In 1973, Alice Walker searched for Zora Neale Hurston, the anthropologist, writer, and folklorist, perhaps now best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. She was prolific in her time, the most widely published Black woman author of the 1930s, yet she died destitute, buried in an unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery. By the 1970s, all of Hurston’s books were out of print, her legacy nearly forgotten — that is, until Walker began searching for her.
When Walker came across the unmarked grave she believed to be Hurston’s, she had a tombstone erected, naming Hurston “A Genius of the South,” thus resurrecting the writer’s legacy from obscurity. And it’s this legacy that actor, director, and writer Ann C. Perry expands upon in Live Rich, Die Poor, her one-woman play about the Genius of the South.
Written almost 10 years ago, Live Rich, Die Poor contains characters from Hurston’s life and work, all of whom are played by Perry, but for her Friday performance at the Halloran Centre, Marissa Gilliam will join her in the opening scene as Alice Walker. “That’s normally a voiceover,” Perry says. “But I thought, ‘I want a new iteration of the story that will fill up the Halloran stage.’” And so, this performance, directed by Claire D. Kolheim, has also been reimagined with full design elements for the first time.
“The reason I wrote [it] is because I grew to be enamored of Zora Neale Hurston’s work,” Perry says. “I remember thinking about the story for years, but what finally catalyzed everything for me is that I was sitting at home as an out-of-work actress.” Live Rich, Die Poor, then, became her opportunity, not only to work but also to challenge herself. “I owed it to her to become the actor that I needed to be to play her,” Perry says. “And in doing so, I have grown as an actress, as a person. I see my life as almost an extension of hers, like a way to say, ‘I’ll take the baton from here.’ I feel it is a responsibility to live up to my potential and finish in a way that she didn’t get to finish.”
Yet the playwright adds, “The title is kind of a play on words because she did die poor, but it really means to die empty. If you give everything away, you empty yourself of all your gifts, you’re poor in this different kind of way. You know, this brilliant artist had to die poor, but she also died empty. She was emptying herself out until her death.”
That’s what Perry hopes to do, too. “I’m fighting to have this work and have this moment in this season at a time where I feel like a lot of my peers are planning for retirement. I’m really fighting to hold on to this art and continue to grow it so that it gets out into the world.
“Even though it’s about a remarkable woman, the story is written, really, so the audience can ask themselves some questions,” Perry says. “That was important to me — that you’re still thinking about it a week later.”
Purchase tickets at orpheum-memphis.com.
Live Rich, Die Poor, Halloran Centre, 225 South Main Street, Friday, January 30, 7:30 p.m., $47.50-$59.80.