Doretha’s Blues

By: Jennifer Vintzileos

In the category of local talent, Doretha’s Blues is a short film that packs a punch and raises issues of social injustice that continue to this day. While Doretha’s (Tonea Stewart) career as a singer has come and gone, the story of Michael Brown on television triggers a dark memory while she is out at her usual watering hole. The story is new, but the outcome is one that Doretha and many of those in the BIPOC community have come to face time and time again.

At the height of her career a young Doretha (Ashleet L’Oreal Davis) was known for her gritty blues songstress style. Fast-forward decades later, Doretha Wright’s star may have faded, yet she continues to get dolled up to visit the bar that launched her career and have her usual night of libations. While enjoying her drink, newbie waitress Tamera (Kristen White) gets starstruck meeting the woman known for the song “My Black Is Beautiful.” But bartender Bernice (Yolanda Davis) is used to this, shooing away Tamera and pulling up a chair to Doretha’s table to ask her why she keeps coming back when the singer has not performed in years, yet still comes to the bar to play her own music that once made her a star. Bernice suggests that Doretha should finally retire from her night-owl ways, but the television discussing the trial of Michael Brown does that for her. As she watches the news, Doretha has her own flashbacks of losing her son Maurice (Elliot Sims) to a hate crime. In her breakdown, the patrons of the bar finally witness what may be Doretha’s last performance as she starts to sing the blues one more time.

As part of the Shatterbox short film series courtesy of Refinery29, Director Channing Godfrey Peoples doesn’t shy away from tackling one of the largest social issues of our time. She does so with a touching tale of a woman who is past her career prime and the ghosts of her past still coming back to haunt her to this day; the characters are nuanced and carefully crafted with grit and tenderness all in one. With the death of Doretha’s son during what appears to be during the time of Civil Rights, the present still exhibits that the same problems still exist even when the laws are supposed to be for all. And that triggers Doretha’s grief and her need to sing the blues just one more time. It is a tragic, gut-wrenching, and beautifully executed story that hits close to home for many. Sadly, it is also a reality that still exists.

Doretha may have sang the blues one last time, but as Peoples was able to point out for the viewers: it’s not the last time altogether. The same story happens over and over, all of us hoping that it will reach an end at some point.