CAncelled: The June 1-3 production has been cancelled due to illness in the cast. A conversation with the playwright and costume designer will be held June 1 at 7:30 p.m.

by Leo Adam Biga

Breakout Omaha playwright Beaufield Berry rides a whirlwind worthy of her dramas. Minus a college degree or formal theater arts training this once wild child has emerged a talent to be reckoned with by turning challenges into opportunities.

The yin-yang applies to her signature play, “In the Upper Room,” whose world premiere came at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) in February to rave reviews. The piece got its first reading at the Great Plains Theatre Conference (now Commons) in 2017. It’s first Omaha stage production will be June 1-3 at Creighton University’s Lied Center as part of GPTC’s New Play Conference. Performances are free and open to the public.

She only wrote the play when, she said, the spirits of her ancestors compelled her to. Then, on the verge of abandoning her career, she learned the piece was accepted by the Colorado New Play Summit. When COVID scuttled plans for a full stage production, she despaired, only to see it still produced. “Being on the shelf for two years, waiting to see if it was going to get mounted, and DCPA staying dedicated to the show when they let other shows go was huge,” said Berry.

She came away from the experience affirmed and empowered.

“Things have changed for me. My career has gone to new places I didn’t know it would ever go. I’ve been in rooms I never thought I would be in. As I see how other people work and succeed, and as I grow as an artist and as a woman I’ve learned to set boundaries, which is something I never implemented or enforced before. I didn’t think I could have any because I was just happy anybody would want to hear anything I had to say.”

Social consciousness runs through the ex-burlesque queen's work. “Red Summer” frames the story of Will Brown beyond his brutal 1919 murder by a mob in downtown Omaha. It enjoyed a sold-out run at the Blue Barn Theatre in the tragedy’s centennial year, prompting panel discussions and memorial events.

“#Harrison,” her response to the tragedy of Michael Brown and Ferguson, Missouri, got its first staging only last April at Drake University in Des Moines.

She also explores the Black experience through the prism of her own extended family. The aspirational Berrys, ruled by proud matriarch Rose, are the focus of “Upper Room,” part of a planned seven-play cycle on her family.

Several of Berry’s works can be read in their entirety via New Play Exchange.

Berry’s family made “Upper Room’s” premiere in Denver an unforgettable experience.

“Sitting there with my husband [Rob Fisher] who is a huge supporter of my work was wonderful. I sobbed and he squeezed my hand and cried, too. That opening night somebody got a picture of me and my face is just radiating because it was the happiest night of my life. I told everybody I didn’t have a big wedding, so this was my big wedding.

“A really special night opening weekend was when I got to sit there with my mom (mixed media artist Pamela Jo Berry), holding her hand, laughing and crying together. We’ve sat in so many shows before, but this one was for us specifically. It was the most incredible way to see the show.”

Personal touches added resonance. “Something we did in Denver that made it really special was decorating the set with real life pictures of the Berrys.”

‘Buffalo Women’ Canceled in Omaha, But Still On for Des Moines

The high of Denver didn’t last long. Just as she came off the play’s rousing reception, she went to court to deal with a stalker. Adding to the distress was that being away two months to prep the premiere strained things at home. She and her husband are parents to three young children. “I came back to personal issues. Things were rocky.” She reconciled wanting a new life with what she had before, adding, “I didn’t even see things the same way anymore. Sometimes you can’t come home in the same way that you left it.”

Then the home school she co-founded, Village Coop, closed and she caught a mild case of COVID. Things get distorted, she said, when a dream suddenly gets realized, as in “Upper Room.”

“The second that it’s a go you are in a vortex of workshopping the show, rehearsals, casting. You’re flown all over the country to put these pieces together. Then your dream arrives and it’s the best night of your life. Opening night was like the first time I saw my babies. Then the dream ends and you go back home – and nothing looks the same, So you’re left navigating that.”

The low point came when her new Black cowgirl musical dramedy, “Buffalo Women,” long slated for a spring Blue Barn run, imploded four weeks before it was to open. As the drama of the aborted show played out, productions of the musical in Des Moines and Kansas City moved forward. The co-production of the Des Moines Playhouse and Pyramid Theatre opens Juneteenth (June 19) for a one-week run. The Black Box in KC was to have staged a concert version this summer but is now planning a fully-staged production next fall or winter. Entities outside Nebraska are vying to host a world premiere.

There’s a plan for the show to still happen at the Blue Barn in the future, only on Berry’s terms. “‘Buffalo Women’ was conceived in Omaha and nurtured here, and it still belongs here, but it just wasn’t right this time around.” There are no burned bridges at the Blue Barn, whose leadership supported her decision to shut down the project.

New Project Tackles Icon Josephine Baker

Meanwhile, “Upper Room’s” success attracted the interest of a veteran Broadway producer who’s commissioned Berry to write a musical biopic of Jazz Age icon Josephine Baker.

For good measure, two episodic television pilots Berry’s written are under consideration by streaming content producers.

“I’ve discovered that when you’re out there in these big rooms and your dreams are coming true, you have to have an anchor that holds you down and reminds you where you come from. Being able to have boundaries for yourself and around your work is key to remembering you can say no to things, you can walk away from things that don’t feel right or good or that don’t take care of you or your work in the way you desire. You have to have boundaries to come back to when things get wild or you don’t know which way is up.”

“Buffalo Women’s” imbroglio involved conflicts with collaborators who were also friends. She fired her director, then her composer and music director quit. In a dramatic showdown, she and the remaining team parted ways. “They all walked one way and I walked away by myself. That to me was indicative of we’re just not all going in the same direction.”

Berry gets that hurt feelings result when collaborators break from each other.

“It leaves people I care about feeling raw. I ended up making a lot of apologies – not necessarily for the outcome of my choice because I stand by the right choice for me or the work, but for the way that it left people feeling. As upsetting as it was, it's also been a really good thing because I have greater understanding of the value of myself and my work, which is really priceless.”

Berry feels part of the problem was a creative team unschooled in the messy business of getting a new play on its feet. It started well, but as the material changed in rewrites, conflicts surfaced.

“Plays happen in production,” she noted. “You don’t know what you have or what you don’t until it’s up and moving. Then you can begin to put it together – pull out the juicy pieces or fix the pieces that aren’t as juicy, You can’t do that while it’s sitting on the page. These discoveries that happen in production are huge, and if you shortcut that then you’re not being true to the work.”

Berry acknowledges she shoulders some blame for things unraveling. “I wish I had taken the time to onboard the team more about what the new play process is and what it looks like, how it’s going to go, and how it’s going to feel. It’s going to feel like you don’t know what show is going up.

But you have to trust the writing and the process. I think getting that buy-in earlier could have saved some headaches, some grief.”

Her experience with “Upper Room” in Denver with dramaturg Regina Victor and director Gregg Daniel spoiled her. “When you pull the right team together it feels like magic. It doesn’t mean it’s stress-free but when it’s all working together, everything falls into place and is aligned. “Buffalo Women” never was in alignment.” By contrast, “Buffalo Women” has prospered in Des Moines under the direction of Tiffany Johnson, who also directed “#Harrison.” Berry’s fine with the fact Omaha won’t see “Buffalo Women” anytime soon. “I am very much at peace with it. If the absence of the work feels better than the work itself, you know it was the only decision.”

Sounding out peer women creatives gave her a valuable perspective. “They told me, you can’t take everybody with you. You can’t work here anymore the same way you’re used to working here because people don’t see you the same way anymore and you don’t see it the same way anymore. That’s been really eye-opening. I’m now looking through a more professional lens.

“If this had happened five years ago I would have been devastated. But I’m not there anymore because I trust my work. My biggest takeaway is that it’s important for me to protect myself and my work and to stand up for it. That’s more important to me today than having it produced in a way I don’t think is conducive to my process or the work itself. You don’t get the baby without the mother, especially in the new play process.”

Spreading herself too thin, she conceded, might have contributed to certain disruptions. “Yeah, I think that’s always a concern. I was being pulled in all these different directions.”

An ever more emboldened Berry feels called to speak her truth. “I won’t be limited. There are incredibly beautiful, powerful and strange works being done by Black artists right now and that’s the direction I’m going in. I’m not going to stop because things get uncomfortable or because a show is tanked.”

Great Plains Theatre Commons Conference

Though “Upper Room’s” Omaha production has presented its own share of misgivings for Berry, she’s opted to surrender the process to longtime colleagues Denise Chapman and Kevin Lawler, who are director and producer, respectively. As the script was already set, Berry said, “It’s a very different experience than if we’d been doing it for the first time,” and thus she’s mostly hands-off.

Having it staged for GPTC’s PlayFest returns Berry to her roots. “It’s a huge honor because I have grown up in that conference. Great Plains is why I’m a theater professional today.” She’s had plays read there, she’s worked on stage and behind the scenes, she was the fest’s self-described “ambassador-party girl.” She originally developed “In the Upper Room” as part of its PlayLab.

“To start my career at my home conference, then have it go where it’s gone, and to bring “In the Upper Room” back home is special. It’s not just this circle of life for the show but for me as a writer – to go from being that kid just in love with the plays to having my own play staged there. It’s going to be interesting to see it with a different cast, through another director’s and designer’s eyes.”

Set in the 1970s, the play’s a full-blooded portrait of a multigenerational Black family rich in love and riddled with secrets. The cast features Omaha performers – Catie Zeleski, Xena Broaden, Doriette Jordan, Rusheaa Malimbe, Almeda Giles-Lopez, Anthony Holmes, Deborah Dancer – with the exception of Levy Lee Simon, who reprises the role of Eddie that he originated.

Now that the work is published, regional productions may be in the offing.

Berry attended “#Harrison” amidst “Buffalo Women” devolving. An exchange she had with an audience member at Drake reminded her of her purpose. “After the show in the parking lot this car pulled up with a young Black man behind the wheel and he was like, ‘Yo, did you write that play?’ ‘Yeah, that was me.’ ‘That shit was so good, man.’ ‘Thank you, baby.’ And I remembered my “why” in that moment” – to write a truth that moves people.”

That same “why” is the motivation behind the Josephine Baker project. For now she’s withholding the name of the producer she’s partnered with, saying only, “He’s been wanting to do a Josephine Baker show for quite a long time and was close to doing it before things fell apart. It’s funny because Josephine is this running name in my life – it’s my mother’s middle name (per “Upper Room”), it’s my niece’s name, and now here’s Josephine Baker knocking on my door.” More than coincidentally Berry researched an intended novel about Baker a few years ago before quitting it to focus on her playwriting.

“I’ve always admired her as a great beauty and trend-setter. I feel like we have so much in common as Black women, burlesque dancers, lovers of French culture and Midwest natives.” Baker grew up in St. Louis.

Berry’s great-grandfather Oscar Berry (Eddie in “Upper Room”) introduced her to Baker’s legacy. Her appreciation has only grown the more she’s dived into her life as a bold chanteuse, World War II spy, object of desire and expatriate.

“Ultimately the show is about identity. She twice ran from America because of its horrible racism. At a young age she witnessed the devastating effects of the [1917] St. Louis riot in which 200 Black people were killed. She joined the Chitlin’ Circuit and experienced racism in the South. She went to New York and starred in “Shuffle Along” as the only dark-skinned girl allowed in the [chorus] line. She thought, ‘There’s got to be another place for me.’ So she went to Paris and made it huge, only to come back to get that same old racist treatment in the States – having to enter hotels and theaters through servant quarters, being removed from restaurants. She was like, ‘Get me out of here.’

“This show is about her identity as a Black woman, as someone who journeyed from obscurity and poverty to riches and fame, and as an American expat. That’s where we’re going to find the heart and soul because a hundred years later we talk a lot about identity. That’s the connective tissue with people today to really make this thing beautiful.”

Berry plans to visit France to complete her research. The show’s music team and director still need to be selected. The hoped-for Broadway-bound project is, “a long way from the DIY theater I’ve done as producer-writer putting my own things together – it’s just a new level where I get to play in playwright land and make sure I show up when and where I’m supposed to.”

She expects to complete the show’s book by next spring. She’ll have input into the score and lyrics.

All of it’s more than what her background suggested was possible.

“I’ve dug myself out of really dark corners in life. I’ve worked when people wanted me to shut up.”

— Beaufield Berry

“I’m the product of a single-mother household in North Omaha. I was brought up with government assistance. Later, I was in abusive relationships. So I’m not supposed to be having any of this statistically. I lean into that when I feel in the hot seat or people wanting to bring or tear me down. I’ve been there before. I hold tight to that. I’ve dug myself out of really dark corners in life. I’ve worked when people wanted me to shut up.”

She knows she’s arrived where few Nebraska writers have traversed. “Yeah, it’s an unusual place, but it’s earned.” She may not be long for her hometown. “I’m trying to hold out here. Sometimes though you need to be a little closer to the action to stay in the action. It’s an ongoing evaluation. It shifts every day.”

With New York-based agents Samara Harris and Michael Moore unequivocally having her back, she feels unstoppable, ready for wherever her career next leads her.

“It’s not about getting a big head. It’s about standards and recognizing that when you have people who protect, love, understand and respect you and your work, you won’t settle for anything less. You go where that is.”

Show times and reservations for“In The Upper Room” are available on eventbrite.

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