Leroy and Lucy

 

"[When we’re dealing with artistic inspiration], are we wrestling with our demons, are we talking to a God, ...or maybe to ourselves"

 

 

The Characters

Leroy – Running, wandering and weary, he is on a path. On a path to where, he does not know. Is he running away from something, or running towards something? Guitar playing and harmonica breathing, he is talented, that’s for sure. But is talent enough?

Lucy - “I go by many names” says Lucy. She seems to have been here for aloooooonngggggg time. Ageless, but appears to us in a young body. Why is she here, and did Leroy just happen to stumble onto her at the crossroads in the middle of the night? A coincidence or did she know where to find him, ....and his guitar.

 

Reimagined Myths

During the course of this play, your understating of otherworldly themes such as African and Greek mythology may be challenged.

 

 

"Robert Johnson has become the stuff of legend; his voice and talent on the guitar, some have said, were of an almost supernatural virtuosity. In Leroy and Lucy, playwright Ngozi Anyanwu drops us at a crossroads in Mississippi, at the stroke of midnight, with two strangers. This setting is immediately familiar; crossroads, and the deities that frequent them, have been at the heart of myths and legends across countries, cultures and faiths for millennia. But Ngozi’s play is not aimed merely to retell a folk tale many might know; it is to reclaim it"

- Artistic Directors Audrey Francis and Glenn Davis

 

 

LEROY

Naw Naw I remember that story
She was ugly
So ugly men turned to stone.

LUCY

That’s a fable
Folklore.
That ain’t real.


Throughout this story, the playwright asks us to engage in a level of rebellious imagination and question everything we think we know:

  • What makes someone or something “good” or “evil,” and who has the power to define that?
  • What do we truly know about the age-old stories in our culture? Do we know every side, or only the side that is most accessible to us?
  • What trends do we notice in the stories passed down to us from generations before? Is there a specific perspective that tends to win out?

 

Behind the Man

Uncover more details about Robert “Leroy” Johnson in this article carefully penned by our Young Adult Council Alum Tyra Smith.

WHO IS ROBERT JOHNSON? TAPPING INTO THE HISTORY OF LEROY AND LUCY

Ngozi Anyanwu’s Leroy and Lucy is loosely inspired by the life and myth of blues musician Robert Johnson. Johnson is largely known in popular culture by the crossroads myth, as the man who sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads to become a masterful guitar player. While Johnson’s influence in modern music remains significant, his life story was largely shrouded in mystery. Since the late 1980s, numerous musicians and scholars have published their research and Johnson’s surviving family and friends have recounted their stories to paint a clearer portrait of the man whose musical stylings laid the groundwork for rock and roll.

In the play, Anyanwu remixes the crossroads myth to explore themes of identity, truth, destiny, and remembrance. As you read below for more of the historical and cultural context behind Leroy and Lucy, we invite you to consider:

  • How do people and places influence a story?
  • Why do certain stories prevail against time while others are forgotten?
  • Is there value in disproven myths?

Born in 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, Robert Johnson was the son of Julia Major Dodds, a housekeeper, and Noah Johnson, a farmworker (Conforth 31). Johnson initially learned to play guitar from his stepbrother Charles (Conforth 59). Unattracted to the arduous work and exploitative pay of sharecroppers in the Deep South, Johnson pursued the economic possibilities available to traveling musicians who could earn money playing at juke joints and in cities where audiences had disposable income (Oakes 2019).

We see this reflected in the play as Leroy is on his way to Memphis, Tennessee, where he hopes to perform at a juke joint for money.

LUCY

What’s in Memphis Leroy?

LEROY

The future
My future.

Soon after, Leroy clarifies:

LEROY

There’s a place I heard about.
They pay good money for singers
And this joint It’s like
Well it’s like
Like a kinda Eden for musicians

While Johnson eventually recorded 29 songs, he was not initially known as a skilled guitarist (Oakes 2019). Rather he was said to be a decent harmonica player. According to established bluesman Son House, when Johnson handled a guitar, his clumsy strumming was a nuisance (Guralnick 15). How Johnson became an innovative guitarist puzzled other notable bluesmen who Johnson admired such as Son House and Willie Brown. In the 1930s, Johnson was said to have disappeared for a year and returned with the ability to play complex rhythms on a seven-string guitar. Johnson’s transformation from fumbling to adept player served as the genesis of the crossroads myth (Oakes 2019).

 

The Makings of the Myth

A myth is a story that explains the origins of the world, a community, or a phenomena. Myths emerge from the desire to understand remarkable or fantastic events. They can also serve as parables, providing wisdom and principles for people to live by. Over time, the original story may change or evolve as the myth reaches different cultures and places. Leroy and Lucy discuss this when Lucy recounts the gruesome story of Medusa, a beautiful African goddess, which contradicts Leroy’s more simplistic understanding of Medusa, a hideous woman whose gaze turned men to stone.

Throughout cultures, similar figures who hold different names arise. In the play, we learn about an Igbo deity Ekwensu, sometimes called Legba or Esu. We hear about the loneliness this god endures as a forgotten and misinterpreted deity, specifically in the mainland United States. They have been ignored or seen as the devil, and are reeling from the aftermath of the transatlantic slave trade which resulted in the loss and reinvention of West African culture by enslaved Africans.

Several prevalent beliefs or interpretations of events present in the early 1900s fueled the crossroads myth, including the belief that the blues was the “devil’s music” by some Christians, various hoodoo folktales of people making deals with the devil at a crossroads and the true story of Robert Johnson’s guitar lessons with his mentor Ike Zimmerman at a graveyard in Beauregard, MS (Conforth 105, 119).

Furthermore, interpretations of lyrics from Johnson’s recorded songs “Crossroads Blues” and “Hellhound on My Trail” aided the myth.

 

The Crossroads

Leroy and Lucy is set at the crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi. In myths, crossroads often represents a moment when a protagonist must make a decision that will determine the outcome of their life, community or society. The crossroads can also represent a meeting place for those from both the earthly and spiritual worlds to commune. Often a protagonist meets a spiritual figure, a mediator or trickster, and the following interaction irrevocably alters the protagonist’s life. At the crossroads, Leroy and Lucy discuss several mythical figures including Medusa, Adam and Eve and Lillith, Anansi, Legba and Oba. The Igbo deity, Ekwensu, is a god of dual nature holding good and evil, truth and deception.

As you watch the play, we invite you to consider how Anyanwu employs the concept of crossroads and duality. What crucial decisions are Leroy and Lucy tasked with making? What or who influences their decisions?

 

Article Resources

  • Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow (2019)
  • Remastered: Devil at the Crossroads (2019) directed by Brian Oakes
  • Searching for Robert Johnson by Peter Guranick (1989)
  • Overlooked No More: Robert Johnson, Bluesman Whose Life Was a Riddle by Reggie Ugwu (2019)
    • https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/obituaries/robert-johnson-overlooked.html
  • Neo-Hoodoo Dramaturgy: Robert Johnson on Stage by Patricia R. Schroeder (2015)
  • Mojo Workin’ by Katrina Hazzard-Donald (2012)

 

Additional Context

Still curious? Flip through our Education and Engagement guide to dig deeper.

LEARN MORE

 

 

EXTERNAL REFERENCES

Robert Johnson Foundation | Website
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame | Wesbite
Remastered: Devil at the Crossroads | Netflix Series
True Story of Growing Up with Blues Legend Robert Johnson | NPR Audio Story
Overlooked No More: Robert Johnson, Bluesman Whose Life Was a Riddle | New York Times Article
Can You Hear the Wind Howl | Documentary

 

PHOTOS: Jon Michael Hill and Brittany Bradford in Ngozi Anyawu’s Leroy and Lucy. Photos by Michael Brosilow.