‘Bubbly’ brings the issue of race to the Boston stage

Erin Washington

To call Kirsten Childs a triple threat would be selling her short.

Her tri-fold talents are on display in “The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds her Chameleon Skin,” now playing as a SpeakEasy Stage Company production at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Calderwood Pavilion. Childs wrote the book, music and lyrics of the musical, which runs through Dec. 9.

But she’s also had a distinguished career as a dancer, with roles in the chorus and as Velma Kelly on tour in “Chicago,” when theater legend Bob Fosse was still alive. She performed in two other Fosse productions as well — “Dancin’” and “Sweet Charity” with Debbie Allen, and later Ann Reinking. Fosse was such an influence in Childs’ life that she even loosely based the “Bubbly” character of “Director Bob” on him.

Directed by Jacqui Parker, the musical follows the fictional life of Viveca Stanton, the “bubbly black girl” who hopes to one day be “the greatest dancing star in the world.” Viveca deals with constantly changing issues of race throughout the decades, her attitudes morphing with them from wanting to pass as white to proclaiming that black is beautiful. For tickets, please call 617-933-8600 or visit www.BostonTheatreScene.com.

“Bubbly” is supposed to be pretty much based on your life. How much of it really happened?

It’s based on my life, but certain events have been changed around time-wise. The sense of it is pretty close to things that happened in my life, but … it is really sort of that hazy memory you have. I would say that it’s not 100 percent accurate — it’s not even 90 percent accurate. It’s all based on feelings. To create a story that has a genuine arc, you have to make the autobiographical things work in the context of this new character, who is Viveca Stanton — not me.

There’s a lot of dancing in the “Bubbly” script. Do you think it takes a cast of great dancers to pull off the show?

Well, because I started out as a dancer, [I think] songs and dance are so essential to musicals. … I think there’s something really joyous about having that expression involved with the musical. One of the things that many musicals are known for is when the emotion is so strong that you can’t talk anymore, you’ve got to sing it. And then you can take it to another level where you can’t sing it, you’ve got to move with it. I think that the one place where you do really need someone that has some strong dancing talent is Viveca. Everybody else can be a singer who moves well … It would be good for [Viveca] to be a dancer because she wants to be the greatest dancing star in the world.

Race is an essential issue in this show, and it is, of course, very visual. Do you think colorblind casting would affect the messages embedded in the show?

There are quite a few people who feel if the show is about a specific race or if you think there are restrictions on a character that it should be like that. I wrote it because there was a dearth of characters for black people. But on the other hand, I think that black people should be playing a lot of roles that are traditionally thought of as only white roles. So it would be kind of hypocritical of me to say that only black girls can play this role. Hopefully, there’ll be one day when nobody will blink if anybody plays this role. At the moment it would behoove people — especially since there are not that many musicals around that have a black [female] protagonist — it would behoove people to at least try to get a black woman to do the show.

Do you think being a chameleon is a bad thing?

No, I don’t think that being a chameleon is a bad thing. But what I do think is when you let it deny your own self, that’s really destructive to you. … There’s a point in the show when the little girl says she wants to be white. When I was a little kid, if you even thought that in your mind you would be slapped down. But when you think about the fact that even today, how many black women do you see — I’ll say even in black magazines — who don’t have straight hair or blonde hair? You’ve got to acknowledge that there’s a message being sent that there’s something wrong with you in your natural state. … And those names that people give to people like “Oreo.” And not allowing you to say, “I’d like to be white.” Well of course, why wouldn’t you want to be white? It would be easier. But when you can’t express [those feelings] openly and honestly, I think that that’s destructive to the person, I think it’s destructive to the community. I think that we need to be able to say these things, so that we can get over them.

Which musicals or lyricists influenced the tunes of “Bubbly” the most?

My prime influences for lyrics did not come from the theater. I love Cole Porter, and I really love Lorenz Hart. But the people that really influenced me were people that my parents were really interested in. Like the people who wrote “Moon River” [Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini], and songs from that era. And then my own influences were pop people — the main person that I loved was Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Brenda Holloway, Ashford & Simpson, Bob Dylan — it was really eclectic. That was the era where people were really experimenting with form, but things were very politicized. People were interested in very social things, social consciousness.

Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oscar Hammerstein, and of course Stephen Sondheim at a much later point. It was all a melting pot in my head, all of those different things. If something had meaning, that’s what was really wonderful. Since I am from Los Angeles, it was not a big theater town, but there were a lot of great commercials that had jingle lyrics that were a lot of fun to listen to. And also the TV themes. Whatever you want to say, the people were clever with how they turned the phrase. If you’re a lyricist, you thirst for wordplay, wherever you can get it. I never pooh-poohed anything.

The songs seem to have an a cappella feel to them. Why is this?

I think it really comes from the fact that “Bubbly” began as an exercise in writing music. I would layer a vocal harmony on a tape recorder and then balance it against another harmony that I had already laid on a track. I kept doing that back and forth, so the a cappella sense of it comes from the way that I first started writing music. But it also comes from [the fact that] I really love communal singing. And I think that that’s a type of singing that sometimes is not so evident in Broadway musicals. … I love contrapuntal harmony, and I love people sort of hitting up against each other. So a cappella is a wonderful way to express that.

Was this the first musical or play that you wrote?

It’s not the first play, but it is the first musical that I wrote by myself. I was in NYU’s graduate musical theater writing program, and I collaborated with people all the time. But this particular piece started out as a couple of songs and then what happened was I went to a poetry reading and the only thing that I could share was my songs. And people really loved it because they were really personal songs. … And then I went to a place called Dixon Place, in the Bowery on the Lower East Side of New York. That was a performance place, where people like John Leguizamo started their work. They perfected their craft there. And then I started to create a story around the songs, and that story was about a girl called the “Bubbly Black Girl.” At that time she didn’t have a name. … That became very popular and then as I was performing that piece from time to time at that performance space, people came up to me and said, “You know, you should really make this into a regular musical.” That really appealed to me because I knew I wasn’t going to be the “Bubbly Black Girl” for the rest of my life, but perhaps somebody else might do the show. And it could go to different places, like Boston. I was very intrigued by that and so I started to write it as a book musical.

Are you a bubbly person?

I think that sometimes bubbliness is a bad thing, but sometimes bubbliness helps you rise above stuff. One of my favorite Greek myths is “Pandora’s Box.” She opens the box that she was forbidden to open, and all of the horrors and evils of the world escape. But the thing that comes out in the end is hope. And it’s beautiful and it’s bubbly. There’s something wonderful about maintaining bubbliness, sometimes in the face of things that are pretty grim. There’s something unrealistic about it, but sometimes it’s the strongest thing you can do — to be bubbly.