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Friday, July 27, 2007
Wendell’s ($15) weekend pick: ‘Emergen-SEE!’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For the final weekend of the National Black Arts Festival, True Colors Theatre has brought back Daniel Beaty’s amazing one-man performance piece, “Emergen-SEE!” — which imagines a mind-blowing New York day in which a slave ship magically appears in front of the Statue of Liberty.
A fantastical voyage that exposes the personal and political baggage of a young African-American slam poet, it’s a tour-de-force evening of theater. In the tradition of Anna Deavere Smith, Beaty’s virtuosic performance style requires him to re-invent himself with split-second timing — playing an entire family, a neighborhood and all the eyewitnesses to an apocalyptic event that will ultimately be as healing as it is tumultuous.
Beaty’s main character, Rodney, is trying to make it to a poetry competition when he realizes his father has climbed to the top of the ship. Uh-oh. Time to call in the troops.
Soon we meet Rodney’s gay brother; his brother’s transvestite hustler friend; neighborhood denizens; talking heads and so on. Like a really dexterous deejay, Beaty keeps several turntables revolving at once: seguing back and forth between the poetry slam and the news story unfolding in the harbor.
Referencing everything from Shakespeare to the City of Bones in August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean,” Beaty’s characters explain how African-Americans remain stigmatized, inwardly and socially, some two centuries after the Middle Passage. “You can have a Ph.D. and a six-figure income and still be a slave,” says one character.
Another describes those rare, fleeting moments when he’s not defined by skin color. “I’m not thinking about being black. I’m just thinking about being me,” he says, painting an image of a perfect day in the park or afternoon at the mall. “But it seems like somebody always remembers.” At Thursday night’s opening, I heard audience members gasp in recognition of such an experience.
As the story twists on, we are told that Rodney’s Shakespearean scholar-father hasn’t been the same since the young man’s mother was murdered by a drug addict. While The Rev. Al Sharpton demands that the slave ship be turned into a kind of memorial-museum, Oprah calls the event a “full-circle a-ha moment,” and Rodney’s family is born again through a soul-cleansing emotional baptism.
Whew! There’s a lot going on here.
But if Beaty sometimes gets lost in the sweeping urban tapestry that he conjures, he still manages to acquit himself as a supremely talented playwright and performer. Directed by Kenny Leon and first seen at New York’s Public Theater, “Emergen-SEE!” is an astonishing work of art that’s as funny and entertaining as it is smart and socially relevant.
Don’t let the National Black Arts Festival sail away before you can see it.
Through Sunday. $15. True Colors Theatre production at the Alliance Theatre. 404-733-5000. woodruffcentertickets.org/center/calendar/nbaf.aspx
