Writer Wants Her Stories To Show Black Women As The Lead In Fairytales

Playwright, Author and Illustrator Mallory Raven Ellen Backstrom has just been named the latest recipient of the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award. Photo provided by O-Street Brand Management + Consulting.
Playwright, Author and Illustrator Mallory Raven Ellen Backstrom has just been named the latest recipient of the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award. Photo provided by O-Street Brand Management + Consulting.

Writer Wants Her Stories To Show Black Women As The Lead In Fairytales

By Tia Carol Jones

Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom’s earliest memories are of her being four or five, under the covers, writing or drawing. She knew she was a storyteller and wanted to write magic for Black people. She began writing plays because during her time in the theatre she didn’t see roles for Black women in stories that had magic and whimsy. At 28, she received a scholarship to Chicago Dramatists and she wrote Cephianne’s Reflection. Backstrom has just been named the latest recipient of the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award. She is the fourth person of color and one of few Black women to receive this award.

“I have always known I wanted to write, it has always been a part of my blood song to tell stories,”she said.

Backstrom described Cephianne’s Reflection as high magic, a big world full of magic, with an all-Black cast. Backstrom wanted her plays and her stories to leave Black people, especially Black women feeling the joy of being a Black woman, in a world where those aren’t a lot of that joy portrayed on stage. All of her plays are intergenerational.

“If I was going to make a contribution to something, if I was going to spend my life, speaking into the wind, shouting into the void, then I want every Black woman, who maybe even hears the echo of the wind of my voice, to hear, ‘you deserve a happily ever after,’” she said.

Backstrom created Fairy Tales for Sunkissed Women after a close friend of hers lost their partner. The friend asked Backstrom to take her story and drop it into a fairytale as a way to process the grief. Backstrom wrote a story that transformed that loss into an experience of transformation. From that she learned that fantasy is soul craft, it is not just an escape and not for children, where she could take a woman’s pain and throw color on it, add a little pixy dust on it and something that was awful would have meaning and a forward motion and show there were more chapters to the story, and more story. Backstrom wanted Black women to view their lives with whimsy and joy, and to feel like they were the princess in the story.

Backstrom said the original fairytales that were recreated by Disney were written for grown-ups. She said a real fairytale takes a real woman’s pain and trauma and transmutes it into triumph. That is what Backstrom wants to do with her fairytales. She said while there is suffering and pain, on the other side of that is great power. Backstrom has been performed at the Goodman Theatre, the O’Neill Theatre, as well as at the New Stages Festival and the New Play Festival.

Backstrom didn’t know she was nominated for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award. She said she was surprised when she received the news that she had won. As part of the award, Backstrom will serve as the artist-in-residence at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Mass. She said having plays and stories she wrote performed on stage by actors is the best feeling ever.

“Theatre is unique in that it’s like church. Everybody is there together and there is an energy, a spirit, that just whips through you in this large group of people. It’s so different that sitting by yourself and watching something on television,” she said.

Backstrom added that being in a theatre is transformative, one person laughs, and the energy goes through the entire audience, and that, she said, is a form of group healing. She said actors receive a body of work and they take it, and they create something the writer couldn’t have imagined. She said the embodiment of the character changes based on the actors who are in the play. She said as a playwright, she can sit in an audience anonymously and watch how her work moves that audience.

Backstrom has been commissioned to write a new play, the Revelry of Ash and Lom, which she described as a love song to Toni Morrison and August Wilson. She is also working on new fairytales for her collection, which she is looking at releasing this fall and a novel. She is interested in doing audio recordings for her plays. She wants her work to be as accessible to Black women and women of color as possible. Backstrom wants her work to spark creativity in Black women.

For more information about Mallory Raven Ellen Backstrom, visit www.MalloryBackstrom.com.

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