Noël Coward’s Private Lives

Directed by Clay David

This deliciously stylish comedy is set against the cultivated backdrop of 1929s Paris Black Célébré, the zeitgeist of Black art, jazz, philosophy and literary sophistication. Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne—cosmopolitan lovers divorced, remarried to others, are unwillingly reunited, honeymooning with their new spouses in the same hotel. The separated lovers, moneyed and metropolitan in their disregard for conventional propriety, find their new spouses lacking in chic finesse, stultifying in provincialism.

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Director’s Note

My passion as a director is breathing new life into classical masterpieces, reawakening and transforming plays with a fresh, diverse perspective. Noël Coward and his play PRIVATE LIVES bask in chic finesse while disdaining stultifying provincialism; its original production and subsequent revivals have been British, reflecting the habits of Anglo-Saxon British gentry.

I chose not to direct this work with color-blind casting, defining the play without regard to race, a directorial route when driving down the road of cultural pluralism. In this production, I drive down a different road, with the accelerator to the floor, casting in historical contrast of the original white aristocratic milieu it was celebrating by turning the spotlight on a contemporaneous cosmopolitan culture: the Black aristocracy and its sophistication in Paris, completely immersed in the cultivated backdrop of 1929’s Paris Black Célébré, the zeitgeist of Black art, jazz, philosophy and literary sophistication.

Our leads, Amanda and Elyot are now immersed in the historical French Black beau monde of finance, government and culture. One need not fabricate a history of venerable noblesse for Black actors embodying them, Black erudite célébrités, possessing rapier wit and the epitome of style. French Black leaders in commerce, politics and culture in France, were the crème de la crème glitteratithrough Senegalese business and the French Government, having estates in Cambo-les-Bains, in the French Pyrénnées Mountains and Paris.

Noël Coward entertained an exclusive set of English literati and nobility. However, that fashionable set ran parallel with French Black cultural awareness and the zenith of empowerment of the 1920s. Blaise Diagne, brilliant Black scholar and politician earned a seat in the French National Assembly in Paris, founded a newspaper called L’Ouest Africain Français; Paulette Nardal, Afro-Martiniquais writer and driver of the Black literary consciousness, created the “Négritude genre” and translated the works of the Harlem Renaissance; Severiano de Heredia, Mayor of Paris and the first mayor of African descent of a Western world capital; Bessie Coleman, the first black woman to earn an aviation pilot’s license in Paris; Josephine Baker, opened in La Revue Nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

The lauding of French Black power in the 1920’s speaks volumes for France and was viewed by many African Americans as a welcome change from the widespread racism in the United States. African American musicians, artists and Harlem Renaissance writers found 1920s Paris ready to embrace them with open arms. Montmartre became the center of the small community, with jazz clubs such as Le Grand Duc and Chez Florence.

All of these French Black visionaries are embraced in African-American Shakespeare Company’s production of PRIVATE LIVES; and that enables Amanda and Elyot to savor life with delicious decadence, hence this production becomes a Black French comedy. We are propelled by their magnificence. The accelerator is to the floor, fueled by the drive of brilliant Black visionaries, the heat of jazz and the bubbles of champagne.

— Clay David