After New York success, actress comes home to Westcoast Black Theatre

Tarra Conner Jones returns to Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe in “Once On This Island” as a vastly different actress than the one audiences saw a little more than a year ago in her one-woman tribute to Tony-winner Nell Carter.

The actress and big-voiced singer, who has been exciting Sarasota audiences off and on for the last nine years, has discovered what kind of impact a major role can do for a performer’s career.

In a last-minute decision earlier this year, Jones was cast in a featured role in the off-Broadway musical “White Girl in Danger” by Michael R. Jackson, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning creator of “A Strange Loop.” In the show, she sang the powerful song “That’s Why I Kill,” a performance that The New York Times described as “titanic.” Others noticed as well. She was nominated for Drama Desk and Drama League awards and enjoyed a taste of celebrity in the awards-season circuit last spring.

Suddenly, people are calling her about roles, rather than her trying to snag an audition from people who had no idea who she was.

“It’s been a great year,” she said. “I came out of it with a lot of respect from the community and I couldn’t ask for anything better than that. It was by far the hardest show I’ve ever done. Our script changed daily through the process, working it and massaging it. But there was joy on the other end. I created the role. A cast album is coming. My mind is still blown about all that.”

Despite her higher profile in the theater industry, she promised Artistic Director Nate Jacobs that she will always find time to come “home” to the Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe, where she plays Asaka, Goddess of the Earth, as part of an ensemble of returning and new performers in “Once On This Island.” The 1990 musical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (“Ragtime,” “Anastasia,” “Knoxville”) is based on Rosa Guy’s novel “My Love, My Love,” a twist on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” set in the French Antilles. Westcoast first staged the musical in 2007.

It’s about a young island peasant girl named Ti Moune, who survives a hurricane and is adopted by a childless couple who revere the gods of earth, wind, water and death, who guide their way of life. When Ti Moune helps save a young mixed-race nobleman, she wants to be with him after he returns to his life in the family palace, and the Gods guide her on an unexpected journey that will test the idea that love is stronger than death.

“We get the overall story of how love conquers all, but I also hope that we start a good conversation about different cultures, different belief systems that people may not think about with Caribbean culture and ancestry,” said director Jim Weaver, the theater’s artistic associate.

Ilexis Holmes, who makes her Westcoast debut, returns to a role she played once before.

“I really relate to this story. Me and Ti Moune are the same. We have lived a similar life journey. The show means a lot to me. Ti Moune wants more for life, feeling stuck, disobeying her parents and starting on this journey, growing up and learning the consequences as well as with race and class. And loving someone you’re not supposed to.”

As Asaka, Jones sings the rousing “Mama Will Provide” as Ti Moune starts her journey. She is joined by Jazzmin Carson as Erzulie, Goddess of Love; Raleigh Mosely II as Agwe, God of Water; and Lee Hollis Bussie as Papa Ge, the Demon of Death. Jermarcus Riggins plays Ti Moune’s love interest, Daniel Beauxhomme.

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Dan Sander-Wells is the musical director and leads a six-member band.

Jones, who also has appeared in previous productions of the show, said that with its inspiring story, the musical also “is very relevant to issues of today, of race, or class, and the great divide between the two.  I hope that what people take from it is that love is love, no matter the race, or the class.”

Weaver, who has appeared in the show and directed past productions, said he was impressed with the way the original off-Broadway and Broadway productions kept things simple in a “very folkloric kind of way. It made perfect sense. I don’t want the story to get lost, but I also want it to be relevant to today’s audiences because they will look at things differently from when it first opened on Broadway. I’m putting my own stamp on it and not trying to recreate what was done before.”

Jones was a little concerned that a new project in New York might keep her from taking part in the production. That didn’t happen, and she has learned from a sorority sister that “I am always where I’m supposed to be. If I am here, then this is where I’m supposed to be. She said, ‘Sister, what’s for you won’t miss you.’ And it was like a Maya Angelou moment. If they want you in something, you can be in Egypt and they will find you and fly you to New York if it’s for you.”

‘Once On This Island’

By Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. Directed by Jim Weaver.  Runs Oct. 11-Nov. 19, Westcoast Black Theatre, 1012 N. Orange Ave., Sarasota. Tickets are $40-$50, $20 for students or active military. 941-366-1505; westcoastblacktheatre.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Musical ‘Once On This Island’ tests power of love at Westcoast Troupe