Milwaukee Rep Explores Singer Nina Simone’s Evolution to Activism

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Milwaukee Rep Nina Simone ‘Four Women’ banner

It’s rare to find a play named after a song and the artist who wrote it. But Nina Simone is no ordinary songwriter, her 1966 composition “Four Women” is not just another song, and the Milwaukee Rep’s production of Christina Ham’s Nina Simone: Four Women, which opens April 16, is no ordinary musical production.

The classically trained Simone, who died in 2003 at age 70, was one of the foremost Black jazz voices of the late 20th century, a voice that became even more prominent after she embraced her role as a civil rights advocate.

The tipping point for “the high priestess of soul,” as she was known, came on Sept. 15, 1963, when four white Ku Klux Klan members detonated a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young Black girls. That event, along with the killing of civil rights worker Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, earlier that same year, led to Simone’s first protest song, “Mississippi Goddamn.” At that point, the artist’s life began to change.

“I always loved her music,” says Milwaukee theater artist Malkia Stampley, who directs the Rep production. “In the play, you hear all of Nina Simone’s hits, but the songs have been curated to evoke the activist in her.”

“Four Women” commemorates the death of the four young girls in Birmingham, but it took Simone’s penchant for protest to a higher level, one that didn’t hinge on a specific event, but on racism in general, particularly as it relates to Black women and then-society’s white Euro-centric view of female beauty.

“Aunt Sarah,” the first woman in the song, represents Black enslavement and the stoicism by enduring generations of indignity and pain. “Saffronia,” a mixed-race woman, is forced to live uncomfortably between two worlds. “Sweet Thing,” a prostitute, finds acceptance with both Blacks and whites providing that sex is involved. “Peaches,” the fourth woman is tough, embittered by generations of oppression, perhaps representing Simone herself. A different cast member portrays each of the women, with Simone the fourth woman in the cast. Simone is played by actress Alexis J. Roston, familiar to Milwaukee Rep audiences for her past roles in The Color Purple and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.

Black Female Experience

Taken together, the four types represent the overall Black female experience in America, Stampley says. Simone wanted Black women to know they were beautiful as they were, and worthy of love despite what society may be saying about them.

“It’s a play in conversation about the conflicts she was having with being an artist who could no longer ignore her call to action,” adds Stampley, who currently serves as artistic producer for Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. “In the end, Nina Simone couldn’t help but be Nina.”

In later life, Simone was diagnosed as bipolar and became known for her temper and outbursts, as well as carrying a gun and occasionally firing it at people. She eventually left the United States to live and perform in Barbados, Liberia and several European countries. She died in her sleep of complications from breast cancer while living in Carry-le-Rouet, France. In 2019, “Mississippi Goddamn” was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically and esthetically significant.”

“In trying to read Nina’s emotional state, I think the question she asked herself was ‘Am I doing enough?’” Stampley says. “It’s painful to think that, with all that she did, she didn’t think it was enough. And that’s part of what this play is about.”

The Milwaukee Rep’s production of Christina Ham’s “Nine Simone: Four Women” runs April 16-May 12 in the Quadracci Powerhouse in the Associated Bank Theater Center, 108 E. Wells St. For more information and tickets, visit milwaukeerep.com.