On Nov. 2, Moonie Productions presented the play “Love and Circumstances” at Delta College’s Atherton Auditorium.
The play was originally written by Janice Feaster and directed by Moonie Productions for this production, casting the Moonie family, the Stallworth family and more as actors in the play. Featured musicians included Charles Ware Jr., Momo Mendoza, Que Johnson and Julius Jarvis.
“This is really a soap opera. This show can go on and on and on and on. It was kind of lengthy, and we cut it down already, so it’s like stories within stories. Everyone had a story. So we tried to display that as quickly as possible, but I just loved this show because it’s from my family. My family, the Stallworth family, the O’Neil family — we were all a part of this and I’m proud of them,” said Elaine Marine Moonie, theater actress and entrepreneur. “And so it was really dear to my heart to see them all act, and sing, and dance and do whatever else they did for the first time.”
The Moonie Productions company was originally founded in 2008 by the husband-wife duo of Jarrett and E’Marie Moonie, and is a Black-run theater company based in Stockton focused on “Gospel Music and Stage Plays filled with Inspirational Soul Excitement.”
The company also works as a charity organization under the name Moonie Foundation, who have supported children through food donations and free rides.
The Moonie Foundation also works with the Dr. Lewis D. Stallworth Sr. Charter School, named after E’Marie Moonie’s late grandfather Bishop Lewis D. Stallworth Senior, by giving students free tickets to their shows and teaching the kids about stage production, management and performing.
“I wanna leave behind a living legacy. I don’t wanna die and then it happens, I wanna watch it happen. I wanna be alive when it happens, like my grandfather did for us. He prepared the way, we have jobs off the backs of my grandfather — the late Bishop Stallworth — and I wanna do the same for my children, and my grandchildren and for the other people in the community,” said E’Marie Moonie. “Now is our time to be the next, and to teach the generation behind us to be the next.”
Throughout the play, singers both acted out scenes and broke out into song. Their performance was accompanied by a jazz band playing at the foot of the stage, partitioned from the front row of the auditorium. With the help of curtains and props, the stage set shifted from a house living room, to a diner and to a police interrogation room throughout the production.
The story of “Love and Circumstances” revolves around the interpersonal drama between the Turner family, a poor family of church pastors raising a child — consisting of a son in college aspiring to play for the NFL, his mother who’s spiritually healing from a traumatic miscarriage and his father with a dark past that gets him into trouble with the police.
“The inspirational part about men and their sons and the athletic part of it, ‘cause the guy … was a football player. And so we wanted to be able to relate to men, and we think relating the story to men — which normally a lot of stories don’t — so we think it’s gonna be a very powerful story that’s relatable,” said Feaster.
“Love and Circumstances” concerns heavy topics such as criminal injustice, gun violence and psychological trauma.
Moreover, the story centered on the themes of love and faith, with a prominent Christian undercurrent. The story’s thesis comes between the dialogue between the protagonist and his love interest, leaving the message, “Love is more powerful than circumstances.”
Feaster wrote “Love and Circumstances” with the consult of her young daughter, D’Ericka Feaster-Stevenson, who she read the play to and critiqued it together with.
The story was written out of a desire to address the emotional states and relationships between men, particularly between Black men. The play’s father-son love story was inspired by Feaster’s experiences growing up with six brothers and a lacking relationship with her father.
“I like to do stuff that’s particularly positive towards Black men, because they don’t always get a positive light,” Feaster said. “People don’t look at them in the same light, and nobody else is building them up in the storyline even though they go through a lot. But at the end of the day, this was a father that loved his son. Where you got a story, most of a lot of people are like, ‘a lot of black men … he wasn’t with the family, he left my fam, I never knew my father.’ So that’s what we did reverse.”
At the end of the play, the emcee brought out all the actors from the play on stage to thank them for their performance. Various people who have closely supported Moonie Productions were also given a shout-out at the end of the performance, as was the case for Shontay Stricklen – an instructional assistant at the Stallworth Charter School and long-time fan of Moonie Productions’ plays, who attended the show to celebrate her birthday the Monday afterwards.
“I loved ‘Love and Circumstances.’ It did have a twist, ‘cause in my mind, I really was thinking that it was gonna be on a whole ‘nother plot twist. So when those things came about, I was like ‘okay, I didn’t see that coming.’ So I loved that about it, it wasn’t predictable,” said Stricklen.
