39 pages • 1 hour read
Alice ChildressTrouble in Mind
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1955A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Blues Music
While Trouble in Mind is, for the most part, a naturalist drama, there is one motif that Alice Childress employs that breaks the world of naturalism. The sound of Blues Music seeps into the world on stage at various points within the play. Act I begins and ends with the sound, and Act II also starts off with Blues Music. It is later revealed that this music is likely a memory from a gig Wiletta had years ago. She discusses it with Henry at the beginning of the play:
HENRY (Welcomes an old memory): You…you are Wiletta Mayer…more than twenty years ago, in the old Galy Theater… (Wiletta is pleased to be remembered) You was singin’ a number, with the lights changin’ color all around you… […]
WILETTA: Was a doggone rainbow.
HENRY: And you looked so pretty and sounded so fine, there’s no denyin’ it (8).
Later, Wiletta moves downstage and poses like she did when she sang the blues at the Galy all those years ago. The motif reminds the audience of the time Wiletta felt good on the stage, the longing she has to return to that feeling, and the decades that have passed since.
Initially, the sound comes at the beginning or end of an act. However, in Act II, it happens after Wiletta is shut down by Manners the first time she critiques the script. She is doing all she can to fight the overwhelming dread she has about this role. As she stands alone on stage, pacing and reciting her lines, suddenly the “Lights whirl and flicker. Blues record comes in loud, then down, lights flicker to indicate passage of time. Wiletta is gone. Stage is empty” (74). This time, the Blues Music is an intrusive memory that breaks the reality of the play. The way Childress uses the Blues Music motif is not too dissimilar from another of her contemporaries, Tennessee Williams, who also used music to show the past invading on the present in his play A Streetcar Named Desire. Both Childress and Williams use the music to not only provide context for a memory, but to prompt action. For Wiletta, the memory of the joy she felt on stage once gives her the necessary courage to stand up for the craft she loves. Finally, she has had enough of seeing theater as a business and wants to see it as an art again.
Recorded Applause
The beginning of Act II introduces a new character, an older white actor named Bill O’Wray. Manners is directing him, with Eddie at his side taking notes and playing applause on a tape recorder. They are rehearsing a scene where Bill’s character, Renard, is delivering a glib speech about helping Black people in moderation. At certain points of the speech, Eddie is directed to play the recorded applause, adding emphasis to certain parts of the speech. This recorded applause is intentionally comedic and stilted. This comedy is Childress’s way of exposing the artificial absurdity of scripts like Chaos in Belleville, and audiences who enjoy them, as the praising given to Chaos is intentionally fabricated.
The recorder appears again at the end of the play, when Wiletta and Henry are left alone on stage. Henry asks what’s on the recorder, and she plays it for him, saying, “Canned applause. When you need a bit of instant praise…you turn it on…and there you are” (89). Henry grabs the recorder, and, after Wiletta says her piece and takes the stage for herself, he plays the applause for her. This time, the applause doesn’t seem humorous. Instead, it is sad and ironic, symbolic of the audiences who are not there to witness Wiletta taking control of her own story on the stage.
Justification
Manners, who has spent most of his time in Hollywood directing films, is enthusiastic about directing his first Broadway show. He is eager to test out some new directing methods, and one in particular: justification. He is constantly telling the actors to justify their actions and it is this methodology that causes Wiletta to look closer than ever at all that is problematic with her character and the script as a whole.
Justification is also used as another way to divide the actors. The younger ones who have taken classes, John and Judy, are well equipped to answer questions from Manners because of their training. Wiletta, however, is not as well equipped. She calls Manners out on this, saying, “You don’t ever listen to me. You hear the others but not me. And it’s ‘cause of the school. ‘Cause they know ‘bout justifyin’ and the antagonist…I never studied that, so you don’t want to hear me, that’s all right” (67). She quickly learns that in this area, the younger actors have a leg up on understanding what Manners wants from them, but that shouldn’t negate her own feelings about what she knows is right. When Wiletta realizes she cannot justify her character’s actions, she snaps at Manners: “Yeah, kill my child and call me violent, that’s what comes of all the justifyin’” (79). Ironically, the very method that Manners insists on using is what helps Wiletta find the language for what’s wrong with the play.
