Ozzie Jones puts his stamp on 'Black Nativity' - again

Watching Ozzie Jones at work can feel more like a jam session than a theater rehearsal. Not just because of all the music that's such an integral part of Langston Hughes' Black Nativity, which Jones is directing at Theatre Horizon in Norristown, but because of the loose, improvisatory, collaborative feeling that abounds in his creative process.

At a recent rehearsal, he was trying to shape the opening scene of Act One, an African-set retelling of the birth of Christ, though he often seemed like the least concerned person in the room, more genial party host than director. Music director Will Brock alternately paced the floor and ran to his keyboard, creating an impromptu arrangement of "Joy to the World." Suggestions might come from anywhere: a dance move from Sanchel Brown, who plays Mary and who has worked with the African-inspired dance company Urban Bush Women; a vocal line from Candace Benson, a runner-up on BET's gospel singing competition Sunday Best.

Even while working the room, Jones took it all in. When the results didn't quite jell, they were met with a terse, "That's not it," and the hum of activity sprang back into motion. When he liked what he saw, however, he would leap out of his seat and dance a few steps.

"I don't really think of myself as a theater director," Jones said. "I'm a musician. I very early on started approaching theater as if this is my instrument. What's the tune? What are the changes? What's the rhythm going to be? I'm trying to make every play that I do feel like you're listening to a song."

If each play is a song, Black Nativity might be considered one of Jones' greatest hits. The Philly native first directed Hughes' take on the Christmas story at Freedom Theatre in 1994, just two years after graduating from New England's Bates College. The production garnered several Barrymore Award nominations, putting the young director on the map. He reprised the show in 1999 at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, and in December presented a piece inspired by Hughes' play in Cape Town, South Africa.

"This is a really important piece for me because it sort of started my career," Jones said. "I was really young and it was a hit, so it got me a lot of attention that usually doesn't come for theater directors until you're the age I am now. But also, I'm Christian. Like with anybody who has a spiritual or cultural connection to something, anytime you get to deal with something beyond functionality, it's a blessing. This show is always an opportunity for me to do my job and worship."

Black Nativity is unique in the freedom it offers directors. The play was designed so each production could tailor the songs and setting to its particular audience. Traditionally, the first act is set in an abstract precolonial Africa; the second act transplants the story to a more contemporary setting. For Theatre Horizon's production, Jones sets the second half in a ruined church in post-Katrina New Orleans.

"Very often the Christmas story is taught like a Kardashian wedding: a commercialized, goofy event," Jones said. "What I'm always trying to get at with the piece - what I think Langston Hughes was trying to get at - is about God coming to the poorest and weakest members of society when they're being oppressed, and finding liberation and inspiration in that connection with God. The story of Christ has been co-opted by the One Percent to oppress the way people think, to oppress the way they connect with each other, to put up more walls between each other, when, if you actually read the text of the New Testament, it does the exact opposite."

Hughes conceived Black Nativity as a corrective to more white-centric depictions of the Christmas story, which places it in line with much of Jones' recent work. Last year, he directed an African American version of The Death of a Salesman for Philly's GoKash Productions, followed over the summer by an all-black reimagining of Shakespeare's Othello in Malcolm X Park.

"I'd love to be able to say that it's on purpose," Jones shrugged. "But my work has become a situation where I'm directing all-black casts all the time because white theater companies don't ask me to direct plays with white casts. Ever. I guess you could say it's become on purpose intellectually and philosophically out of the practicality of a reality."

Those circumstances have led Jones' work to take on a more social-realist cast than he might prefer, he said. "If I get a call from a white theater company, it's to do Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, and, now, Suzan-Lori Parks, which is funny, because all that isn't really my thing. I appreciate it intellectually and spiritually, but I like weirdo [stuff]. I want the dance and the music, I want to get freaky with it. Black writers right now aren't playing with time and space and form the way that Amiri Baraka or Sonia Sanchez did."

In his own work, Jones is bringing together his love of music and theater with an ambitious series of plays inspired by American jazz and blues composers collectively called "The Real Book," with pieces on Charlie Parker and Miles Davis so far completed. But he's also not complaining about the opportunities presented to him.

"I've got a very Bob Marley/George Clinton way of looking at what I do. I want to work with people that want to work with me. If it's 'irie' " - pleasing - "and the vibes are good, I just want to have fun and make art that's not lying to the people."

StartText

Black Nativity Through Dec. 13 at Theatre Horizon, 401 DeKalb St., Norristown. Tickets: $22-$49.

Information: 610-283-2230 or www.theatrehorizon.orgEndText