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Feb. 24, 2006
Black power, Jewish pride
Rain Pryor brings her one-woman show to the JCC this weekend.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
Her father was one of the most famous – or perhaps infamous
– comics of the late 20th century. But that doesn't mean Richard
Pryor's little girl can't stand on her own two feet.
"I've wanted to perform ever since I was a baby," Rain
Pryor told the Independent in a phone interview from New York. "Everyone
knew this was what I was going to be." Unlike many celebrity
parents, who try to dissuade their offspring from treading the boards,
she said, "My dad encouraged me. Both my parents wanted me
to be a performer. They knew it. The rest of my family got trust
funds; I got the rainbow Afro wig and Mr. Microphone. They were
like, 'she's gonna make it!' "
As if growing up in the shadow of a famous parent weren't enough,
Pryor was also the product of a mixed marriage (her mother is Jewish)
at a time when there was little social acceptance of it. It's the
subject of her one-woman show, Fried Chicken and Latkes,
which opens the Chutzpah! Festival Saturday night.
"It was interesting," she mused. "The '70s were an
interesting time to be a biracial child. It wasn't as accepted as
it is today, so there was a lot of difficulty on both sides; on
being accepted because I was light-skinned. The show focuses really
on my family and their perceptions on race and some of the people
I grew up with and just coming into my own – realizing that
I'm black and Jewish and beautiful and I don't have to really choose."
Pryor said she has always moved easily between her different backgrounds.
"I joke about it in my show," she said. "I've been
doing Chrismakkuh for years." Growing up, her family always
had a Christmas tree. ("We call it a Chanukah bush," she
said wryly.)
Although she just won best female performer at the 2005 NAACP (National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People) awards for
Fried Chicken and Latkes and has regularly headlined at comedy
clubs, Pryor defies easy categorization. "I would just say
I'm an actor," she observed. "People just assume I'm funny
automatically. But I trained. I did Shakespeare acting in high school.
I'm more well-versed than people think I am."
She's also played dramatic roles in film, television and on stage
(including Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues). She's currently
working on a book, Behind the Laughter, an album of jazz
standards and – along with a team of research scientists –
a treatment for multiple sclerosis patients. (Richard Pryor, a long-time
MS sufferer, died last December at the age of 65.)
"I'm working on creating an artificial nerve ending,"
said Pryor, "which can send impulses through the spinal column
to the brain to help with mobility. So I'm definitely involved in
that area and I'm very much behind what they do."
Fried Chicken and Latkes, which will soon be mounted off-Broadway
and at the Edinburgh Festival, began three years ago as a cabaret
show. Pryor managed to round up enough investors to produce a run
at a 375-seat theatre in Beverly Hills. Now, she said, "it's
evolving and changing and becoming a little more theatrical. It's
different characters, there's music ... it's like John Leguizamo
meets Bette Midler. People can expect to cry, they can expect to
laugh, they can expect to hopefully gain something from it, poignant
as well. And to be entertained and to be free to have a good time,
to participate verbally if they need to. It's not like the kind
of theatre piece where you have to sit and [here Pryor affects a
posh English accent] watch the play. There are a couple of
characters that ask the audience to participate, so it's like, you
know, feel free, have fun."
She was very close to her father, and admits that he was certainly
an influence on her performance style. "My show is a story
about my life," she said, "and it's truth and my dad was
all about truth and being able to just put it out there. He was
very vulnerable on stage and I think I have learned that from him.
Not to be afraid to just go. I do say things that push people's
buttons. I deal with stereotypes in my show; there are stereotypes
in my show. Sometimes it ticks people off. But I'm sorry, in the
'70s, that's what existed. It's kind of hard not to allow my Jewish
grandmother to be stereotypical – she is a stereotypical Jewish
grandmother who I grew up with."
Pryor also credits her Jewish background with a legacy of positive
influences, though. "It's the food," she said, "it's
the traditions, it's the holidays. It's the teaching of Torah, it's
the family values that I hold onto. My mom didn't embrace it as
much, but my grandparents were the ones, you know, my bubbe was
the one who taught me everything and same with my grandfather, my
grandfather and I would sit down and talk about Torah. Both of them
can't stand temple but they go every year [for the High Holidays]."
Pryor will perform Fried Chicken and Latkes at 8 p.m. on
Saturday, Feb. 25, and 1 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 26, at the Norman Rothstein
Theatre. For tickets, call 604-257-5145.
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