This is a big piece of theater with a small cast. Ed Shockley wrote the script and Lary Moten directs, and the two of them, Philadelphians both, are the players. Theryn Knight does sound and lighting, and the show takes place at Stage 4 on the 4th floor of Studio Theatre at 1501 14th Street N.W.
Moten reminds us in the program notes that slavery sometimes takes place even when both slaver and the enslaved share a culture or skin color. One such instance at the show’s beginning quotes the chilling admonition of an Indian master to his young Indonesian. Reminding the slave to do everything he is told to do, he concludes, “and if you live . . . perhaps I will feed you.”
The third word in the title, “Revisited,” sets this play apart from a simple retelling of the horrors of America’s Peculiar Institution. For example, even in the worst of times humor helped make an intolerable situation more bearable, and moments of humor lighten the narratives.
A series of letters from Vanunu, the Israeli imprisoned for telling the world about their secret nuclear weapons program, is a thread running through the play from the first day of his confinement through the years until his release.
There is horror, too, of the worst kind – the everyday acceptance of evil. How could there not be in an honest work about slavery? But overall, the play meets its objective as stated by the director: to perhaps find in the examination of choices “something that may prepare us to bravely face our own crisis of conscience when it inevitably arrives.”
I know that “It’s good for you” is faint praise. The Slave Narratives Revisited, though, demonstrates that good intent need not preclude absorbing entertainment, with both humorous moments and profound ones. There is one more chance to see this thought provoking work: the last day of Capital Fringe, Sunday, July 27, at 4:00 p.m. For more photographs of Slave Narratives Revisited click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment