photo by Bruce-Michael Gelbert
Hazelle Goodman
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The Arts Project of Cherry Grove's (APCG) guest at the Community House on September 4 was Hazelle Goodman, with her one woman, but highly populous show, "Don't Get Me Started!" directed by Vernice Miller. Don't listen to that exhortation, because once you get her started, you won't stop laughing at her earthy wit and wisdom, and her uncanny ability to capture character(s).

Hazelle began as 'Big Mama Bertha Bust Washington,' plus-sized and proud, with "Big is in/the hell with being thin" her motto. "I wear anything I goddamn please," she declared, adding, "There's nothing like a full-figured woman in spandex!" She changed into 'skinny clothes' and offered, "I would like to be part of a couple. I am so tired of masturbating to old memories." She held forth on hefty guys not having to worry about finding sex; on bikini waxing-"the shit we go through, all to get laid;" and on men who can't get it up-"They eat pussy really good."

Hazelle was a giddy blonde-"I have to Feng Shui my house;" then her daughter Ashanti Nicole, who dates Black and Latino men and gets attitude from minority women, who call her a "flat-assed white bitch;" and finally her elderly father, who keeps an eye on all of them, and maintains, about telling people about your problems, "Half of them don't care. They're just glad it's you!" She was a subway panhandler, Willie Enrique Colón, obsessed with breasts and zeroing in on our Homecoming Queen Beach DeBree. She was an older woman, happy with the Obamas, pro-choice, and pro-gay-"They don't bother nobody. They are happy people. That's why they call them gay," but with little tolerance for men "on the down low"-"they're gay, but act straight."

Hazelle's tour de force, however, was a single scene in which she played a trio of characters, differentiating among them with clear changes of posture, expression, and delivery. They were a BBC America "Today's Woman" host, probing breast augmentation-"Is bigger really better?"-and her guests, sisters with opposing views, Maria, a battered woman, and Rosie, a butch toughie. Tomorrow's topic: penile implants-"Is bigger really better?"

Hazelle could play everyone from a woman at a beauty salon, insisting in her most 'top-drawer' tone, "It's better to look good than to feel good," to a woman with messy hair and crooked glasses, scratching herself and promoting vibrators, to a Jamaican woman learning to appreciate the virtue of an ugly, but sexually talented man. Hazelle showed us that she could probably play anyone. Check her web site, www.hazellegoodman.com, to find out what she's doing next.