Ruby Dee: Nanna Maria
Ms. Ruby Dee calls herself a word worker. “Ideas too,” she says. “I love language and authors and music and how they can all interconnect. As an actor, I want to explore life and people rhythms and the sounds in the silences.”
Ms. Dee plays Nanna Maria, an elderly Fijian matriarch living in New Zealand. Fearing that the vibrancy of her childhood has been lost in her quarreling offspring, Nanna Maria commands that her grandchildren organize a great feast – an opportunity not only to reunite the family but also to name her successor. Recognizing that her time is limited, this one night could be Nanna Maria’s final opportunity to see the joy, passion and vivacity of her youth recaptured in her family.
“When the role of Nanna Maria was presented to me, the fact it was being shot in a place I had never been to intrigued me immediately – New Zealand seemed like some place from Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. This is my first look at this part of the world. It’s wonderful; the air you breathe is different. Then I was drawn to the fact that the key to the story is Nanna Maria – a woman in her 80’s, head of a family. And at the heart of it there’s the notion of the unity and sanctity of the family, traditional values by which it has been sustained over the years. The story is a microcosm of what we are going to have to think about, the world as family”. Ms. Dee’s enthusiasm for the role was rewarded with a New Zealand Screen Award for Best Actress.
Ms. Dee grew up in Harlem, New York, graduated from Hunter College in 1945 and soon after made her Broadway debut in South Pacific (not the musical). She went on to appear in such plays as Jeb, Anna Lucasta, and A Raisin in the Sun. Off-Broadway, she received an Obie Award for her performance in Boesman and Lena in 1970 and a Drama Desk Award for Wedding Band, in 1974. Other off-Broadway and regional theatre credits include King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Glass Menagerie.
She has also adapted works for the stage, most notably Rosa Guy’s novel, The Disappearance: Zora Is My Name, which featured the writings of Zora Neale Hurston (and was later filmed for PBS). Ms. Dee was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1988.
Her film career began in 1950, with No Way Out and The Jackie Robinson Story. Since then, she has been featured in many films, including A Raisin in the Sun, Buck and the Preacher, Cat People, Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Just Cause, and Tuesday Morning Ride.
Ms. Dee’s notable television credits include Long Day’s Journey Into Night (for which she received a Cable ACE award). She received Emmy nominations for her performances in The Nurses, Roots: The Next Generation, Gore Vidal’s Lincoln, China Beach, and Evening Shade; in 1991, she was awarded the Emmy for her performance in Decoration Day. She has received two Daytime Emmy nominations for her role as Alice the Great on Bill Cosby’s animated series, Little Bill, and in 2005 appeared in the television production of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, also starring Halle Berry and executive produced by Oprah Winfrey.
Ms. Dee is the author of two children’s books, Tower to Heaven and Two Ways to Count to Ten, as well as a book of poetry and short stories, My One Good Nerve (which she has adapted into a solo performance piece). She and her late husband Ossie Davis wrote a joint autobiography, With Ossie & Ruby: In This Life Together, for which they won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken-Word Album.
Through their company, Emmalyn Productions Company, Inc, Ms. Dee and Ossie Davis produced with PBS some of their best work: Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum; A Walk Through the 20th Century with Bill Moyers; and three seasons of the critically acclaimed series, With Ossie and Ruby. Together, they were inducted into the NAACP Image Award Hall of Fame (1989), awarded the Silver Circle Award by the Academy of Television Arts and Science (1994), the National Medal of Arts Award (1995), and the Screen Actors Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2001). In September 2004 Ms. Dee and Mr. Davis received the highly prestigious Kennedy Centre Award.
Ms. Dee’s is a formidable legacy. From her outstanding achievements in the arts and her considerable contribution to the development of twentieth century American theater to her groundbreaking work in civil rights with late husband Ossie Davis, she is an icon in every sense of the word.