*As the feisty maid in the Manhattan Theatre Club’s (MTC) Broadway revival of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Caroline Stefanie Clay is celebrating a seventeen-year working relationship with the award-winning theater company. Directed by Daniel Sullivan, The Little Foxes features a star-studded cast: Laura Linney, Cynthia Nixon, Darren Goldstein, Michael McKean, Richard Thomas, David Alford, Michael Benz, Francesca Carpanini, and Charles Turner. With sold-out audiences, the critically-acclaimed production received six Tony Award nominations, including Best Revival of a Play.
In this revival of the 1939 classic, Clay portrays Addie, a 20th century domestic. When asked about playing a maid in 2017, Clay echoed the famous words of Hattie McDaniels, “I’d rather play a maid than be one.”
“I play her with integrity,” says Clay of the Addie role. “The story of the domestic in the United States of America is a story soaked in blood. It’s a story soaked in oppression and servitude and the slavery of the black person. It is a part of our American story. We don’t like to talk about race, so when we see maids and butlers on stage, it is a reminder of that wound because we are the symbol or the archetypes of that servitude.”
Clays continues, “Hollywood in the early days so disrespected that role—that the archetype of the coon and the mammy and the Sapphire and the tragic mulatto—taking all of those archetypes and turning them into symbols of stupidity and disrespect that we as black people learn to disrespect [them] and not want to see those images because they were so hurtful and such tragic reminders of where we had come from.”
The Little Foxes is a classic story of a family’s struggle to control its business and fortunes. The story is set in 1900, post-Reconstruction Alabama, the center of the anti-lynching legislation and Jim Crow, years before the Great Migration, when the South was still heavily populated by blacks, many of them who were sharecroppers or worked in the homes of white people. Many blacks at the time were freed slaves or children of freed slaves who continued to work with employers who at one time were their mistresses and masters.
“The period is set right out of slavery,” says Clay. “Regarding [Addie’s] back story, I think Lillian Hellman goes to great pains to let us [audience] know that Cal [the butler, played by Charles Turner] and Addie are not slaves but they still very much are in service to the Hubbard family.”
Addie is a full-time domestic. Her character is based on a real person. Lillian Hellman was raised in the South, in a Jewish merchant family in New Orleans. Hellman’s parents were constantly working, so she was raised by a woman named Sophronia McMahon.
“Addie was based on the woman who raised her, so that gave me an idea of the love that Lillian Hellman had for black characters,” she says. “In all of Hellman’s plays, there is that black character who is the moral center, who is the one who’s got good sense among all the crazy white folks.”
Clay gives director Sullivan credit for his vision of this production. It was his idea to incorporate Addie more into the show. In previous productions of The Little Foxes, Addie was merely a bit player in the story.
According to Clay, Sullivan’s goal was to give Addie as much agency as possible. Addie doesn’t mince words, and she certainly doesn’t shuffle along. While she might say “Yes, sir” and “Miss This,” and “No, ma’am,” Addie is played as an over-confident employee of the Hubbards under Sullivan’s direction. He wanted her to play the role as if she would never be fired—a self-assured woman with a mind of her own who reads everything she comes across, pieces together quilts, and is self-sufficient enough to secure work outside of the Hubbards if necessary.
In developing the character of Addie, Clay viewed her as a strong, independent black woman of that time, a woman who has always fought for freedom and independence. She saw Addie as fiercely intelligent and a canny businesswoman who just happens to be using her talent and skills as a domestic because that was her only option.
Clay’s grandmother, Julia Caldwell Clay, is also an inspiration for Addie. She was a domestic for more than 30 years and worked for a rich oil family in Birmingham, Alabama. Growing up, Clay and her brother Christopher spent the summers with her grandparents in Birmingham. That’s when she caught her first glimpse of white southern society. She remembers that her grandmother would receive sparkly dresses, costume jewelry, and gifts.
“Grandmother Clay would say, ‘I got that from my white woman.’ I remember hearing that, and even without fully understanding what that meant, I thought, ‘What does she mean, her white woman? What does that mean?’ I later learned that southern society goes back to slavery with the interplay between owner and employer and the people who raised their babies and cleaned their houses and cooked their food,” Clay explains. “I discovered that if you’re down in it and you see it first-hand, you come to understand it or, if nothing else, have a softened empathy for that kind of community and mentality. In that way, I was able to love and not judge Addie.”
In previous productions of The Little Foxes, the “N” word was never removed. Sullivan removed the excessive and repetitive use of the word from the script. It’s used twice by the overtly racist Hubbard brothers, and the word “colored” and “Nigra” are used a few other times. Sullivan wanted the audience to embrace the play without the distraction from the overuse of the word.
“There is no way that I’m going to call myself the ‘N’ word, period,” Clay says. “It’s unacceptable. I am so glad that [Sullivan] put his foot down on that concept because I would not be in the play if it were used as many times as Hellman used it. Oh, no. I told my agent that because I’m not going to experience all of the microagressions that I experienced on the daily basis as a black woman in America, and then go to a theater and hear [that word] all night. Oh, no. Not me. One of the reasons that you see me in this play is because those alterations were made.”
Clay continues, “You know how people say, ‘Oh, I’m an actress who happens to be black’? I’m black who happens to be an actress, and for that reason, whenever I take a role, I am always thinking as a woman of color. ‘Will this reflect well on my race and my people?’ If the answer in my soul is yes, that’s all I need to know. That’s my barometer.”
As a coach and teacher for a new generation of young, talented black actors, Clay does not want any of her students, all of whom attend some of the leading conservatories and performing arts institutions in the country, to have their only options be roles as maids or butlers. However, if they accept these roles, they should have nothing to be ashamed of as long as they are played with integrity, dignity, and respect, because those stories are still part of the black American experience.
Growing up in the Nation’s Capital
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Washington, D.C., Clay claims Chocolate City as her home. Says Clay, “My father said, ‘Boston is no place for a black man in 1968. We got to get out of here.’”
Clay’s parents met in the ‘60s while working on the War on Poverty in Appalachia, in Kentucky. James Earl Clay, now deceased, and his wife, Suzanne Edwina Hubbard Clay, were passionate and active supporters of the Civil Rights Movement. The husband-and-wife team were advocates of issues surrounding public housing and urban development. “How May I Serve” was the mantra of the Clay household, and they instilled those same values in their children.
The Clay family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1970, where they lived for 20 years. Incidentally, when the family moved to the exclusive Upper Northwest, near the historic Rock Creek Park area, their next-door neighbor was Democratic Congressman Jamie L. Whitten, a Mississippi segregationist, who had repeatedly voted against the Civil Rights Act in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965, and 1968. Then, in 1991, he voted for that Civil Rights Act and said that his previous votes had been a mistake.
“I only share this story, not to besmirch the legacy of the Southern congressman, but you can imagine what it must have been like to have black neighbors for almost 20 some years,” says Clay. “Every morning, my mother would go out and say, ‘Good morning,’ and I know it would just kill him, as he muttered ‘Good morning.’ Oh my God, that’s so funny.”
With a career on the rise, James Earl Clay was a firm believer of “do what you can where you are.” With the War on Poverty hitting major American cities across the country, Father Clay, who grew up poor in Meridian, Mississippi, and Birmingham, Alabama, knew first-hand what it was like to be hungry and to live in an unstable housing environment. He was determined to provide better living conditions for his family.
In 1977, James Earl Clay was named the Undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under Patricia R. Harris, who was the Secretary of HUD and appointed by President Jimmy Carter.
Years later, James Earl Clay became the Director of the District of Columbia Housing Authority. California Senator Dianne Feinstein appointed him head of the Housing Authority in Kansas City, Missouri, and later in San Francisco, California, when she was the first female mayor. He dedicated his life to making sure that there was fair wage housing for low-income people. He was also a White House Fellow, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The mission of the program was to give the Fellows first-hand, high-level experience with the workings of the federal government.
Mrs. Clay, now 78, grew up in segregated Louisville, Kentucky; Clay refers to her as a “race woman.” A Vocational Rehabilitation Specialist for the Department of Health and Human Services for many years, Mrs. Clay retired in 2007.
As Clay reflects on her father’s legacy and unyielding dedication and devotion to his family and community, she says her father had access to locations and properties that other people of color did not have at that time. According to Clay, he took full advantage of those resources, including free museums and events, but felt that the access was also a double-edged sword. Though her mother believed in integration, Clay says she suffered because she wanted her children to be around more children of color. She wanted her children to know where they came from, and living in Upper Northwest was a challenge.
“We talk about the nature of inhabiting spaces,” says the actress. “There’s so many in academia now, and in popular discourse, we talk about intersectionality, we talk about occupant-per spaces. I couldn’t think of a better example than a black family who in many ways, almost like the Younger family in A Raisin in the Sun, desegregated this Upper Northwest neighborhood, and because my father had his good government job and because he was in many ways, as my aunt calls him, the ‘housing czar.’”
What’s Next
During her 40s, Clay went back to college to obtain her master’s degree in performance at the University of Maryland-College Park, where she learned how to develop her writing projects. Clay’s goal is to produce works on unsung “sheroes.”
Clay is currently developing two plays. LET IT FLO!: Radicalism’s Rudest Mouth is the story of the late radical feminist Florence Kennedy, who was the best friend of Gloria Steinem, feminist and political activist. In the one-woman show, Clay plays her mother, father, husband, as well as other characters who were key in Florence’s life. Steinem has seen the play twice and is a huge supporter. She came to the Cherry Lane Theatre in Lower Manhattan and brought some producers.
Clay is friends with Kennedy’s sisters, Joy, who recently has passed away, and Faye, now 84, who lives in Honolulu, Hawaii. Faye is also an activist and the executor of Kennedy’s estate. Through her generosity, she has given Clay access to her writings and literary belongings.
Clay learned about Kennedy watching an HBO documentary on Steinem titled In Her Own Words. In 1976, Kennedy wrote her autobiography, which is a primary source of the material. Dr. Bonnie Dill, who is the Dean of the Humanities Department at the University of Maryland, was friends with Steinem and introduced her to Clay.
“This play and the interest in this play has taken on a life of its own, particularly as it relates to activism,” says Clay. “During the recent Women’s March after the inauguration of Donald Trump, Gloria mentioned her that day. I’m not sure if she mentioned her in her speech, but she mentioned her in interviews and how proud Flo would have been to see the Women’s March because she was an early architect of the feminist movement and public protest. We are in a time, where Florence’s spirit is needed more than ever.”
Clay is also developing Sepia Sculptress, the story of Edmonia Lewis, the 19th-century sculptress of Afro-Chippewa descent. Her father was Haitian and her mother was a Chippewa Indian. Initially, Clay presented Sepia Sculptress as a one-woman show at the Kennedy Center. The concept was well received by the performing arts organization. Clay was asked to turn it into a play with more than one character. In the play, Clay portrayed Lewis’ brother, mother, father, and the people who mentored her, as well as two white women involved in a campus crime at Oberlin College for which Lewis was accused.
Sepia Sculptress was directed by Dr. Walter Dallas, formerly the artistic director of the Freedom Theater in Philadelphia. Dallas has been Clay’s mentor since she was 17 years old and taught her almost everything she knows about theater.
A graduate of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the famed Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., Clay has served on the faculty at Ellington both as a full-time and part-time teacher. She previously held a professorship at the University of Maryland-College Park and serves as a mentor at Georgetown University.
Clay’s seventeen-year association with Manhattan Theatre Company includes productions of The Royal Family, Doubt, Come Back, Little Sheba, and Drowning Crow. She has worked with various theater companies including New York Theatre Workshop, The Signature Theatre, Atlantic Theatre, Yale Repertory, and the La Jolla Playhouse, just to name a few. Clay has also recorded more than 40 audio books with RecordedBooks.com.
One of the greatest lessons she learned from her parents while growing up is that “there’s no reason to be given a gift if you don’t share it.” As an actor, coach and educator, Clay considers theater and storytelling as her ministry. “If you are given a gift, and you don’t share, and you don’t pass it on to the next generation, it might as well be taken away, because on some level you don’t understand [spiritually] why it was given.”
Gwendolyn Quinn is an award-winning media consultant with a career spanning more than 25 years. She is a contributor to BlackEnterprise.com, Black Enterprise’s BE Pulse, Huffington Post, EURWEB.com, and Medium.com. Quinn is also a contributor to Souls Revealed and Handle Your Entertainment Business.
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