Angelica Chéri’s "Gun & Powder" Explores Passing for White in the Old West

It’s one thing trying to solve a puzzle when the pieces don’t fit; it’s another when they’ve gone missing entirely. In the case of Angelica Chéri’s ‘15 (Grad Musical Theatre Writing) new musical Gun & Powder, an incomplete family portrait simply called for some creative license. 

“So much of what I’ve known to be true… is also what I don’t know is true,” Chéri says. “The story keeps changing. That gave me the ability to piece together the truth with what I felt like was the most interesting throughline.”

Gun & Powder visualizes the mythical lives of Chérie’s great-great-aunts Mary and Martha Clarke, African-American twins who passed as white and leveraged that ambiguity to help their mother settle a sharecropper debt. Played by Solea Pfeiffer and Emmy Raver-Lampman, whose roles as siblings date back to their time together on Hamilton, the Clarke sisters are a gun-toting duo wreaking havoc on post-Emancipation Texas, and they won’t stop till they take back what’s theirs—or at least until romance gets in the way.

Chéri, who wrote the book and lyrics for Gun & Powder, pegged award-winning director Robert O’Hara to bring her family folklore to the stage. It’s a collaboration that challenges the frequently whitewashed Old West by pondering race, identity, and ownership, and thrusting two Black women to the forefront of a genre that has typically relegated similar characters. Chéri and her collaborator Ross Baum ‘15, who developed the music for the play, are alumni of the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, an intimate two-year course that unites composers, lyricists, and bookwriters for participation in ongoing workshops. Gun & Powder was eventually  workshopped as part of the graduate program’s inaugural collaboration with the New Studio on Broadway, and nearly six years later is set to make its world premiere at the Signature Theatre in Washington, D.C, on Tuesday, January 28.

The below conversation with Chéri has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How much did you strive for fidelity to the oral history of the Clarke sisters, and how much was this something you chose to make your own?

AC: The thing that was interesting about that choice is that so much of what I’ve known to be “true”... is also what I don’t know is true—because the story keeps changing. That gave me the ability to piece together the truth with what I felt like was the most interesting throughline. I wanted to make sure that the essence of it—that [the sisters] had a reason to leave and they wanted to do something to help their family—is what I ended up remaining most faithful to. Also, the fact that people couldn’t pin them down… I really wanted it to feel like there was this legendary, larger-than-life Thelma & Louise [feeling]. That untouchable outlaw narrative is what I wanted to keep intact.

At the heart of this musical is a century-old—but entirely relevant—dialogue about race and identity. It’s a springboard for a conversation about whether to assert or suppress one’s identity. What drove you toward these themes?

AC: “Passing” is something that is known within African-American culture but is not spoken about in mainstream culture. It is something that happens often. We see lots of images of women who are of color who are somewhat racially ambiguous in lots of popular culture—images in magazines and television shows. They’re of color, but it’s not entirely clear what their racial background is. And we have that juxtaposed against images of women of darker shades, and it’s just to kind of compare: What is blackness? What does it mean to be racially ambiguous? Who can claim blackness? 

Even just talking to our performer Solea Pfeiffer, who plays ‘Mary,’ she said, “This is the first time I’ve been able to play me.” She is of mixed race, and she said she’s constantly passing in different roles. She’s playing characters of various ethnicities, but never just herself: someone who is black and white and dealing with that because we have a culture of definitive lines and boxes. 

Also, this idea of how much color-culture affects access in American culture. I was at the National African American Museum in D.C., and I ran across something that I had known about for many years but never saw displayed in public in a way that marketed a piece of cultural history. And that’s the brown paper bag test. This test, where certain organizations and different people would be tested, they would hold up their skin to a brown paper bag. If they were lighter or darker than the brown paper bag, then they could have or couldn’t have access to certain organizations, or be married to certain people, [or join] certain sororities and fraternities.

Even though we may not know about [these activities] or practice them anymore, they’re still pervasive in our culture as Americans, and especially in African-American culture.

What were you looking for when casting for these two very layered lead roles?

AC: It was tricky because here we are trying to address the same issue that we end up perpetuating by wanting to cast people of lighter skin. But I think it was important in terms of showing the contrast. We’ve had different workshops of Gun & Powder and we had come against this conversation a lot where a theater would say, “We have two amazing African-American women who can sing this material and play these parts, but they don’t necessarily pass for white—is that okay?” We had to have the conversation and say, “Well, for the purpose of this workshop it’s fine, but for the stage production we would obviously want people who could visually pass for white.” After so many times having that conversation with different theaters, then the question started to come up: Does it matter if they’re lighter-skinned and they pass for white? 

So we started entertaining not being married to the skin tone of the women. They must be African-American, but they can be African-American of any shade and still play these roles. We lived in that space for a while. We went back and forth. What does it mean with either choice? One of the things that happened, from the brilliant mind of Robert O’Hara… When he stepped in on the project he was very firm that they must be lighter-skinned; they must be able to pass as white. Because we must take the opportunity to show that skin color politics dynamic. There has to be a visual separation between Mary and Martha and the other Black people in the show. That’s why we made the decision that we wanted to pursue casting from the standpoint of someone who could believably pass for white. 

You connected with another Grad Musical Theatre Writing student, Ross Baum, to develop the music for the play. What were some of the early conversations you had with him about this piece?

AC: In the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program the first year is basically like speed dating between composers and lyricists. We rotate with different people to see what feels the most natural and then it becomes time to select a partner to write your thesis with. And of course Ross was at the top of my list. We were having these conversations where we were pitching to each other. I had been sort of carrying around the idea of these two sisters, and when I submitted it to him, I’ll never forget, we were at Starbucks on Astor Place. I sort of showed him the picture and talked a little about the legend, and I said, “What do you think?” And he said that was all he needed to hear. Instantaneously he thought that this was it because he was invested in the idea of two women taking control. It sounded like there was so much musical energy behind it, and he decided right then and there, “This is what I want to do.” 

You’ve nurtured this play for many years now. How have you remained emotionally connected to the work and seen it through to the stage?

AC: It really wasn’t a challenge because the relevance of it remained throughout this long process. I was saying to someone that when we started writing the show it was around the time that Mike Brown was killed by the cops in Ferguson. Ross and I thought, “Oh, we have to hurry up and get this done while this is a current hot-button moment for civil rights.” But I don’t have to even do any explaining between Mike Brown and now. There’s enough to show. Even going back to 1893 in terms of what reserach we’ve been able to do in this last six years, there were so many lynching of African-American men for accusations that were absolutely false. 

History continues to validate the relevance of the show. That would be the thing that would encourage us every time we would apply to a workshop and be rejected. We would get a rejection letter, and then there would be something on CNN. We would simultaneously be reminded, keep going, because we need this story. It needs to be heard.