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Heinous or Good. What would be a just portrayal of the Negro onstage? Gunn's answer is "the totality of black experience, to be shown as heinous or as good as they are on the basis of their humanity. In the casting of a play like The Owl and the Pussycat—and I have the highest regard for Diana Sands' performance—the white boy is a bookseller and the black girl is a prostitute, and that caters to the white man's notions about the black woman. I want to see the black woman portrayed in all the facets of her existence. In a play or a film I want to see a black man and a black woman seriously presented as falling in love and making love. We have white character actors. Why don't we see the life of Negroes over 40 portrayed onstage? Whole areas of our lives are treated as if they did not exist."
Since black roles are limited and too often trivial, should black actors strive to play traditionally white roles? Gunn feels that the term itself is misconceived: "When Shakespeare is done in South America or in India, do you believe that anyone thinks of the parts as 'white roles'? In school, everyone is taught about the universality of these roles. Yet when a black goes to theater and sees an all-white cast, he is bound to feel, 'what does this have to do with me?' You cannot imagine the psychological damage that has been done to a group who on TV, films and the stage never saw themselves represented at all. When I played Capulet, several black kids came up to me after the show and one 15-year-old said, I like that. We've never seen a black man play a role as commanding as that, and we could identify with you.' It touched me."
As to the seeming incongruity of Juliet's having a black father, Moses Gunn disputes it: "I think people are more sophisticated nowadays, and they accept that that could happen." In a sense, it has happened to Gunn. His wife Gwen is white and his daughter Kirsten, 9, is the child of his wife's former marriage.
Abiding Obsession. Moses Gunn grew up in St. Louis during the '30s, the eldest of seven children. His father was a junkman, or "ragpicker," as Gunn puts it. His mother died of pneumonia when Moses was twelve, and the family was splintered. At 17, he went to live with Mr. and Mrs. James Richie, and his foster mother Jewel Richie, an English and diction teacher, had profound and lasting influence on him. Says she: "Our house is full of books and Moses would devour them. He read books like someone who eats a loaf of bread—eats a couple of slices and then takes another. I taught him to have clipped, clear speech. I told him, 'Get your ds and ts straight. You may speak with a sort of Southern accent, but speak so that people can understand you clearly.' " Gunn regards Jewel Richie as typical of the educated middle-class blacks who would spur on a boy with talent, and help give the ghetto a sense of community. Says he: "I don't believe in making a lot of bones about poverty and the downtrodden black child and all that. Most of us didn't have an 'identity problem.' "