Young Man Without a Country is a bridge that connects the past to our now.
BIOS
KYLE BASS (Playwright) is the author of Possessing Harriet (Standing Stone Books, 2022), which was commissioned by the Onondaga Historical Association, premiered at Syracuse Stage in 2018, was produced by Franklin Stage Company in 2019, and most recently at East Lynne Theater Company in New Jersey. His play Salt City Blues received its first production at Syracuse Stage in 2022, and Citizen James, or The Young Man Without a Country, about a young James Baldwin, has streamed nationally since 2021 and has been optioned for a feature-length film. His new play Tender Rain will premiere at Syracuse Stage in 2023. His opera libretto Libba Cotten: Here This Day, commissioned by The Society for New Music, premiered in 2021. Kyle is the co-screenwriter of Day of Days (Broad Green Pictures, 2017, starring Tom Skerritt), and, with National Medal of Arts recipient Ping Chong, Kyle is the co-author of Cry for Peace: Voices from the Congo, which premiered at Syracuse Stage and was subsequently produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York City. He is a three-time New York Foundations for the Arts (NYFA) fellow (for fiction in 1998, playwriting in 2010, screenwriting in 2022), and is Assistant Professor of Theater at Colgate University and Resident Playwright at Syracuse Stage. A descendant of African people enslaved in New England and the American South, Kyle lives and writes in upstate New York where his family had lived free and owned land for nearly 225 years.
CRAIG FOLS (Director) is the Artistic Director of East Lynne Theater Company.
JAMES ALTON (James Baldwin) is a NYC based artist originally from North Carolina, before receiving his Acting BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts. Favorite roles include: Othello (OTHELLO), Wining Boy (THE PIANO LESSON), Pontius Pilate (THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT) and James Baldwin (CITIZEN JAMES at Syracuse Stage). James is grateful to East Lynne Theater for allowing him to share his love for acting.
JAMES BALDWIN (born 1924, New York City—died 1987, Saint-Paul, France), American essayist, novelist, and playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the United States and, later, through much of western Europe.
The eldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty in Harlem in New York City. From age 14 to 16 he was active during out-of-school hours as a preacher in a small revivalist church, a period he wrote about in his semi-autobiographical first and finest novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and in his play about a woman evangelist, The Amen Corner (performed in New York City, 1965).
After graduation from high school, he began a restless period of ill-paid jobs, self-study, and literary apprenticeship in Greenwich Village, the bohemian quarter of New York City. He left in 1948 for Paris, where he lived for the next eight years. (In later years, from 1969, he became a self-styled “transatlantic commuter,” living alternatively in the south of France and in New York and New England.) His second novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956), deals with the white world and concerns an American in Paris torn between his love for a man and his love for a woman. Between the two novels came a collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son (1955).
In 1957 he returned to the United States and became an active participant in the civil rights struggle that swept the nation. His book of essays, Nobody Knows My Name (1961), explores Black-white relations in the United States. This theme also was central to his novel Another Country (1962), which examines sexual as well as racial issues.
The New Yorker magazine gave over almost all of its November 17, 1962, issue to a long article by Baldwin on the Black Muslim separatist movement and other aspects of the civil rights struggle. The article became a best seller in book form as The Fire Next Time (1963). His bitter play about racist oppression, Blues for Mister Charlie (“Mister Charlie” being a Black term for a white man), played on Broadway to mixed reviews in 1964.
Baldwin continued to write until his death—publishing works including Going to Meet the Man (1965), a collection of short stories; the novels Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and Just Above My Head (1979); and The Price of the Ticket (1985), a collection of autobiographical writings—but none of his later works achieved the popular and critical success of his early work.
Although he spent a great deal of his life abroad, James Baldwin always remained a quintessentially American writer. Whether he was working in Paris or Istanbul, he never ceased to reflect on his experience as a black man in white America. In numerous essays, novels, plays and public speeches, the eloquent voice of James Baldwin spoke of the pain and struggle of black Americans and the saving power of brotherhood.
The eldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty in Harlem in New York City. From age 14 to 16 he was active during out-of-school hours as a preacher in a small revivalist church, a period he wrote about in his semi-autobiographical first and finest novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and in his play about a woman evangelist, The Amen Corner (performed in New York City, 1965).
After graduation from high school, he began a restless period of ill-paid jobs, self-study, and literary apprenticeship in Greenwich Village, the bohemian quarter of New York City. He left in 1948 for Paris, where he lived for the next eight years. (In later years, from 1969, he became a self-styled “transatlantic commuter,” living alternatively in the south of France and in New York and New England.) His second novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956), deals with the white world and concerns an American in Paris torn between his love for a man and his love for a woman. Between the two novels came a collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son (1955).
In 1957 he returned to the United States and became an active participant in the civil rights struggle that swept the nation. His book of essays, Nobody Knows My Name (1961), explores Black-white relations in the United States. This theme also was central to his novel Another Country (1962), which examines sexual as well as racial issues.
The New Yorker magazine gave over almost all of its November 17, 1962, issue to a long article by Baldwin on the Black Muslim separatist movement and other aspects of the civil rights struggle. The article became a best seller in book form as The Fire Next Time (1963). His bitter play about racist oppression, Blues for Mister Charlie (“Mister Charlie” being a Black term for a white man), played on Broadway to mixed reviews in 1964.
Baldwin continued to write until his death—publishing works including Going to Meet the Man (1965), a collection of short stories; the novels Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and Just Above My Head (1979); and The Price of the Ticket (1985), a collection of autobiographical writings—but none of his later works achieved the popular and critical success of his early work.
Although he spent a great deal of his life abroad, James Baldwin always remained a quintessentially American writer. Whether he was working in Paris or Istanbul, he never ceased to reflect on his experience as a black man in white America. In numerous essays, novels, plays and public speeches, the eloquent voice of James Baldwin spoke of the pain and struggle of black Americans and the saving power of brotherhood.
