Healing With `Nappy Edges' -- One-Woman Show On Life's Losses Touches Soul Of Artist, Theater

----------------------------------------------------------------- Theater preview

`Nappy Edges" previews tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday, and opens Wednesday at Group Theatre, Seattle Center. It runs through May 5. 441-1299. -----------------------------------------------------------------

This spring the Group Theatre faces the latest in a series of life-threatening challenges. Due to a cash crunch, the long-running multicultural troupe canceled the final two shows of its 1995-96 season: Roy Conboy's "When El Cucui Walks," and "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" by Neil Simon.

Rather than shut down or go on hiatus, Group artistic head Tim Bond found an affordable alternative. He invited Tawnya Pettiford-Wates to dust off her well-regarded 1986 solo piece, "Nappy Edges," revamp it with Bond's help, and revive it as a spring replacement.

"I thought we should go to our strengths, to those local artists of color who have been our mainstays and integral to our mission," explains Bond. "Tawnya's show was a big hit the first time we did it, and when we brought it back a year later. Doing it now is a very healing thing for us in this difficult time."

Pettiford-Wates needed to update the autobiographical "Nappy Edges," because so much has happened to this seasoned actress and educator in 10 years.

"My life has been going through transformations and my show is about transformations," she says. "It's about taking what is, and

using that for strength and growth.

"Parts of the piece are timeless. But I'm also bringing in myself as I am now. The script has to change because I've changed."

how helped heal artist

Pettiford-Wates' life-shifts include receiving a doctoral degree in theater, and becoming head of Seattle Central Community College's drama program. Also, she and her husband have added to a family that now includes three children.

And though the maternal grieving that catalyzed "Nappy Edges" won't disappear, it has subsided.

"I definitely used the show to heal myself," Pettiford-Wates confirms. "In 1984, I had a very healthy baby son. When he was four months old we went on a camping trip, and he had an episode of what they called SIDS - infant crib death."

The tragedy struck when Pettiford-Wates' career was thriving. She first came here from New York in 1980 to direct a local production of "For Colored Girls" - the Ntozake Shange play she co-starred in on Broadway. On that visit, meeting future husband Luther Wates "interrupted my plans. Seattle was not on my map before that!"

Pettiford-Wates got busy in local theaters, and when her son died, "I did the projects I had lined up to keep sane. I directed at Seattle Children's Theatre, was in the film `Twice in a Lifetime.' But losing my son made me deal with loss - not just loss by death, but the loss of various relationships, and how we learn to transform loss."

She began her solo play after auditioning for a role at ACT and "getting turned down by somebody who said casting me would bring a racial element into the show that would confuse a black issue with a human issue! I was so mad, I wrote an angry monologue, marched into ACT, and performed it in the office."

Later, Pettiford-Wates fattened the piece with other stories "about family, friends, art, community." For the 1996 version, she speaks of a recent visit to Africa with her 13-year-old daughter - "a transformative trip for both of us."

ounting on `Nappy Edges'

After some discouraging box office returns this season, and a drop in grant revenues, the Group needs "Nappy Edges" to be a hit.

Managing director Risa Morgan says that through cutbacks, the Group has cut its budget by about $100,000 (about 10 percent) but adds, "we're living from paycheck to paycheck, and it gets scarey."

The company also faces a major artistic transition soon, when Bond leaves his post. Despite present stresses, he says re-doing "Nappy Edges" "is very meaningful right now. It's about coming of age, and a wonderful celebration of life."

To Pettiford-Wates, the key word is sankofa - a concept from Ghana "which means, `go back and get it.' It means there is no shame in forgetting, as long as you go back and get what you need from the past to move your journey forward."