“Mary Speaks:, a one-woman play performed and written by Angela Polite, was performed on-campus at the MPAC theater on March 1st as the final part of the Commission on Equity, Race, and Ethnicity’s annual Summit. In it, Angela largely portrays numerous generations of women within the titular Mary’s family lineage, in addition to the occasional neighbor or white policeman, aiming to “explore the history of black mothers and their sons, from slavery to present day.” And through utilizing a mix of monologues, songs, and the like, this excellently written and performed piece accomplishes just that.

Mary, an intentional parallel of the Biblical figure of the same name, gives birth to a boy, the first of her family in generations. Believing him to be innately destined to escape her family’s systemically-brought poverty, she attempts to raise him while protecting him from the ever-present threat of bigotry and violence brought by their government and society, as the play follows her from her early teens up through her later middle-age years.

The characters outside of Mary and her immediate family that Angela portrays embody increasingly timely themes and social issues, both systemic and societal. Key highlights included her grandmother, worn down from decades of hardship and bigotry, who supports Mary unwaveringly, warning her of the dangers she and her son would face, and a friend of Mary’s we meet while she is an adult, a thematic stand-in for Black Panther-esque advocates. This latter character brings up issues of classism and colorism between black people of different levels of privilege after being upset by Mary’s pride (interpreted by her friend as vanity) in sending her son to an expensive school and sparks the tonal shift of the play.

Before this scene, Mary was largely entirely hopeful and confident in her and her son’s ability to overcome the dangers of bigotry and state violence so long as they kept their faith strong. During and after, as the play chronologically inches closer to the modern-day, tensions concerning the fate of Mary’s son rise which culminates in a scene depicting the harassment of Mary’s son, now somewhere near the cusp of being a young adult himself, by a police officer beside their home. The epilogue is made so much more prescient and impactful following current-day events, Mary’s reaction to and description of her son’s body mirroring recent real-world police killings of black men, continuing with her reprising a song and cradling her son as she had at the start of the play as the lights dimmed, and ending with a final, especially powerful monologue.

Overall, “Mary Speaks” is a deeply empathetic, powerful, ever-increasingly relevant piece. She also had a talk-back immediately after the performance, in which she - along with her pianist and the dramaturg - went over the history, thematic meaning, and details concerning the play, making it clear just how meticulously the piece was created. And considering the bulk of this play was conceived prior to 2020, so much of it seems all the more striking for it.

A Review of Angela Polite’s Mary Speaks