by Don Redman
This
year marked the 10th anniversary of one of the most devastating storms to
ever hit the United States – Hurricane Katrina – and Slidell Little Theatre
commemorates the historic event with a touching and humorous play that relives
the experience through the eyes of its survivors.
 |
Rob Florence
Photo by Steven Forster NOLA.com |
Katrina:
The Mother-in-Law of ‘em All, by New Orleans playwright Rob Florence,
explores what happens when six Katrina survivors gather at the Mother-in-Law
Lounge to retrace their footsteps. Experience the heartbreak, humanity, and
yes, comedy through the journeys of real New Orleanians who lived to
tell their tales about the devastating storm.
The northshore's premiere production of "Katrina" at Slidell Little Theatre opens October 9 and remains onstage weekends through Oct. 25.
Prior
to opening night, Florence took a moment to talk about his play.
Rob
Florence is originally from New York and moved to New Orleans in 1987 only to
discover that his father’s family had been in the region since the 1840s. “In
doing family genealogical research I discovered the wonders of New Orleans
above-ground cemeteries,” says Florence. “In some way, most of my plays are
connected to New Orleans cemeteries.”
He
received a Masters in Playwriting with distinction from the University of New
Orleans in 2008 and is the Dramatists Guild Gulf Coast / Mississippi Delta
Regional Representative.
His
body of work includes: Bones; Burn K-Doe Burn!; Mirrors of Chartress Street;
Fleeing Katrina; Katrina’s Path; The Key; Hurricane Katrina Comedy Fest and
Holy Wars.
Q: What
was your relationship with the K-Doe family?
I
was fortunate to have a close relationship with the K-Doe's, as they were
extraordinary people. I knew Ernie K-Doe back in the 1980s when his
drinking problem was so bad that he would sometimes sleep on the street.
I saw Antoinette come into his life, literally pick him up out of the
gutter, sober him up, and add years to his life which turned out to be an
amazing experience for the many people who shared it with them. They
opened the Mother in Law Lounge which was their home, so when you were at the bar
you were in their living room. The place was a shrine to New Orleans
R&B, full of dazzling, eccentric memorabilia.
Like
the K-Doe's themselves, the Lounge was surreal. The K-Doe's shared my
interest in New Orleans cemeteries. We had a cemetery preservation group
called Friends of New Orleans Cemeteries. Ernie K-Doe was the grand
marshal, making us the only preservation group in the world with a grand
marshal. I was responsible for burying both Antoinette and Ernie in the
historic St. Louis Cemetery #2 and wrote the text for their historic markers.
Antoinette K-Doe asked me to write a play about them called BURN K-DOE
BURN! and she asked me to write this piece about her Katrina experience.
Q: What
was the genesis of “Katrina: Mother-in-Law of ‘em All?”
Although
I'm a playwright and writer of nonfiction which focuses of this region, Katrina
was the last thing in the world I wanted to write about. I wanted to put
it out of my mind, which was of course impossible, but I certainly didn't want
to live with it 24 hours a day as you do when writing about something.
However, in listening to people over the subsequent months and years, I'd
occasionally hear stories which were so different from the popular narratives
that they compelled me to write them. The differences that struck me in
these stories were that although all these people went through hell, they
landed on their feet in a very strong, defiant, New Orleans way. They
also in many cases got through their experience with humor, which is very New
Orleans. If this experience had happened to another city I don't think
I'd have found narratives that are so funny. Something else these stories
emphasize is that despite how the region was portrayed – defeated, chaotic,
criminal – anyone here at the time can tell you that thousands of people were
behaving in exemplary ways. Strangers were helping strangers – countless acts of self-sacrifice, compassion,
and kindness that seemed to be hidden from people outside the region. So
part of this project was an attempt in a small way to create a record from the
inside-out which establishes that post-Katrina New Orleans wasn't all what
people were seeing on television, as this dialogue from the play illustrates:
RODNEYSo I
go back into the room where my folks are and they had run into some of the
people who had been on the roof with us. So there was this group of
octogenarians but with only one cot and they were taking turns lying down. The
young folks were trying to help the nurses, handing out water, taking people to
the bathroom, changing diapers, whatever we could. We had heard all these
horror stories about the city so I walk over to this nurse I see from
Alaska and say, “I just want to let you know how thankful we are that
you’re here because we keep hearing these stories about horrific things going
on all over New Orleans and I just want you to know that the whole city isn’t
populated by crazed lunatics who are burning it down and that we appreciate
your -NURSE Nobody
thinks that.
Q: You
write that these are based on true stories. How did you come to learn these stories?
I
think I was fortunate to access these stories because I wasn't looking for
them. Again, I was trying to mentally escape from Katrina. But like
everyone else here for the past 10 years, I've been listening to hundreds,
maybe thousands, of these experiences. So the stories kind of came to me.
At the time, there were writers parachuting into the region with tape
recorders looking for material, which struck me as odd with all the work that
needed to be done. Could you imagine going to Haiti after the earthquake
with a tape recorder looking for stories with all the death and destruction that
needed attention? For her PhD in Theatre History at L.S.U., Anne-Liese
Juge Fox wrote a paper on Katrina plays written by regional writers as opposed
to out-of-state writers. She concluded that out-of-state writers,
"Cut your heart out, put it on a plate and ate it in front of you,"
whereas the regional playwrights humanized the people of this region through
their Katrina experiences.
Q: How
were you personally affected by the hurricane?
If I
were to sum up in a few sentences what happened to my life during Katrina, most
people outside of here would say, "That's horrible!" But
compared to so many people I ultimately did much better so I don't like to
dwell on negative things that happened to me back then. And moving-on is
a characteristic I see in New Orleans people and which people have identified
in this play. About an earlier version of this play which went to the
Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, one of the KCACTF
adjudicators commented that the characters aren't self-pitying, which is
compelling for the audience. I guess as bad as their experiences were to
begin with, they were still alive? David Hoover, director of that U.N.O.
production, commented on this lack of self-pity by comparing it to Vietnam War
plays which David summed up like this: "O.K., I'm going to tell you
about my pain. Alright, get a little closer, because you need to know
about my pain. O.K., here comes the story about my pain: YOU CAN'T
UNDERSTAND MY PAIN!!!"
Some
of the positive effects of Katrina have been that although I've always loved
the people of New Orleans, Katrina made me love them much more. The
devastating human failures of Katrina were governmental but on a local level
many people conducted themselves heroically. And we all know how fantastic
the rest of the country and people from other countries have been to us for the
past 10 years. So although Katrina made me deeply cynical and bitter
toward all levels of government, the experience actually made me feel better about
individual human nature.
