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Southern Fried Love Road Trip Diary I
Southern Fried Love Road Trip Diary I
©by Leo Adam Biga
Just got back mid-evening on Memorial Day from a one-week family road trip down South. We were two mixed race couples of different generations heading down to Dixieland. Beaufield Berry and Rob Fisher, plus their baby Shine along for the ride. Then there was Pamela Jo Berry (Beau’s mother) and myself. Pam and I rode shotgun with the baby while Rob and Beau took turns driving. Eight days and a couple thousand miles of travel is a lot for anyone, especially a 21-month old, but Shine was a remarkable trouper.
Our happy band of travelers pit-stopped in Kansas City to board a dog before wending our way in a southernly direction to our vacation’s first real destination, St. Louis. We toured the St. Louis Art Museum and the new National Blues Museum. The first rates 4-stars and the second 3-stars. Some in our party did the City Museum downtown. The single most impressive thing we did and viewed was tour the St. Louis Basilica a truly magnificent sacred structure that left us in a state of awe. I know, not exactly a fun thing to do, but meaningful and impactful, Immersed in that wonder. I swear that my soul stirred and my vision expanded.
Civil Rights Museum.
“I can’t explain how it feels to be here. I have goosebumps the whole time. I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m grateful…this is a must see. You HAVE to come here. They start at Africa and walk you all the way through.” –Beau
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Lorraine Motel – National Civil Rights Museum |
Graceland. ❤️❤️❤️#bucketlistchecked – Beau
“They ain’t playin with these collard greens down here.” – Beau
Memphis was next among our bucket list destinations and its mega attractions of Graceland and the civil Rights Museum provided two vastly distinct history experiences. Each in its own way and for its own attributes rates 5 stars. Graceland offers more than what any of us expected in terms of personalizing Elvis and his place in the collective popular culture consciousness. The Civil Rights Museum sensitively and intelligently blends the preserved Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was assassinated with a surrounding museum. The extensive exhibits walk you through the legacy of slavery from pre-colonial times all the way through to the Emancipation Proclamation and its messy aftermath. It informs you of the earliest efforts for equal rights that culminated in the modern civil rights movement. It takes you through the birth of that movement and King’s rise within it. It places you as well as any exhibit possibly could right in the thick of the protests, demonstrations, sit-ins and marches.
Beale Street proved surprisingly short but we consumed some mouth watering and flavorful food there, including a killer gumbo and some righteous greens and cornbread, and we caught some down home blues thanks to the Queen of Beale Street, Miss Ruby Wilson. Our waiter at B.B. King’s restaurant was a gregarious ambassador for the charms of Memphis, We stayed at an AirBnB-found private home in a quiet Country Club-like neighborhood. It was a spacious, comfy, unpretentious family dwelling with a great big old covered patio and deck we meant to do a grill out on but never quite got around to. If felt like a home away from home. The drive out of Memphis gave us a thrilling view between the Bass Pro Shops’ pyramid headquarters and the steel arched Hernando de Soto Bridge spanning a picturesque segment of the Mississippi River.
The only things I was sorry we didn’t make time for were tours of the legendary Sun and Stax Records.
Branson
Christ of the Ozarks #eurekasprings
We were to have continued south to Nashville, where we planned to do the Grand Ole Opry and some music studios, but our accommodations got double booked in a major AirBnB snafu. So in classic improv fashion we double backed and spent our last few nights on a lakefront condo between Eureka Springs, Arkansas and Branson, Missouri. It made for a nice Plan B compromise getaway within the larger getaway. Eureka Springs was a delightful surprise to us for its rich mix of historic buildings, eclectic architecture and hippie trippy vibe meets redneck kitsch. We were surprised too by the hilly, rocky terrain of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri that alternated with lush forests and big beautiful valleys. Saw far more Confederate flags and references to Dixie than we spied in Tennessee. As two mixed race couples down South we never felt uncomfortable, though the sight of those old wound symbols was a bit upsetting. But everybody we met, with very few exceptions, was friendly and inviting. Branson was far less visually and aesthetically pleasing than Eureka Springs, but in all fairness we only drove through its main strip or drag with all the theaters and shows. Our stroll time there was limited to another section of town devoted to shops and eateries. We mean to go back one day to take in some of those iconic Branson attractions.
Staying on that lake provided a tranquil respite to all the ferrying around from point to point. The only harrowing part of the whole trip was driving at night on dim-lit winding roads from Memphis to Eureka Springs. The weather the whole time we were away was moderate with plenty of sunshine and some stunning skyscapes and sunsets for good measure. The only inclement encountered happened on the return jaunt home between K.C., where we retrieved the dog, and Omaha, when we drove through a storm cell that kept opening up on us. Adding to the excitement of heading home was Beau, who is a playwright, fretting if she’d make it home in time for a 7:30 p.m reading compilation of some of her new work at the Great Plains Theatre Conference. Construction delays and storm surges worked against us before the road and the sky finally cleared and she made it back with plenty of time to spare.
All in all, a good, positive, fun-filled bonding time and adventure shared by people who love each other. A much needed break from the grinding routine and rut. Thank you Beau for planning such a cool gypsy experience and for expertly changing things on the fly the few times when plans did go awry. You did a great job with the accommodations and making sure we all saw and did things that touched our hearts and expanded our minds. Thank you Rob for being our steadfast main driver and all around leavening agent with your good sense and humor. Thank you Shine for being the joyful life spirit who engenders love and trust. Thank you Pamela for being the Queen Earth Mother whose serene example of going with the flow became our team mantra. Thank you God for fending off the panic attack-like freakouts that have spoiled some of my travels. This was all good and easy going down, just like a Southern Fried Chicken dinner smothered in homemade peppered gravy. A real Pot Liquor-rich flavored, stick-to-the-ribs good time.
Omaha playwright Beaufield Berry comes into her own with original comedy “Psycho Ex Girlfriend”
Writers come in all packages. Few are packaged as colorfully as Beaufield Berry, a young, talented Omaha playwright who’s just coming into her own as a force to be reckoned with. Her new original comedy, Psycho Ex Girlfriend, is now playing at the Shelterbelt Theatre in town. My profile of Berry is soon to appear in The Reader (www.thereader.com). It won’t surprise me if her work eventually gets produced in theaters regionally and nationally.
Beaufield Berry, ©femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com
Omaha playwright Beaufield Berry comes into her own with original comedy “Psycho Ex Girlfriend”
©by Leo Adam Biga
Appeared in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
Everything about one of Omaha’s bright new playwrights bespeaks exotica, starting with her name, Beaufield Berry. This biracial, bicoastal creative with model good looks has worked as an actor, a singer, a VIP dancer, a burlesque performer, a mud wrestler and a horse ranch entertainment director.
She’s into body-building. She’s fallen in and out of love. She’s suffered broken hearts and broken a few herself. She’s written several plays, a novel, a television pilot and many poems. She’s had works read at the Great Plains Theatre Conference. One ended up staged in New York. Another in Philadelphia.
Her self-described original full-length “dark comedy,Psycho Ex Girlfriend, is in the midst of a month-long run at the Shelterbelt Theatre, 3225 California St., where it continues through May 12. Playwright and former Shelterbelt artistic director Ellen Struve is a champion of Berry’s work. So is new artistic director, ElizaBeth Thompson, who directs the show.
Fans of Omaha native author and playwright Rachel Shukert will find a similar satiric voice in Berry.
Berry calls her play’s title character, Britte, a “crazy, kooky, quirky girl,” adding, “Parts of the show I wouldn’t say are autobiographical but I wouldn’t say they’re extremely foreign to me either. When I was writing the show I had myself kind of in mind. It was a really cathartic writing experience from beginning to end. I was sharing my writing as I usually do with my close, intimate friends, my best friend Katie Beacom-Hurst being one of them. So when it was done at the Shelterbelt Reading Series (in 2012) we had the luxury of hand-picking the cast and there was no one else I wanted to play Britte but Katie, someone who knows me inside out and has watched me take this journey.”
Beacom-Hurst landed the same role in the current Shelterbelt production. Britte’s best friends, KB and Didi, played by Katlynn Yost and Kaitlyn McClincy, morph into several more characters to create a Greek chorus. The boyfriend, Matt, is played by Nick LeMay, who also plays other male roles.
Berry started Psycho in 2010. By 2011 it lagged as she found herself stuck in a bad case of writer’s block.
“It wasn’t until I went to Central America by myself for two months on this soul journey to Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador that I really had a breakthrough.
Once I got out of my surroundings and got alone and foreign the show became really close to the play that’s being performed.”
Berry has another full-length play, He’s Here, being considered for a month-long workshop by the Raven Theatre in Chicago.
It’s a full resume for anyone, especially for the just-turned 29 artist who after years of flitting around has finally settled down. She has a real job at Rebel Interactive, an Omaha branding agency.
“I’ve always had a sense of independence, I’ve always been a do-what-I-want kind of person,” she says.
Upon returning from Central America she says she felt “transformed.” She’s more purposeful than ever about doing her work and getting it produced. But like most writers she’s beset by insecurities about the very thing she cares so much about.
“When it comes to writing it’s the only thing I feel like I’m here for this reason, so it’s very close, it’s very personal. So it just scares me shitless whenever anybody even says anything good. I can’t believe it.”
Her play The Waiting Line about a cross-section of people awaiting organ transplants received an unusually strong response at its Great Plains reading
“It was overwhelming. I walked in there with my mom and my best friend holding their hands, I was so scared. It was very emotional. It’s nerve wracking for me to hear my words in actors’ mouths.
“But that was by far the best response I’ve had to any of my pieces and I’ve had a lot of positive feedback on other shows. One of my panelists called the show ‘raw and visceral, poetic and lyrical.’ Whoa! What?
“I didn’t set out to be any of those things, it just mused through me…
Words tend to automatically flow through her. Like the poems she puts on Redbubble.
“I don’t edit any of that, it all comes straight-out however it comes. Very organically. I feel like if I work it too much or think about it too much I’m going to take all the life out of it.”
Berry
The feedback she gets from readings and workshops helps her hone her plays.
She’s long had a writing gift though claiming it as her own has been another thing.
“It’s hard for me to even say gift. I really don’t know where it’s coming from. I am a good writer but I can’t think too highly no matter what somebody else says, no matter what I think because not everything is going to be accepted. I’m going to get rejection letter after rejection letter and that hurts. So I just take everything casually. I’m on pins and needles, every single goddam time.”
Growing up she was steeped in creativity by her artist mother, Pamela Berry, who got Beau started in theater at 14. The home-schooled Berry got her experience at churches where her mom organized theater productions and through the Omaha scouting theater troupe, Explorer Post 619. She says working with the troupe “was a great experience,” adding, “You got to write and direct your own shows. We did some awesome stuff and some really bad stuff, too I happen to know a lot of people in the theater community from the Post – people I met there.”
Her involvement with the Post ended around age 19, when the intrigue of dating took hold. She eloped at 20 and divorced soon after. Then in quick succession she put together a burlesque troupe, the Sparkling Diamonds, that opened for some bands before falling apart. She went off to Vegas, where she went by Carmen Rose. There, she formed a hip-hop dance group and relaunched a new version of Diamonds. She was doing off-strip VIP table dancing when she wound up a paid mud wrestler at a club. She did a stint as a Miller Lite Girl.
What possessed her to lead this Reality TV life.
“Oh, it was Vegas, I was 21, I have no idea. I get bored extremely easily and I have to always be looking for the next big thing or something fun to do. I just want to try everything. Like there’s no reason not to.”
Love took her to New Jersey. Philadelphia became a regular haunt. She did some spoken word there. She appeared in a production of Cabaret. Through it all, she kept writing. Eventually her plays got readings in Philly and one, Ugly Birds, was performed at Spark Fest.
When her East Coast love affair went bad she went to Telluride, Colo., where she wrote The Waiting Line.
There was also a music sojourn in Calif. and various forays to Europe, Canada, Mexico. Her “traveling self” is so engrained that even though she’s seemingly found in Omaha what she’s been searching for she’ll always be footloose and fancy free.
“I think the majority of my soul will never quite be settled anywhere and that’s why I want to give myself the luxury of traveling to places and staying there for a few months spurt, so I can keep my foot in the world.
“What I really love about Omaha that I didn’t find on either coast is there really is an opportunity to create your own world of whatever your art is. There’s a lot of open doors here and if you’re of an entrepreneurial spirit there’s a lot of doors you can open yourself.”
She’s currently looking at forming her own theater production company.
For tickets to Psycho call 402-341-2757 or visit http://www.shelterbelt.org.
Related articles
- Matched Set: Susan Baer Collins and Carl Beck Share a Life and Career Based in Theater at the Omaha Community Playhouse (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
- Playwrights-In-Residence and The Meaning Of Homegrown Theatre (undermainblog.wordpress.com)
- Region sets scene for local playwrights (triblive.com)
- Bailiwick Chicago Theater Presents the World Premiere of MAHAL By Resident Playwright Danny Bernardo (chicagostagestandard.com)
- Playwrights-In-Residence and The Meaning Of Homegrown Theatre (nepaplaywrights.wordpress.com)
- when the playwright is owned (nepaplaywrights.wordpress.com)
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