Performing Arts : ‘Porgy’ Gets a Cultural Makeover : Director Hope Clarke has added a historic African American flavor to Gershwin’s classic characters on Catfish Row.

Like its title character, George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” has gone begging for much of its life. In Europe, ironically, Gershwin’s rich evocation of African American life on Charleston’s Catfish Row is regarded as America’s greatest opera. But on its native soil, “Porgy” remained hat in hand outside locked opera house doors for 40 years after its 1935 debut in Boston’s Colonial Theatre.

“The work had a Broadway stench to it,” explained Houston Grand Opera general director David Gockley in a recent phone interview. “Over 40 years it had devolved into a musical, and then it was further adapted for a movie version.”

In January, Gockley and the Houston Grand Opera unveiled a new production of “Porgy and Bess,” which will tour Southern California starting this week in San Diego. This is the second time the Houston company has mounted Gershwin’s work.

In 1976, during the bicentennial Americana fixation, it was Houston that produced the first fully operatic U.S. “Porgy.” A musical and dramatic success, that show eventually toured 17 American cities, enjoyed a lavish revival in 1983 at New York’s Radio City Music Hall and paved the way for a production at the stodgy Metropolitan Opera in 1985.

But even as the American opera Establishment became more comfortable with “Porgy and Bess,” cultural criticism of the work festered, especially among African Americans. Because the opera’s hero was a beggar and his rival was a drug dealer, many perceived “Porgy and Bess” as a catalogue of negative role models. When the urbane Duke Ellington complained about “Gershwin’s lampblack Negroisms,” he underlined another irritant: The opera portrays a segment of black life seen through distinctly white eyes.

“From the beginning, ‘Porgy and Bess’ has been a piece about black people that involved white authors, directors and producers,” Gockley noted. “This has created great uneasiness, as if one group were lording it over the other. I was very interested to see a production placed in the hands of a black director.”

For the new Houston production of “Porgy and Bess,” Gockley selected Hope Clarke to be director and choreographer. The 52-year-old Clarke will enter the record books as the first African American to direct a professional U.S. staging of “Porgy and Bess.” Clarke came to Gockley’s attention through her work with New York City-based Opera Ebony productions of “Porgy and Bess” in Brazil and Finland. Gockley had also seen her choreography for “Jelly’s Last Jam” on Broadway, which earned her a 1992 Tony nomination.

With the choice of Clarke, Gockley hopes to overcome some of the remaining critical reservations about the opera. Clarke has brought out the African roots of the people who inhabit Gershwin’s Catfish Row and has given its population a more positive, hopeful cast.

“I want African Americans who come to see the opera to be proud that an African American is directing the production and to recognize the people on stage,” Clarke said from her home in New Jersey. “I wanted to draw a community which we could find today: It could be any poor community, but one with pride. The residents wear lovely clothes--they love style and color, just as most African Americans do today. And everybody goes to work. There are different classes in this community. Jake and Clara, for instance, own their own business. It’s a community with classes and gradations.

“What I didn’t want people to see was a poor, downtrodden black community. They may be poor, but they have hopes and dreams like everybody else.”

The best symbol of Clarke’s vision is her spin on the title character. Porgy is still a beggar, but when he receives a coin, he presents the passerby with a small, hand-carved African totem. Clarke has also made prominent use of drumming, a significant aspect of African culture. For example, at the big dance on Kittiwah Island, she has added an onstage drum and percussion ensemble.

Clarke justified her African emphasis on the better understanding we now have of the Gullah community that inhabited the Sea Islands off the coast of the Carolinas and Charleston. The Gullahs (the obscure name may be a corruption of Angola) were far less assimilated than other African Americans, keeping their unique dialect and preserving many African customs. DuBose Heyward, whose 1925 novel “Porgy” gave the opera its plot and who worked with Ira Gershwin on the libretto, knew this culture third-hand through the tales his Charleston-raised mother recounted from the Gullah servants of her childhood. Although Gershwin spent time with Heyward in Charleston while he was composing the opera, it is unlikely that two whites could have gained access to the inner circles of the Gullah community.

Clarke has fleshed out the opera’s Gullah context, using that culture’s integrity to compensate for some of the lead characters’ moral defects. She has also made certain the cast knows how to pronounce Gullah dialect, which the opera’s libretto employs.

“I have a descendant of the Gullahs in this production to help with the dialect, to get it as close as possible in the time we have. I want the characters to express the accent, the fears, the superstitions of the Gullah people so the audience will know just who and what they are--not just some black people running around the stage.”

Clarke said that the Gershwin family, holders of the opera’s performing rights and cautious guardians of the Gershwin legacy, approved of her interpretive approach. To ensure their cooperation, Gockley included members of the Gershwin family in the earliest stages of the production’s planning. Marc Gershwin, nephew of George, requested but a single alteration.

“He felt that Bess’ second outfit was too subdued. He wanted it a little sexier, so we made it a little more off the shoulder,” Clarke said.

Critical reaction to Clarke’s approach has been positive. Reviewing the production’s opening night in Houston on Jan. 27, Houston Chronicle writer Charles Ward said Clarke’s staging was “zestful and humane. The details she infused deepened the humanity of the show immeasurably.”

When the production opened in Dallas on Feb. 15, music critic of the Dallas Morning News John Ardoin approved of Clarke’s “well-oiled and, at times, dance-like” direction, although he had some reservations about some of the “freeze-frame” moments of her choreography.

When it came to the production’s choreography, Clarke, who early in her career was a principal dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, encountered some limitations built into the touring production.

“The choreography is a mixture of 1930s jazz movement and some African movement. It was designed for singers--there are no dancers in the cast--so the choreography is limited to what the singers can do,” she explained.

Houston Grand Opera’s $2-million “Porgy and Bess,” a co-production with nine other American opera companies, will play 10 American cities this year and will tour Japan in 1996. It opens in Southern California on Wednesday at the San Diego Civic Theatre, running through next Sunday under the auspices of San Diego Opera. Los Angeles Music Center Opera presents the production June 7-18 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and the Orange County Performing Arts Center hosts the opera June 21-25. At each venue, the opera arrives complete with everything except the pit orchestra and supernumeraries.

Gockley added that he has recently added a European extension to the 1996 tour, with performances at Milan’s La Scala and the Paris Opera Bastille. Now that Houston Grand Opera has two period productions of “Porgy and Bess” under its belt, Gockley admitted that it might be time for a new look, a postmodern production, in seven or eight years. Would he consider asking the ever-controversial Peter Sellars to direct it?

“Why not?!” he said.

* George Gershwin’s opera “Porgy and Bess,” a co-production of Houston Grand Opera and nine American opera companies, including San Diego Opera.

San Diego Civic Theatre, 202 C St. March 8-12 , Wednesday-Thursday, 7 p.m.; Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. Tickets: $20-$90. (619) 236-6510).

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., June 7-18. For information: (213) 972-7211.

Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, June 21-25. Evenings at 8 and Saturday-Sunday at 2 p.m. $19-$60. Ticket info: 714- 556-2787, Ext. 294.