A 12-year-old play is making a revival in Jersey City. Choose Ye This Day, written and produced by local minister Almarie Taylor, is about choosing the right path and finding a belief in a higher power. From sexually transmitted diseases and infidelity to love lost, the play is a modern day Rent in gospel form.
“It’s about change and about people reevaluating their lives,” said Taylor. “People still remember it from the first time [it was produced]. The events are still happening today.”
The play documents the lives of young people struggling to find a true moral path, battling sin and desire. One of the characters, Monet, has contracted AIDS from a man and has since been looking for vengeance, trying to hurt every man she comes in contact with.
“It’ll make you laugh and cry, and at the end you’ll find joy.” – Almarie Taylor
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“It tells the story of what a lot of people are going through today,” Taylor said, “about making the right choices – that everyone can change.”
Taylor said that the play is for people of all colors and backgrounds, and that men are especially taken by the story.
“Men having been coming to me and saying, ‘How did you know my story?’ Some have even cried in the audience,” she said. “You know, they had something in their eye.”
From then to now
Taylor has been a co-pastor at St. Mary’s Evangelical Church in Jersey City for over 30 years.
“We’re a small church with a lot of power,” Taylor said. According to Taylor, the older women of the congregation even play the scrub board – a washboard played with a bent hanger. “They really tear it up,” she said.
Choose Ye This Day was the first play Taylor ever penned.
“What really amazes me is that a lot of the actors come from the community,” Taylor said, “and had no formal acting education, only the desire to act. I’ve been so blessed to have had them and teach them, and to now see them perform.”
After attending St. Peter’s College and Cornell, Taylor concentrated in directing at the New School in Manhattan. She has finished another play entitled Give Me Back My Son about a father who is battling to win custody of his child.
“Theater lets people explore things that they never thought they could,” Taylor said. “And to see my actors on stage and performing is so fulfilling. To hear someone telling them that they should be on Broadway, or they should have their own CD – it’s unexplainable.”
The next generation
Jersey City resident Paul Chong has been working with Taylor for over five years and now is in the process of writing his own screenplay. Called Lifestyles, the play follows two female business executives as they struggle with relationships with a drug dealer and an alcoholic. The play is scheduled to run at the end of May. Chong wants to have his first showing in Jersey City.
“Choose Ye This Day is really one of the best plays that I’ve ever been in with Almarie,” Chong said. “She is so inspirational. I wouldn’t even have been thinking about writing or acting if it wasn’t for her.”
Come Ye This Day runs at the Mt. Olive Baptist Church, 400 Arlington Ave. in Jersey City, from March 20, 21, at 7 p.m. through March 22 at 6 p.m. Minister Dorothy Harris is the assistant director, and minister George Hodnett composed and arranged the music. Tickets are $15.
For tickets or more information about the play, please call Mrs. Taylor at (201) 938-1390.
Sean Allocca can be reached at current@hudsonreporter.com