It’s curtain call on opening night of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at the Goodman Theatre. As her fellow actors smile down on the crowd, Nambi E. Kelley is visibly crying.
Her tears of joy are the product of a full circle moment. She recalls, as a student at Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center, attending a performance of that very same play, starring her aunt. Fast forward 33 years and her aunt is there, watching Kelley portray Mattie Campbell from the audience.
“All of the important people in my life were there,” Kelley recalls a few days later. “I was thinking about myself as a little girl and the dreams I had. To have that moment was overwhelming.”
This spring, the actor and playwright is bringing a triple play to Chicago stages. She’s acting in “Joe Turner” at the Goodman downtown (through May 19) and producing two of her written works on other stages: “Stokely: The Unfinished Revolution” will have its world premiere at Court Theatre in Hyde Park (opening May 24) and up north, Lifeline Theatre is producing her adaptation of the classic Richard Wright novel “Native Son” (which opened May 10).
Kelley’s flair for crafting complex characters and writing poetic dialogue has made her an in-demand voice for theaters seeking new works. Her influence today still almost surprises her; at times she refers to herself as the little girl from the South Side who was never supposed to be here — a sought-after writer whose television credits include “The Chi” and the “Bel-Air” reboot.
But that’s where her study of the complexity of human nature starts. She credits her ability to create intricate characters to her homelife in Chicago and to books like “Native Son.”
Kelley spent part of her childhood across the street from the Ida B. Wells Homes on the South Side. It was her mother who, unintentionally, made her a dramatist.
“My mother was schizophrenic,” Kelley said, thinking back to her childhood. “When I was a little girl, she set fire to the house while I was in it. One of my earliest memories is being in that fire.”
Kelley thought these were dreams, but her father later told her these events happened.
She grew up listening to her mother talk to the walls in the house, and, as a sharp young girl, she would imagine who might be speaking back. “But what made me a dramatist, and this is God, is that my brain went, ‘Who’s on the other side of the wall?’ ”
Even early on, she said, “I was interested in character. And listening to her talking to the wall, it sounded like poetry to me.”
In high school at Von Steuben, drama teacher Ellen O’Keefe remembers being stunned the first time she saw the precocious teen audition for a play.
The girl, it turns out, had written her own monologue. O’Keefe said she took the young Kelley by the shoulders and told her, “You must write.”
O’Keefe connected the budding young writer to Richard Pettengill, who at the time was the dramaturg and education program director for the Goodman. Pettengill arranged for the young writer to meet the famous American playwright August Wilson. Kelley told Wilson about a play she was writing called “MiLK.” It was about a child growing up in Chicago across from the housing projects who is part girl, part clown. Wilson agreed to read an early version of the script.
The play would go on to be staged at the former Victory Gardens studio space. It was Kelley’s first professional production.
Nineteen years later, Kelley is still taking swings at complex characters. In “Stokely,” she’s training her focus on Kwame Ture (born Stokely Carmichael), a central figure in the Civil Rights era.
Then there’s Bigger Thomas, her central character in “Native Son.” The Lifeline Theatre production marks the 10th anniversary of Kelley’s adaptation.
For Kelley, who now lives in New York but commutes back to Chicago for projects, this reproduction of “Native Son” is another full-circle moment.
In between rehearsals, Kelley takes a minute to reflect on her tears of joy on “Joe Turner’s” opening night and on the feeling of having her family, friends and former teachers all there.
But missing that night were her parents, who have both died. Kelley thought in that moment of her mother, who herself dreamed of being a writer.
“Every morning that I wake up, and I’m living my dream, my mom beat those voices. And that’s never lost on me.”
