Listening to the muses: Phylicia Rashad and LisaGay Hamilton reflect on how the voices of many writers spark their acting.

Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson was on Broadway in New York City for approximately 10 weeks from late November through January. Among the cast members were two amazing women: Phylicia Rashad and LisaGay Hamilton. Rashad is widely known for the role of Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show and Hamilton as Rebecca Washington on The Practice. Both have significant careers in the theater. Each spoke with Black Issues Book Review about the writers and books that have inspired them as actors and women.

Phylicia Rashad

Gem of the Ocean takes place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1904. Ms. Rashad plays Aunt Ester, a 300-year-old spiritual adviser to whom folks go to get their souls washed clean of guilt.

"Authors that have inspired my work have little to do with acting or African American history. The books that inspire my work as an actor have to do with expanding the intellect and awareness. Fiction based on history like The Da Vinci Code by Daniel Brown (Doubleday, March 2003), or actual factual personal history. Books like The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho (HarperSanFrancisco [reprint], May 1995) that tell of spiritual ripening, a person's individual endeavor to know themselves, and ancient scriptural texts of spiritual paths that predate the Bible.

"I grew in literature and art. My mother is an artist, a writer, a poet and a scholar. As a young person I used to love to read accounts of pre-Civil War and Civil War South ... I remember as a child being at the YWCA in Houston, Texas, on McGowen Street, and staring up at this mural by the legendary artist John Biggers who was a personal friend of our family. The mural was of Harriet Tubman. She was bigger than life. She carried a torch in one hand and in her other was a man who was injured and couldn't walk. And behind her were throngs of people that stretched back into the horizon as far as the eye could see. It was as if there was no end to the people behind her. I was a child (seven- or eight-years-old) and didn't know who Harriet Tubman was, but I would look at this portrait; staring at it for hours while my mother was in meetings about art and literature.

"By the time I was in fifth grade, my brother, a junior-high student, brought home a book from the school library about Harriet Tubman. I saw it lying on his bed one day, and I picked it up and started reading it, but he had to take it back. It was going to be two-and-a-half years before I got to that junior-high school and my first mission was to find that book in the library and check it out, and I did.

"I remember the account of her as a child in the field having angered somebody and they took a stone and hit her and knocked her out. I remember as a result of that, she would get headaches and have blackouts. But she also had this other sense of things, and it impacted me; and I knew people were fierce. I never concentrated so much on slavery. I concentrated on the people and I knew that people were fierce! I knew that we were a strong people and people of great faith and vision. People with vision whose purpose was the next and oncoming generations.

"Of course, I've read Richard Wright, Langston Hughes. Of course, I've read Ralph Ellison, and of course I've read Alice Walker. One of the greatest books is Jubilee by Margaret Walker (Mariner Books, January 1999). I read that when I was a teenager getting ready to go off to college. It made me very soft and sensitive inside. Sula, from the Toni Morrison book (Vintage, reprint, June 2004), would probably have been the one character I would have wanted to play. I liked that story very much. I loved Song of Solomon (Vintage reprint, June 2004), and I thought that would have been a very beautiful film."

LisaGay Hamilton

LisaGay Hamilton, who is a director as well as an actor, plays Black Mary in Gem of the Ocean. Black Mary is being groomed to become the next Aunt Ester.

"We shared things among the cast. For example, Ruben [Santiago-Hudson] shared with us The Middle, Passage: White Ships Black Cargo by Tom Feelings (Dial Books, November 1995). It is an extraordinary book from a pictorial standpoint. It not only helps one see history but to draw from our imagination. A powerful, powerful book!

"Often, it is what I am reading in the moment or what I have most recently read that I can automatically draw from in some way. At the moment, I have been reading and re-reading With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together (Perennial, February 2000). It has nothing to do with 1904, but it has a great deal to do with two warriors who have found their way as artists and as political beings who bring truth to the work and to the world as a whole and I find their book to be very inspirational.

"I turned to Faith of Our Fathers: All Examination of the Spiritual Life of African and African-American People (by Mumia Abu-Jamal, Africa World Press, April 2003) as August [Wilson] in Gem of the Ocean, seems to be torn, in my opinion, with the issue of Christianity and the religion of our ancestors. For me, the book is a great dialogue. Often, as an actor, I am a part of works that perhaps my politics don't mesh with, or are not quite the same in the philosophy or perhaps there is something that is not quite clear to me, and it is helpful for me to seek other voices to clarify or complement the playwright or my own feelings on a given topic.

"It just so happens that a dear friend of my sister and my family, Professor Harry Elam, has just written a book The Past As Present in the Drama of August Wilson (University of Michigan Press, January 2004). It reevaluates August, who he is; and talks about his plays. And I found that helpful.

"From an historical standpoint, hooks like W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk (W.W. Norton and Company, April 1999) takes place right in the era. To get a more historical perspective, I love the works of Herbert Aptheker. In particular, volume two of A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States: From Reconstruction to the Founding of the NAACP (Carol Pub. Group, 1990), which hits right in where the play takes place--late 1800s early 1900s. He is not African American, but he is an extraordinary historian of African American history in particular, who was very much on the left wing of politics. He was very close with Du Bois.

"Now, does all this prepare me for Black Mary? It just gives fuel and ideas. Ultimately, it is my imagination and my instrument that moves me forward in the creative process of trying to tell the story of the particular character I am portraying. These texts allow me to come from a truthful place. Most importantly, this is my history. So I need to know this information anyway, as I discover who I am as a human being in nay journey....

"As an actor or woman of color, I want to portray that which is truthful about me as a human being in any text regardless of the ethnic origin of the writer. If it is truthful, then I would love the opportunity to bring that to life. I love older writers such as Louise Meriwether (Daddy Was a Numbers Runner, The Feminist Press, November 2002); Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (Plume Books [reprint], April 2000). These books are interesting and have amazing characters. All of Baldwin's books and Lorraine Hansberry's. You know, all the great writers, be it stage, film or television. If it's a truthful journey, I would like to be a part of it. I think Beloved (Plume Books [reprint], September 1998) is one of the greatest books ever! I love Adrienne Kennedy, Zora Neale Hurston, Dorothy West ... I have much to catch up on."

Sharita Hunt is an actor, writer, and administrator at The King's College in New York City. Her acting roles have included Bessie in Having Our Say, in regional theater, and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf on Broadway, and in her own one-woman show, A House Is Built.