In 2024, we in the United States are closer to a loss of democracy than any time in our 250 year history.
It’s such a nightmarish idea, it’s borderline unthinkable, and it’s barely been touched upon by most mainstream media outlets, like movie studios, for example.
During Trump’s first administration, the parade of rom-coms and sitcoms continued unabated. As a writer who grew up with protest art in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was hard for me not to think: “What the f*** is going on here? Are we just fiddling while Rome burns?”
As it so happens, I was living in Hudson, New York, at the time, working as a newspaper editor and unofficial “stringer” for newspapers like the New York Times, collecting local story ideas for NYC-based writers to potentially research for feature stories.
One of the ideas that crossed my desk one day was such an utterly incongruous story that I thought it must be fictional: It was the story of 15 year-old Ella Fitzgerald’s incarceration and eventual escape from The NY Training School For Girls in 1933.
How could that possibly have happened without the general public knowing about it?
Well, it had to do with the mores of the times. Remember the concept of “shame?” Well, it was a big deal a hundred years ago, and it was particularly inflicted upon women who didn’t behave in a particular way, so Ella was always ashamed of talking about her early incarceration, even until the moment she died in 1996. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks after her death that a reporter Nina Bernstein uncovered the hidden story of Ella’s incarceration for The New York Times’ “Ward Of The State: The Gap In Ella Fitzgerald’s Life.”
Then, somehow, the story must have died, or slipped from public consciousness. But it was never quite fully-forgotten in Hudson, the original site of Ella’s incarceration. There, a team of historians called The Public Prison Memory Project had spent the previous two decades researching general prison life in the town, where prisons had always been a major cottage industry. And while they may not have come up with any huge new revelations about Ella’s incarceration, they were able to unearth quite a bit of new documentation.
Now, the more I learned about this story, the more I became convinced of its absolute power as a double-headed metaphor: First, of course, as perhaps the most powerful metaphor of African American incarceration that I had ever, ever, heard. And secondly, as a story of Black prisoners in a predominantly white town whose business was prisons, as a metaphor for the disgusting cultural divide that has been pushed and provoked in recent years by Trump and everything he represents. In fact, this is, in essence, a story about consciousness, or lack of it. Or where we are as a country, where the social compact has been replaced by “I don’t give a f*** about you.” And that social compact, the foundation of our democracy, has been abandoned by MAGA and all of its ilk.
So, the telling of this story, and the telling of it now, urgently, became more than a priority to me, it almost became a question of life or death. Could I get this story out before the next potential nightmare of an election, and more importantly, would anyone listen? To my absolute surprise, people seem to know exactly what the play signifies, and the public has supported it whole-heartedly.
Now, we’re about to have our New York City debut, three weeks (June 20 to July 7) at The Lower East Side’s Theater for the New City, the absolutely perfect venue for a play like this. In keeping with Theater for the New City’s progressive philosophy, the top ticket price is $18 bucks, and $16 for students and seniors. And we have a cast and crew of over 20 people, many of whom are people of color.
It is our hope that people come and see this play, love it, and start bringing it to schools and community theaters around the country. Because “Ella the Ungovernable” is not just a piece of theater, it is theater meets activism meets theater. Its entire purpose is to raise consciousness by raising community consciousness. Its motto is: “Don’t ever, ever, give up.”
Because, if the unthinkable ever happens, and Trump is elected again, it is going to become incumbent upon all of us to become “ungovernable,” just like the title of the play.
David McDonald is the playwright of ”Ella The Ungovernable”
EllaTheUngovernable.com
luminescentmedia@gmail.com