Crumbs From the Table of Joy

Children exist in their parent’s worlds, subject to their parent’s decisions, confined by their parent’s choices and rules. Crumbs from the Table of Joy is a “moment” play. There is a moment when you discover that you are no longer a child, and you discover that you are maybe something other than the person your parents told you you were. It is about discovery and wonder and wishing. The play attempts to articulate the texture of an in-between moment. The scratchy moment between childhood and putting on the new clothes of growing into an adult and exploring the burgeoning identity of new young adulthood. It is a play about finding your voice and discovering the new person you might grow up to be. 

It’s a play about daughters discovering the vocabulary to articulate the person they’re growing into and a father who may not be prepared to raise young women… who may not be prepared to raise young Black women to face a world that may never hold a place for them. This play is about Black womanhood not fitting into the performances of demure politeness and obedience. It’s about women resisting doing as they are told and not content with “their place,” or the concept that there is a world of possibilities burst into existence, after World War II, through movies and movement, and migration? Yes. It’s about the peculiarities of race and self-worth and identity and doubt. It’s about how uncomfortable and confining the American Dream can be, and how some dreams of what it means to be American sometimes hurt. 

I hope you enjoy this production. I hope you take pleasure in hearing stories. This play is rotted heavily in storytelling traditions. This play reminds e of when I was very young, and I would sit on the floor of my grandmother’s kitchen as my mother, and my aunts, and my grandmother would make baked macaroni, and sweet potatoes covered in marshmallows, and stuffing, and turkey for Thanksgiving. I remember sitting under the kitchen table, playing with my toys, listening to these women talk about their lives and share the things that mattered to them. Their words were filled with color and warmth and beauty and texture. This play feels like that. 

  - John “Ray” Proctor