In the script for The Blood Quilt, dramatist Katori Hall writes that the character Clementine is “sweet and sour.” How would Crystal Dickinson, who plays her, explain the description? “Clementine is sweet,” the actor told me the other day, “because she has a genuine love for her family, her culture, and her history. But if any of those things are threatened, you get the sour.”
Hall further writes that Clementine is “the keeper of the quilting stitches.” As she and her three sisters assemble on an ancestral Georgia-coast island to process the recent death of their mother, Clementine reminds the group constantly of the many meanings of the family’s fabrics. “Clementine understands deeply,” Dickinson said, “that quilts are not just a matter of art or of comfort. They hold and represent what is special and sacred. Clementine and her sisters have been entrusted with secrets, and she doesn’t think those secrets should be shared with the general public.”
Clementine’s perspective relates not only to the fate of the quilt but to the fate of the island. “The traditional Geechee culture, of which the family is a descendant,” Dickinson said, “has a certain idea of property. People don’t own a place so much as live in a place. But a bridge is being planned to connect the island to the mainland. For Clementine that represents encroachment.” For centuries, the island was safe from such incursion because it lacked natural resources that are a primary historic reason for colonization. “Now,” Dickinson explained, “the island can be exploited for real-estate reasons.”
Hall goes on to sketch Clementine as the “sister closest to Mama.” Dickinson has a personal connection to that characteristic. “Like Clementine, I am one of four siblings. And I live in a household with my parents, who are in their 80s.” Dickinson added, “I can understand why my character chafes at criticism from her sisters, and why she responds: Unlike you, I was here day after day doing the heavy lifting.” But caregiving also provides satisfactions. “You have fewer regrets,” the actor said. “You helped keep safe and well the person who used to keep YOU safe and well. You return the respect.”
The topic of respect led Dickinson and me to her professional relationship with Lileana Blain-Cruz, the director of The Blood Quilt. “Lileana and I met some years ago when we were both part of Lincoln Center Theater’s Director’s Lab,” Dickinson said. “She’s one of the finest directors I’ve ever worked with. But in that Lab I recognized very quickly that I was not a director and that she was.” Why? “Because she likes to talk about the art and I like to do the art.” Far from being a diss this remark is the kind of sisterly teasing so richly evident in The Blood Quilt.
The play’s teasing, joshing, and memory-sharing evoke a lively response every night from The Blood Quilt’s theatergoers. Dickinson said that this reaction owes something to the play itself and something to the evolution of LCT’s audience. “I did Broke-ology here several years ago” -- that drama, produced in the Newhouse in 2009, was written by the gone-too-soon talent Nathan Louis Jackson – “and it was a great experience. But the audience here is now more diverse. And that helps everybody relax into a story that may not be their own specifically but is their own generally.”
As we wound down our conversation, Dickinson wanted to comment on theatergoers’ response to The Blood Quilt this past week. “As actors and audience our mood can’t help but be affected by the election and what it has stirred up. I hope people can find something meaningful in watching and listening to the story of a very fractured family and how they try to cope.”
Brendan Lemon is a freelance journalist in New York.
