Young actors take Jackie Robinson's story on the road
Posted Feb 26, 2010 By Desmond Devoy
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Desmond Devoy, Ottawa East EMC
Hit It Here! Grade eight Glashan Public School students Harshan Anton, left, and Larry Batten, who play Jackie Robinson and his brother Frank respecitvely in the play "Mallie's Youngest Son," point out where they're going to hit the baseball after one of their Ottawa performances last week.
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EMC Entertainment - A group of grade eight students from Centretown took the story of American baseball great Jackie Robinson back to Montréal last week, the city where he broke the colour barrier in professional sports. 
Desmond Devoy, Ottawa East EMC
Mother and Child Reunion: Lienke Abdeen, left, and Harshan Anton, who play Mallie and Jackie Robinson respectively, share a moment after one of last week's shows.
"It was an amazing thing that he did," explained Rick Elias, a teacher at Glashan Public School, 28 Arlington Avenue in Centretown, before a packed house of students on the morning of Wednesday, February 17, before one of the performances. "He was an amazing man. He broke the colour barrier."
As an ongoing way to celebrate and educate students about Black History Month, the school has been staging a trilogy of plays about the black experience in North America. This year's offering was Mallie's Youngest Son, which highlighted the early years of Jackie Robinson, from his move from a Georgia plantation to Pasadena, California, and how his family and community shaped him.
Along with last week's performances on the 16th and 17th, the play was also performed at Westmount High School in Montréal on Friday, February 19th. It was in Quebec's largest city, in 1946, that Robinson, an African-American, was integrated onto the Montréal Royals, then the farm team for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Harshan Anton, who played Jackie Robinson, was surprised to find that he would be playing the racial pioneer after auditions were held this past December, with rehearsals starting in January.
"I was very excited and surprised because I didn't think I'd make it!" Anton said.
Larry Batten, who played Frank Robinson, was also surprised at being chosen for such an important role. During last year's Black History Month production, "I had four lines!" he said with a laugh. Now, he boasts 36 lines of his own.
The grade eight students, hanging out in an office after last Wednesday morning's performance, said that they were looking forward to their trip to Montréal later that week.
"I'll be a little bit nervous. But it'll be like a regular performance, just with more people watching you," said Luka Lawford, who played Edgar Robinson. Lienke Abdeen, who played the title role, Mallie Robinson, joked that while Lawford may be able to sleep on the bus to Montréal, she would not because of nerves.
"I really like my character. She's really strong and independent," said Abdeen. "Usually, there's only one character in movies like that," she added, noting that she would like to see more strong female characters on both the stage and screen.
The young thespians recalled that while there was a lot of hard work that went into getting the show ready for the stage in both Ontario and Quebec, there were lighter moments, when modern technology has intruded onto the set of Pasadena in the 1920s and 30s.
"Someone's phone rang on stage!" recalled Abdeen.
As an aspiring actor herself, Abdeen noted that the audience sometimes did not react the way she had thought they would for certain scenes or lines, depending on the audience's age or grade.
"They didn't laugh at the parts we thought they would," said Abdeen. "The grade six classes laughed at everything. The adults laughed at different parts."
One of the aspects of the play that both students and staff took very seriously though was the use of the N-word.
"They (the teachers) talked to the people in that scene," where the word was used against the young Jackie Robinson by some white neighbours. "Mr. Elias said you could never use it (the N word) outside of the play and that the audience might have a strong reaction to the word."
Batten admitted that, during the first rehearsal before the first mention of the N-word, there was a bit of tension, but once it was uttered, and the play moved on, it became easier as the ice had been broken.
"The more you say awkward lines, the easier it is," said Batten. Batten himself took to the play since he is also quite athletic himself, playing basketball, volleyball, running and high jump. "It shows how I am in real life," Batten said of his role in the athletic-minded Robinson household.
While the show highlighted the African-American experience, like the school itself, the play and choir were made up of a multicultural cast, with white students filling black roles and vice versa.
"It wasn't confusing," said Anton.
"Some lines were confusing," said Abdeen. For some roles, though, "there are lines that have to be black," performed by a person of colour.
One of the high dramatic points of the play comes when Robinson's older brother Mack won silver in the Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany in 1936. He was racing against his fellow countryman, Jesse Owens, who took gold in the race.
"It's a really good coincidence because it (the trilogy of plays) are on a three year cycle," said Lawford of the fact that the important Olympics scene concides with the ongoing Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC.
The play's choir was able to dip into a wide array of music to convey the different emotions at work in the play. They ranged from the appropriate American classic "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," to Mariah Carey's hit "Hero," from "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," which was a hit for The Hollies and Neil Diamond, "We Are Family," by Sister Sledge, to a number of Ella Fitzgerald songs like "God Bless the Child." One of Fitzgerald's songs, "Basin Street Blues," was reappropriated for the occasion as "Pepper Street Blues," after the Pasadena street on which Robinson grew up.
"They're really doing justice to a lot of great songs," said Elias.
Proceeds from the evening performances went towards the Buxton National Historic Site in Buxton, ON, and to the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre in Shelburne, NS.
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