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Last Updated: May 30th, 2008 - 11:49:13 |
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| Daniel Beaty |
Nothing brings urban dwellers together like the unfolding of a bizarre event—especially one that may end tragically. Folks come out to see what’s going to happen, while adding their own buzz about the unfolding drama. Daniel Beaty, the talented actor, singer, composer and writer of the brilliant one-man play “Emergence-SEE!” sets this strange, compelling curiosity in the Hudson River, when a slave ship inexplicably rises in the harbor, right in front of the Statue of Liberty.
Using song, poetry and inexhaustible energy, Beaty—who received the 2007 Obie Award for “Emergence-SEE!” and is now performing the show at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.—morphs seamlessly into 40 characters who make their own profound, funny and heartbreaking observations about their own lives, as they relate to the collective memory and rage that comes from being the descendants of slaves.
Through news reports, the central character Rodney learns that his father has jumped into the river and climbed aboard the slave ship named “Remembrance.”
“I thought this was the new Carnival Cruise,” cracks one of Beaty’s bystanders.
As he drives to pick up his younger brother Freddy so the pair can get their dad off the ship, all the while anxious about missing his performance in a poetry slam, Rodney—a college-educated BMW owner—is stopped by the police. The stage darkens as Rodney becomes a latter day Nat Turner with an automatic weapon, shouting “bam!” as he fantasizes about shooting the shop clerk who follows him in the store (“I could buy you and your minimum wage job,” he snarls) the lady who clutches her purse as he walks by, and the police officer who pulled him over, all the while yelling “you don’t know me!”
The power of Beaty’s work lies in his seamless transitions from character to character, leaving no gaps that would allow confusion to disrupt the flow. Rodney, who is the brains in the outfit, turns around and becomes younger brother Freddy, who is the heart and soul of the family. Freddy aching for someone to love, and bemoans being “stuck in the gay rat race, like a hamster on a treadmill.”
Dad, explains Freddy, changed after their mother was assaulted and murdered in the streets of New York City when the brothers were young. “Dad would say ‘don’t talk to those hoodlums on the street,’ ” Freddy says of his Shakespearean-scholar father. But by this time, Dad is having conversations with the voices in his head.
On the slave ship, the ancestors are represented by a Ghanaian King named Kofi, who squares off with Dad in an effort to shake him out of his fear-driven resistance and complacency. Kofi implores Dad to look at the bones still shackled to the chains on the ship, and to share the stories of slavery with his sons.
Beaty’s cast connects the dots with their tales. Freddy has a crush on Anton, the Rasta man who hangs out in the park and observes that “we all got a slave ship in the mind,” yet also identifies with the wealthy White folks because “we all have white bones.” A poet competing in the slam tells a story about playing the “knock knock” game with his father when he was a little boy, and the confusion and pain he felt when his dad was taken to prison, “missing the lessons of how to shave, how to talk to a lady, how to dribble a basketball, how to be a man.”
A homeless man asks for spare change in a raspy voice, and then tells a wistful tale of watching his mother gather eggs, sugar, flour and milk to make the most beautiful, amazing pound cake, that tasted “like there was gold inside.”
“Duality Duo” Eric, a poet in the slam competition, spins his verse about the battle “between the nerd and the nigger,” asking if the two can co-exist. The next poet rages about superstars who flaunt “their bling-bling as our kids dodge bullets,” calling out Black entertainers as criminals guilty “of stealing young Black minds,” and declaring that “all the diamond rings and big cars should be sold,” with the profits going to the schools, towards “making our children the stars.”
Beaty’s dialogues and poems, while sometimes warm and playful, have an underlying edge. He’s aiming at the jugular, issuing a desperate wake-up call to both the young and old. In a poem at the slam, Rodney says, “we have been sleepwalking the streets in a state of emergence / see the truth of who we are / pain is waking my ass up from a deep sleep.”
“Emergence-SEE!” is like a cup of hazelnut coffee after dinner, warm and sweet, yet strong enough to jolt you out of the post-meal lethargy--to focus on the work yet to be done.
“Emergence-SEE!” runs though July 22 at the Arena Stage’s Kreeger Theater, 1101 Sixth Street, S.W., in Washington, D.C. For tickets call 202-488-3300, or purchase online at www.arenastage.org. Performance Times: Sundays through Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday though Saturday at 8 p.m.; Matinees: Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.
© Copyright 2006 SeeingBlack.com
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