NOTE: “Today” and “tonight” refer to Friday, Oct. 3.
PORT TOWNSEND — Auntie Bebe, aka Dr. Carolyn Beatrice Montier, meted out her life story in tiny doses.
Niece Gin Hammond listened with her heart — and pen. An actor and playwright, Hammond pays tribute to her aunt in “Returning the Bones,” the tale of a young African-American woman who must choose between two lives.
“Returning” opens at 7:30 tonight at the Key City Playhouse, 419 Washington St., with Hammond portraying Bebe along with more than two dozen other characters, including family members in Texas and the escorts her aunt had when she traveled to Europe.
“Returning the Bones” also will take the stage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday; at 2:30 p.m. Sundays, Oct. 12 and 26; and at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 16, 17 and 25.
In this one-woman show, Bebe must decide whether to stay in the South to join the fight for civil rights — as her father wants her to do — or go to France to pursue a dream.
The play takes theatergoers to London in 1946, one of the places Bebe goes with a group of medical students. The only African-American in the group, she attends the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
“She stood out like a fly in buttermilk,” Hammond said in an interview.
Then Bebe keeps traveling, to Poland and to France, where she’s invited to finish her medical degree in Paris.
The choice and the aftermath compelled Hammond, a Seattle-based actor and winner of the Helen Hayes Award, to interview Aunt Bebe over the course of 10 years.
“She was always very humble,” Hammond said. “Slowly but surely,” though, “she unfolded a story of grace.”
Now 86, Bebe is living with dementia. By the time she saw a video of “Returning the Bones,” she was starting to lose her memory.
“You wrote a show about me?” she would ask.
Yes. And Bebe’s life story, Hammond writes, is full of hope.
It “confirms that even from a very young age, we are all capable of great courage and great achievements, no matter how the rest of the world may perceive us.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
