AAPEX stages reading of Parks' new play PAWNSHOP

Pawnshop, a new play by Atlanta playwright Tiffany Parks, will be given a staged reading in Nashville Monday night, June 21, by The African American Playwrights Exchange. The reading will be held upstairs at Bongo Java, 2007 Belmont Boulevard.

Pawnshop focuses on relations between members of Atlanta's African-American and Jewish communities in the 1950s and is the winner of the AAPEX Best New Play 2010 award.

"The reading is a first step in moving the property toward filming in our 'stage to screen' project, which we call Film Noir," said Jaz Dorsey of AAPEX.

Actors featured in the reading include Vilia Steele, Jonah Kraut, David Allds, Terri Mitchum, David Chattam and Mike Callahan.

According to Parks, the play was inspired by her grandmother's many stories passed down through the family: "My grandmother's mother - Big Mama - worked her entire life for local Jewish families on LaVista Road in Atlanta," Parks recalled. "My grandmother's family lived on Magnum Street, in the slums a few blocks from the prominent Atlanta University, the Georgia State Capitol and many prominent African-American churches."

The relationship between Jews and blacks was essential, Park suggests, to maintain the economic and social structure of Atlanta during the 1950s. "Blacks needed the Jews to survie and the Jews needed the blacks to strive," she says. "Pawnshops were a way of life. When blacks needed money and a loan, a pawn shop was not far away. Jews employed blacks to work in their shops all of the time. Peter Street, now known as the Castleberry Hills community, was home to many Jewish pawnshops. There was a strong relationship between the Jews and blacks."

One of those stories, one of a more personal nature, stuck with Parks and provided the impetus for her new work: "One story that stuck out in my mind was about Mr. Schaefer, the Jewish grocer, who gave my grandmother's family credit for food."

To give her play a strong historical basis, Parks engaged in tireless research to effectively capture the tenor of the times in which Pawnshop is set.

"I went to the William Breman Jewish Museum on Spring Street in Midtown Atlanta and I consulted with Sandra Berman, the archivist," she explains. "At the Breman, I researched the black/Jewish relationship in Atlanta; I read personal stories and books on the subject. I discovered that a lot of Eastern European Jews immigrated to America during the early 1900s because of the pogroms in Eastern Europe. When they came to America, some Jews came to the South and opened businesses in all black communities.

"The black/Jewish relationship was a relationship of necessity. First, Jewish immigrants were considered foreign and thus discriminated against in the segregated South. Secondly, many Jewish immigrants did not speak English. All of these issues worked in harmony with blacks and Jews because they had to rely on each other for survival."

Parks also interviewed David Goldwasser, owner of Atlanta's Brooklyn Loan and Jewelry, a family-owned pawnshop from the 1930s through the 1950s. Located in downtown Atlanta, Goldwasser's tales of daily operations of the shop provided much background for Parks' play.

"And, of course, I talked to my family members who actually grew up in this world," Parks says. "My grandmother's mother worked for Mr. Schaefer and the Goldsteins. Her mother worked for Jewish people as well. Many of the older people in my family worked for Jewish families; back then, the only job for most black women was domestic work."

To reserve your seat for Monday night's reading, email jazmn47@aol.com or call (615) 915-0891.

pictured: Vilia Steele

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