12088: Lenelle Moise

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Sent by LeGrace Benson
                legrace@twcny.rr.com

>From Ithaca Journal, Ithaca, NY:

Youthful playwright seakes with authroity on mixed-race identity
by Stephen Landesman, Journal Staff
ITHACA--When Lenelle Moise talks, you really listen.
It's hard not to since the Haitian-American playwright speakes just as
eloquently with here arms, hands and eyes as she does in a voice that
resonates with expereince beyond her 22 years.
She also talks about herself with absolute candor.
"Iwas born in Haiti, but my family came to this country when I was 3, and
I grew up in a housoing  project, " said Moise, seated in the Mural Room
of the Clinton Hopuse."Istarted writing poetry for my grandfather at 5,
but when I was in the seventh grade I really wanted to be a rapper.  Stuff
like 'AIDS...is..coming at you!"
    Instead, as a teen-ager in a Haitian enclace of Cambridge, Mass.,
Moise devoted her considerable energy to such things as creating a drama
curriculum for the Cambridge Schools Sisters Group, a tuition-free program
for underpriveleged girls from various ethnic backgrounds living in
Cambridge.
    Or working as a program assistant for the Institute on the Arts &
Civic Dialogue, a three-year summer project in Cambridge.  Or serving as
liaison between tenants and administration for the Cmabridge Housing
Authority.
    Or writing three plays and self-publishing a book of poetry.
    Or winning the Ithaca Grand Poetry Slam two years ago.
    Dressed with simple elegance that only experienced models or very rich
women have learned to cultivate, its hard to beleive that Moise is just a
graduating senior at Ithaca College. Even her dreadlocks are swept back in
a handsme ponytail more debonair than Rastafarian.
    "As a hyphenated woman, I've always been interested in people who are
in the middle, people who are walking a fine line," said Moise. Hence her
latest endeavor, Purple, a play about a biracial 15-year-old girl named
Lena struggling to fit into a small community much like Ithaca.  Funded in
part by a grant from the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Purple was
commissioned by The Kitchen Theatere for its "Saturday Morning Live, a
series of plays aimed at young people and teens.
    The play's title is soon self-explanatory at severl levels. Purple, a
combination of red and blue, is also the color of Lena's biracial
boyfriend, Jonah, turns when he becomes angry.
    "It started as a writing assignment in a fiction course. We had to
pick a color and write about it, " said Moise. "As I began to write, this
voice of a biracial girl just evolved."
    Although Lena is growing up in a community that tacitly welcomes
differences, she doesn't seem to recognize here. Nor for that matter, does
she.
    ....."The play is in part about what it means to have a body of
color," said Moise.
 Four col. pictures of Lenelle Moise accompanied the news article.