A yellow plywood sign adorns the exterior wall of the mainstage. Above its flashing bulbs and swooping red arrow is a word: Clyde’s.
Clyde’s, an African American Theater Arts Troop (AATAT) production, opens on Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. at the UC Santa Cruz Theater Arts Center Mainstage and will be showing on the 24, 25, and March 1, 2, and 3. Admission is free for UCSC students.
Clyde’s takes place inside a truck-stop sandwich shop’s kitchen run by formerly incarcerated people. The chef Montrellous struggles against the conformist owner, Clyde, to find creative liberation through culinary expression.
The owner Clyde (left), played by Cydney Merritt, scorns Montrellous (right) for wasting time expressing his creativity through cooking. Clyde’s dominating and brash attitude challenges the staff as a whole, and directly contrasts Montrellous’ mindful and kindhearted nature.
“All the characters in this particular play have been in prison, incarcerated, before in their life.” said director and AATAT founder Don Williams. “Now they’re out, trying to revitalize their lives to transform themselves, and be accepted in society.”
Williams founded AATAT in 1991 and has directed plays at UCSC ever since. This is his third time directing a play written by Lynn Nottage.
Clyde’s, a 2022 nominee for the Tony Award for Best Play, continues threads from Nottage’s Pulitzer prize winning play Sweat about the working class in Pennsylvania. Sweat addressed questions about how deindustrialization and job loss affect race relations. Clyde’s investigates who is incarcerated, for what reasons, and the struggle to reintegrate into society.
The Mainstage theater was seamlessly transformed into a variation of Clyde’s kitchen, the predominant space where staff gather in community to reclaim their lives and form relationships.
“We were blessed to get it,” Williams said, “because Lynn Nottage is very strict on who does this particular work.”
Vesper Carney-Demmon, the dramaturg for Clyde’s, sat on a couch in the greenroom and shuffled through a script with lines highlighted in every color.
As the dramaturg, Carney-Demmon researches the historical and production context and helps with actors’ role related questions. They are the self-proclaimed “resident nerd” of the production. During rehearsal, they make notes of lines the actors need more context to understand and give short history lessons for the actors to think about. 
Clyde’s presence instantly changes the room’s temperature as she confronts Letitia about her tardiness. As a mother who was recently released from prison, Letitia is apologetic towards Clyde, so as not to relinquish her second chance at a better life. Rafael witnesses this interaction with a look of concern.
Though Clyde’s takes place in the present day, the context of the War on Drugs is necessary to understand the prison industrial complex that restricts the professional mobility of the characters.
Carney-Demmon draws connections between Clyde’s and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. Laws passed by the Nixon and Reagon administrations made minor drug offenses the basis for incarceration. The administrations skewed drug laws to target the lower class and people of color.
“Once a bunch of people became incarcerated, there was a financial incentive for prisons to grow,” Carney-Demmon said. “There are jobs in prisons, vendors sell to prisons, people sell toilet paper to prisons, food to prisons, people that build and own prisons, and a lot of them are private entities.”
After being released from prison, job opportunities and ways to reintegrate in society are extremely limited. Nottage takes this pervasive systemic problem and writes jokes about it.
“That’s what Black comedy does as well,” Carney-Demmon said. “I’m suffering, but I’m making humor. I’m working, but I’m singing and I’m dancing.”
The characters in Clyde’s are humorous, archetypal depictions of ethnicities who get sent to prison for different reasons. Carney-Demmon’s favorite character is Raphael, the Latino loverboy, who despite his tragic backstory brings a vibrant energy to the kitchen.
Rafael (left) is a charming romantic who openly flirts with Letitia (right) during their shifts.
“The main actor who’s playing him, Colby and the understudy Omar are both really, really, really good and very funny,” Carney-Demmon said. “They’re understanding the assignment.”
Once the actors have learned their lines, the next step is going off script. In rehearsal, the actors move around the kitchen set and learn to prepare real food on stage. The kitchen appliances, walls and restaurant sign were sourced and built by set designers in the prop shop on campus.
Student assistant director Isabella Percy commented on the actors’ process for stepping into their characters.
“You have to let go of who you are and what you know, and touch into the ugly,” Percy said. “The deep feelings of other human beings can be really hard to take on, especially with something you haven’t experienced yourself. So I commend our actors for what they’re able to do.”
Percy was an actor with AATAT for two years before becoming the Student Director of Clyde’s. As a director, she is learning to see the play as a whole; becoming aware of tiny details and fitting them together. Her artistic vision is growing alongside her connection with the AATAT community.
“We put on plays together, but first and foremost, we are a family and we really do get to know each other beyond just working together,” Percy said.