"In my work, my general goal is to move people, to touch their hearts, and to present ways that complicated, painful, historical, and personal situations can be healed," says Caroline Jackson Smith. PHOTOGRAPH BY PAULINE SHAPIRO   .
			Caroline Jackson Smith: Staging the Familiar By Marci Janas
	The cast of Crossroads Dancing stars Dorothy Silver and Molly McGinnis and features live Irish music by Ryan Duns on tin whistle and bodhran and Alana Musselman on fiddle.		DECEMBER 20, 1999--Caroline Jackson Smith, associate professor of African-American studies and theater, has three plays on the boards this winter--two in Cleveland and one at Oberlin. All three, she says, share "a commonality: families, communities, and collective memories." Crossroads Dancing, by Irish-American playwright and Clevelander Margaret Lynch, has its world premiere Friday, January 7, at the Dobama Theatre in Cleveland. The Colored Museum, by George C. Wolfe, opens at Oberlin's Hall Auditorium February 11, and August Wilson's Seven Guitars is staged at Cleveland's Karamu Performing Arts Theatre February 17. The structure of Crossroads Dancing, says Jackson Smith, "is very familiar to me, coming from African-American theater: there is no line between the living and the dead." Slides and videos in Crossroads Dancing "function as dreams and memories of an Irish family's journey from old country to new," she says. The play's action, which occurs over the course of one evening, centers on a conversation between an Irish-American woman and her grandmother. Figures from their past--living and dead, on celluloid and in the flesh--punctuate their dialogue. Jackson Smith cites another similarity with African-American culture: "The notion of the crossroads is a huge metaphor in African-American literature and folklore," she says." There is even a god of the crossroads. In African-American religions, a cosmological symbol is a cross inside of a circle. There is incredible power at meeting points, where roads cross, either literally or where the worlds of the living and the dead converge. A lot of what Crossroads Dancing is about is that juncture where you meet ancestors and get wisdom you need to keep traveling." The significance of the title has literal and metaphorical implications. In smaller Irish villages, townspeople often held dances outside, at the point where roads crossed. "One of the joyful images of the play," says Jackson Smith, "is the singing and dancing, the Irish and contemporary music." On a metaphorical level, the play is "about coming to the crossroads in our lives and staying in the dance of life rather than giving up." Of the three plays she's directing, Jackson Smith says that Crossroads Dancing "is the most located in family." The issue is really about journeys--how do people handle the challenges and journeys that history thrusts upon them? What does it mean to grow up in America with a certain ethnic heritage?" What does Jackson Smith hope audiences will remember after seeing any of the plays? "In my work, my general goal is to move people, to touch their hearts, and to present ways that complicated, painful, historical, and personal situations can be healed. All of these plays have a very healing arc. And I look for plays that do. I look for plays with serious hard-hitting content, but I'm always looking for the healing arc in what I do. I want people to leave seeing life in a new way, and to see the human potential for healing." When the house lights dim and the action begins--in any of the plays--Jackson Smith will be in the audience. She will attempt what August Wilson told her he tried to do after he finished his first play: "I just want to see what the other people see, and make believe that I don't know what's going to happen."
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