Ahead of her upcoming reading of Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha, we talked to acclaimed actress Roslyn Ruff about her connection to the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet’s sole novel, how she’s transforming text into performance, her longtime affinity for poets, and more.
When did you first encounter Gwendolyn Brooks’ writing?
Ever since I was a little girl growing up in a very Black household, I’ve been interested in our greats. I was one of those kids who read the encyclopedia — we had an African American set (of encyclopedias), which I would read for pleasure. I knew she was someone of note, that she had won a Pulitzer, and I needed to read her work. I have a soft spot for poets, and her power of description just transports you.
What makes Maud Martha fertile ground for you, as an actor?
Maud Martha is so fascinating, and complicated and magical for a performer. She so perfectly renders what is happening to this character, both externally and internally. But it’s the rich interior life that grabs you and is extremely relatable. If I’m trying to make a decision about a project and it scares me, I always pay attention. Maud Martha can be intimidating because it doesn’t have a typical narrative structure for a novel. But that’s what makes it great. It’s, in a way, a collage styles. I enjoy the challenge of lifting that off the page.
In a conversation we had with New Yorker theater critic Vinson Cunningham about this reading, he called you “one of the great deliverers of monologues and speeches that we have in the American theater.” How have you prepared for the performance? What kind of decisions do you make to bring Brooks’ character into your own voice?
For me, it’s very simple: I need to live with the material. It’s the repetition. I go over her words and those sharp transitions that she makes when she switches her from interior to exterior, from poetry to prose. The pathway through it reveals itself with repetition. That’s how I learn to navigate it. And it’s been such a pleasure working with Vinson, but extremely challenging to find a version of this to deliver — to choose one way to perform it when so many are available. When we first started to approach this, there seemed to be an initial choice between picking some favorite passages without worrying about how they connect to one another or creating an arc to give a sense of the novel’s flow. We’ve done the latter. There are so many beautiful vignettes, but we want to string them together and tell a story.
I hear you have a signed copy of a Gwendolyn Brooks poem hanging in your home. What’s the story behind that?
I was temping in the office of the president of the University of Buffalo, and the assistant to the president really liked me [laughter]. She wanted to give me a gift at the end of my assignment, so unbeknownst to me she went to one of my professors in the theater department, the great Stephen McKinley Henderson, and asked him what she should do. She had this poem by Gwendolyn Brooks — a draft with an error she was going to toss, but someone convinced her not to and asked her sign it. Stephen had a picture of Ms. Brooks. So my boss had them framed together. It’s one of my favorite pieces I have in my place. It’s a draft Brooks’ late poem “Weaponed Woman.” It makes me feel connected to her — so when I was asked to be a part of this event, it felt like fate, in a way. I look at her every day in my apartment.
What do you hope audience members will take with them after your reading?
This work excites me and moves me, and I want to give that feeling to other people. It’s that simple. This book should be more than just a cult classic. It lives and breathes so beautifully within its own unique structure. Anything that’s great stands the test of time, and Maud Martha continues to do just that.
Roslyn Ruff’s reading of Maud Martha — introduced by Margo Jefferson and followed by a conversation with The New Yorker’s Vinson Cunningham — is on Thursday, June 8.