Kimberly Wilson's "A Journey" Dramatizes Black History from West Africa to Montgomery

Veteran stage performer Kimberly Wilson debuted a one-woman pageant of history Friday at the in East Norwalk in honor of Black History Month.

Titled “A Journey . . . By Kimberly Wilson,” she assumes multiple personae, beginning with a proud West African tribal queen violently kidnapped into slavery, to a cotton-picking slave, women icons of the civil rights movement and a present-day woman striving to make her inner light shine.

It’s a tour-de-force of acting and song, with the statuesque Wilson, at 5 feet 11 inches, modulating her outsize contralto voice from whispered softness to belter renditions of Gospel and spiritual anthems.

Wilson wrote the script, an evolution of an original program called “The Three Spirits of Black Womanhood” she has performed at area schools and workshops for the past 17 years. She lives in Westport and has a daughter studying economics at the University of Connecticut.

“The piece allows me the luxury of breathing improvisation into it,” she said in an interview prior to the opening. “I do welcome the spirit of the history to join me.”

“And I love that!” said Wilson, a Minnesota native who studied theater and fine arts at Howard University following a childhood of acting experiences. She was crowned Miss Black Minnesota in 1984.

Her career includes acting credits in Minnesota and New York and a film debut in 2007.

“A Journey” begins with the sound of African drums in a darkened theatre. As the stage light beams on Wilson, a traditional tribal head scarf lending a regal presence, she dances joyously, her feet and hands frenzied in celebratory motion.

Too soon, she pantomimes a brutal capture and the fiercely proud woman is reduced to chattel, led off in chains from her village.

The journey takes a universal woman to a plantation in New York State in the 18^th century where her five children are taken from her to be sold into slavery.

When Wilson stoops down to pick cotton, her pace quickens as she nearly succumbs to physical exhaustion.

As Rosa Parks, she recalls the monumental 381-day Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott that led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision banning segregated seating in city buses.

Wilson personifies the poet Maya Angelo, down to her mannerisms and vocal inflections.

The performance reaches an emotional pitch when Wilson sweetly delivers “I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free.”

It ends with a rousing rendition of “This Little Light of Mine,” Wilson leading the audience in song and clapping to the rhythm.

No one clapped more spiritedly than Clorasteen Scott Wilson, Wilson’s stylish mother who flew in from Minneapolis for the opening.

Deep-dimpled and radiant, the Louisiana native captured attention in her elegant caped suede ensemble, matching boots and bronze-painted nails, broadcasting a regal presence to match that of any African queen.

“Isn’t she something!” Wilson’s mother said of her stage-struck daughter who had just morphed into a dozen vivid characters onstage. “When she was just little, her father and I wondered where she came from.”

The performance runs on February 19, 20, 25, 26, 27 at Theatre Artists Workshop, 5 Gregory Blvd., East Norwalk. For further information contact Wilson at kimberlyw2010@yahoo.com for theater times and reservations.