A veteran actress opens 'Eyes'

The enthusiasm, energy, and embroidered jean jacket could all belong to a lively teenager.

But Ruby Dee, now starring in the new off-Broadway play, "Saint Lucy's Eyes," has been creating complex women characters on stage, in film, and on television for more than 50 years.

Describing Grandma, the central figure in Bridgette A. Wimberly's provocative new play, the veteran actress calls her character "an extraordinary older woman who has found a real purpose in life."

Set in Memphis, Tenn., the play opens in 1968, when Grandma has scheduled yet another kitchen-table abortion in the tiny, run-down apartment she shares with her husband, a sanitation worker on strike. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has come to town to support the action.

"It isn't really about abortion," Ms. Dee explains, settling into the small cot in her cozy dressing room at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York's Greenwich Village. "It's about rescue. She's contradictory - she's extremely religious, yet she does what she has to do and says God will forgive her." King's assassination that night creates a plot development that changes the woman's life.

For Dee, political activism "was always a part of me." The daughter of a railroad porter, she was raised in Harlem, surrounded by the rising tide of civil-rights activities during the Depression.

"I knew A. Philip Randolph [founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first labor organization of black workers in the United States] before I knew that I knew him," Dee says. "I remember being little, looking up in a crowd at people talking on street corners, hearing about the struggles, seeing riots."

Her distinguished acting career often mirrored her political awareness, with theater roles such as Lena in Athol Fugard's "Boesman & Lena," and Lutiebelle in "Purlie Victorious," penned by actor Ossie Davis, her husband of 52 years.

But three of her movie roles, in particular, spread over three decades, have contributed to how white audiences have viewed the black American experiences. "A Raisin in the Sun" (1961), "Up Tight" (1968), and "Do the Right Thing" (1989), she points out, "were all set in particular and very real times. 'Raisin' was very much about the concerns that came with integrating a neighborhood...."

"Up Tight" director Jules Dassin invited Dee to co-write the screenplay about the rebellious conditions in a black neighborhood, and "the times were changing as we were doing it. King was killed while we were filming. We had to change the story."

Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" "was about a set of circumstances that existed for many, many years on the verge of change, that came to a head in the film. In my own life, I remember being told, 'Don't buy where you can't work.' "

For Dee and Mr. Davis, the assassination of King has had a personal impact. "We met him many, many times because we were always doing benefits, raising funds [for the civil-rights movement], whatever we could do."

While still a teenager in Harlem, Dee took her first job, "distributing samples of Swan Soap for Lever Brothers, door to door. I came in contact with women who lived alone with children that seemed to be out of wedlock, and [I] saw the suffering and pain that go along with that life."

Says Davis of his wife: "We met in December of 1945, rehearsing Robert Audry's play 'Jeb,' and she was an understudy. Nothing impressive about that! But when it became necessary to replace the young lady who was playing my character's love interest, they asked Ruby to step in and hold the rehearsals together while they looked for somebody else.

"Well, when Ruby stepped on that stage, it was apparent to everybody, including myself, that we really didn't need to look any further. She was a professional." They went on to collaborate professionally more than 30 times, and their marriage produced three children and seven grandchildren.

Davis makes a point of noting that "Ruby was always there for the children, no matter what." Once they were both called to testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, and the baby sitter didn't show up. "I tried to explain to [the committee] that Ruby wasn't absent because of an act of defiance," Davis says, "but because she said she wasn't going down there and leaving her children alone."

"He didn't want to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary," Dee says of her husband, laughing. "So I came up with the idea of doing a benefit for theaters like the New Federal and other off- and off-off Broadway theaters that have been struggling for years. And he bought it! My heart is always with those groups because I came from one, in a basement on 135th Street." They raised a quarter of a million dollars, and divided it among 14 theaters.

Because she is also a writer, having written plays, musicals, and books, including her autobiography, "My One Good Nerve," Dee says she respected "Saint Lucy's Eyes" playwright Wimberly's "ear for the individual characters. Each one has its own set of speech vibrations. You don't feel the author is speaking through all the characters. It's a play that demands an actor's full attention...."

Dee hasn't let race keep her from some of the theater's most significant roles, having portrayed Amanda in Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" and Mary Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night."

After completing a TV movie for the Lifetime channel in June, "about chemical plants being built in Louisiana - a real, drastic subject," she settled into this play, which runs through Labor Day. "It's really about forgiveness, and second chances, and common sense in relationships. These are subjects we all need to hear about."