Plays have often inspired the creation of operas, but it usually doesn't happen the other way around. Man in the Ring by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright/director/actor Michael Cristofer ( The Shadow Box, Gia, Mr. Robot ) is an exception.
Man in the Ring is a drama inspired by the tragic life of gay Black boxer Emile Griffith ( 1938-2013 ), a world champion in the welterweight and middleweight classes. It's now enjoying a world premiere run at Chicago's Court Theatre.
But Cristofer's first approach to dramatizing Griffith's life came via his libretto for composer Terence Blanchard's 2013 opera Champion. It was Blanchard who decided on the subject matter of Grffith's life for a joint commission by Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Jazz St. Louis.
Blanchard had approached Cristofer to write the libretto to Champion after the two collaborated together on the 2001 film Original Sin that starred Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas. And though Champion has gone on to have successful productions in St. Louis and San Francisco ( Washington National Opera will produce it next at the Kennedy Center in 2017 ), Cristofer wasn't entirely satisfied with his dramatization of Griffith's life.
"A libretto for a two-and-a-half-hour opera is about 40 to 50 pages. There's not a lot of language—the concentration is on music, obviously." Cristofer said. "There was a lot about Emile that I had not been able to get into the opera."
So Cristofer is eternally grateful for actor Kamal Angelo Bolden who helped to facilitate Court Theatre's commissioning of Man in the Ring. Though the Court has built its reputation on producing the classics of theater, Cristofer feels his Man in the Ring fits in part to its structure which is partially drawn from ancient Greek theater.
"The play is structured, like the opera, around this older man looking back at his younger life," said Cristofer, also emphasizing the large amount of Caribbean music also incorporated into Man in the Ring to reflect Griffin's youth in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
"We've got, in a referential way, what is like a Greek drama with a chorus and singing. There's a rhythmic accompaniment to scenes," Cristofer said. "So the overall all feeling to the production is quite joyous even though the story that we're telling is not the happiest."
Griffith is notorious for a deadly title match with Benny Paret at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1962. At the weigh in, Paret publicly mocked Griffith by making homophobic remarks and gestures in front of the press. Griffith won the match by knockout, but Paret slipped into a coma and died 10 days later in the hospital.
"It was a time when the press did not reveal things like that about a public figure, they were more reticent about what happened," said Cristofer about the media's reluctance to go into details about Paret's homophobic taunting.
Griffin didn't publicly identify as gay in his lifetime, preferring to go by the label of bisexual when questioned later in life by the press. Yet Cristofer said that once Griffin died in 2013, his surviving partner ( and adopted son for legal purposes ), Luis Rodrigo Griffith, clarified that their relationship was a loving one.
"He went back and forth about identifying himself and he was loathe to put himself into a category," Cristofer said. "A lot of the play is about acceptance of yourself and the ability to be intimate and how that ability is hampered by not being able to accept yourself. Emile was in a long relationship with Luis for many, many years and the play does explore that, too."
Cristofer said Griffith's manager tried to pressure him to leave boxing because he could see that it was taking a toll on his mind and body. Griffith suffered dementia late in life likely due to his boxing career, but also from a vicious 1990s gay bashing when he was set upon by men with baseball bats after leaving a gay bar in the Times Square area of New York.
Cristofer feels that Man in the Ring is particularly timely, especially with so much attention in the media about how certain sports like boxing and football might be causing future debilitating brain injuries. But there's also personal affinity for Cristofer, too.
"As a gay man, I think that it's also my connection to the material that I'm of an age where I'm looking back at my life and wondering about the things I did do and the things I did not do and you get to a point where you want to make peace with all the events of your life. Also because Emile and I came up through those same years," Cristofer said. "I have personal knowledge of what the world was like and that was another reason why I was attracted to the story."
Man in the Ring continues through Sunday, Oct. 16, at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $45-$65; call 773-753-4472 or visit CourtTheatre.org .
