Will BayBay listen to her ancestors or follow her dream? UpStage has the answer in ‘Bones’

BayBay has escaped her mother’s bookstore, but her mistakes always seem to drag her back, with most of those slips connected to her bad choices in men.

She knows it isn’t really the Book & Breakfast store that pulls her back but her invisible ancestors, the ones who have guided her mother through life. BayBay resents them.

It’s in the midst of this resentment where you’ll meet her and her family in UpStage Theatre’s production of Shay Youngblood’s “Talking Bones.”

Showtimes are 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, and 3 p.m. Saturday, May 11, in the theater, 1713 Wooddale Blvd.

“Talking Bones” is part of UpStage’s “It’s All About Family” season. Founding Artistic Director Ava Brewster Turner directs this Lorraine Hansberry Award-winning play set in a small, southern town.

“It’s not specified which town it’s in,” Turner said. “It’s just any small, southern town.”

That is the perfect setting for this story, because the town’s location doesn’t matter to BayBay, played by Elizabeth Ervin. Wherever it is, she absolutely doesn’t want to be there.

Her mother Ruth, played by Neichelle Horton, constantly reminds BayBay of the importance of family roots and listening to her ancestors, but BayBay doesn’t want to hear it.

Finally, BayBay’s 20-something daughter, Eila, played by LaShay Akins, has had enough of her mother’s comings and goings and calls BayBay out on it. Eila has lived with her grandmother since birth and watched her mother run off with men of bad character.

Meanwhile, it seems BayBay is about to make an even bigger mistake when Mr. Fine, played by Khari Smith, comes knocking on the book shop door.

“He wants to buy the bookstore and turn it into a nightclub, so he tries to charm BayBay,” Turner said. “Ruth is getting older, and she wants to settle her affairs before she dies. She wants the bookstore to stay in the family, and Eila is the mediator between the two.”

Through it all, the ancestors keep talking. Ruth hears them through her hearing aid. Eila hears them, too, and BayBay wants to leave them behind once and for all, which is why Mr. Fine appeals to her.

“BayBay is looking for love,” Ervin says of her character. “And she still has high hopes for movies and songs being written about her. She’s 40, and she’s still chasing her dreams.”

But the ancestors never stop whispering about what’s right and true.

“BayBay doesn’t want to hear them but she can,” Ervin said.

Ruth definitely listens.

The ancestors are the spirits of deceased family members. They’re Ruth’s higher power, and though she understands BayBay’s frustration, Ruth wants to keep her family together.

“She wants to keep them on the straight and narrow,” Horton said. “She wants to grow the family without rehashing the past.”

“Past” is the key word here, because something happened to BayBay in her 20s, and the revelation of it will change everything.

Eila, meanwhile, is a poet who also works in the Book & Breakfast. Having been raised by her grandmother, traditions are important to her, as are the ancestors’ voices she follows.

“Eila has a strong connection to the bookstore,” Akins said. “She also has the gift of writing, and she loves poems. She has these visions, and she goes into these trances where she recites poems and she visualizes things. And she says it all in a very articulate and artistic form.”

Is BayBay jealous of her daughter’s writing gift? Perhaps. Does she resent the relationship between her mother and daughter? Not so much.

She did leave them several times, after all, and if Mr. Fine is true to his word, she’ll leave them again. Trouble is, Mr. Fine has made a career out of playing with women’s emotions.

“He’s done this before,” Smith said. “But the only problem is, he realizes that BayBay isn’t like the other women he’s manipulated.”

Mr. Fine still uses his charms by employing the young, homeless, yet brilliant Oz, played by Amir Hall, to bring BayBay flowers in the middle of the day. Eila senses Oz’s brilliance and eventually connects with him.

Rounding out the cast is Kyla Bates, the understudy for Ruth.

“Ruth wants to leave this earth with a good conscience, knowing that she still has her place, her bookstore,” Bates said. “It’s all about legacy, passing on the legacy. We relate this to what we have in our community as Blacks and African Americans. Hearing the ancestors, our families — our generations have done that since the beginning of time. I used my grandmother to kind of get myself into this character, and when my grandmother prays, and she may hear back from the Lord, she says, ‘I hear you.’ So, it’s all about listening and letting whoever you believe in, whatever higher being that you believe in, guide you to do the right thing.”

So, does BayBay do the right thing in the end? Well, you’ll have to make a trip to UpStage Theatre to find out.

Tickets are $25. For tickets or more information, call UpStage Theatre at (225) 924-3774 or visit upstagetheatre.biz.