Solo acts

There’s a big problem with Ravening Woman, a one-woman monologue debuting as part of California Stage’s annual Solo Festival. The problem is there are only three more chances to see this impressive, poetic play detailing an African tribal woman’s struggle to save her culture and sanity amid late-1800’s British colonial oppression.

Ravening Woman is the first of two plays offered at this year’s Solo Festival, and is scheduled for two weekends only, so time is of the essence to catch the remaining three performances. (The festival’s second offering is Ubiquity, written and performed by JD Rudometkin; it plays March 1-10.)

Director Ray Tatar stumbled across Ravening Woman in Glimmer Train, a short-story magazine, and recognized the one-person narrative as having monologue potential. Though Tatar prefers to partner with writers in debuting their work, Ravening Woman author George Makana Clark was unable to travel to Sacramento, so the two tele-produced the transformation of short story to stage.

The lyrical writing, along with a lovely performance by Lavinia Cooper and the dramatic drumming of Kenneth Ritchards, work together to tell the haunting story of a Xhosa tribal member simply referred to as “The Woman.”

Cooper, dressed in regal African-print skirt and head wrap, enters the stage, quietly lights candles strewn about, and begins to address the audience as a tribal storyteller. Through vignettes, she tells the history of her people—the strange-but-true story of the Xhosa’s mass self-destruction while facing British oppression, the subsequent slow disappearance of tribal customs and language, and the awkward relocation to the city.

The play is a showcase of Clark’s writing, with such beautiful lines as “the years flocked over me without leaving a shadow” and “the house was so big, clouds formed inside.”

Cooper successfully transforms herself into the Xhosa woman, and the staging works well with her pacing the stage, sitting in a large rattan chair, or bounding eye-level on the theater floor. A couple of times Clark dips into reciting mode, but considering the length of monologues, the lush language, foreign words and tribal accent, she does an admirable job. The handsome set with the large rattan chair, and African-print screens, baskets, pots and wood carvings, along with the mesmerizing beat of Ritchards drumming, work to transport the audience into the heart of Africa.