Review of Eclipsed which closes on the Vernal Equinox
By Wanda Sabir

In “Eclipsed,” playwright Danai Gurira, holds the politics of rape and war up to the light and finds it is gone, hidden behind a cloud or the orbit of a larger constellation. How are the politics of the black female body somehow trivialized or ignored when sexual slavery or rape and war fill mouths, the atrocities dripping from chins; however, no one wipes away the stain? Currently up through Sunday, March 19, at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, the play asks audiences to consider the violence of war and what people do when cornered to survive.

It is the second Liberian Civil War, President Charles Taylor is at it again and this time there is a concerted response by insurgents. The only problem is, innocent people, the majority women and girls, are brutalized, captured and sold. “Eclipsed” characters are understandably fierce, they have to be — life is so unpredictable when one is a pawn in civil conflict. Yet, the work has moments of joy and happiness. We find ourselves laughing when Wife #3’s hairpiece scares Rita and Wife #4 who think it is an animal. Other moments are the women sitting together in the evening listening to Girl read from a biography on President Clinton, a white man with a second wife named Monica Lewinsky. The women find a sense of normal as they wash clothes, cook food, dance, tell stories, and dare to dream.

Known for work which explores African Diaspora themes, the “Zimerican” what the Zimbabwean-American writer calls herself, says she is not trying to be political; however, if telling stories that reflect her reality and that of her people, translates as political, then so be it.

Gurira says in an interview with Kevin Sessums, the writer, the reason she started writing in the first place was to excavate her sisters from the battlefield. In her “honors paper at Macalester College,” the scholar looks at “the neglect of black women in psychology. [She agrees with Sessums that she has] always been drawn to speaking out for the invisible in society. [Her] work [says], ‘No. We are here.’ It [bears] witness to those who are not witnessed” (Curran program 13).

The playwright says she grew tired of having to “study and embody dramatic narratives which did not ‘speak to who [she] is and who people who look like her are.’” She says she became “’outraged and decided to address [this omission] in a very practical way. A very literal way'” (Ibid.13). What she has done is write plays, direct films, and act. She is a very busy woman.

Hers is the first production on Broadway to have an all-black woman cast, playwright, and director, South African, Liesl Tommy. This latest work continues to challenge prevailing notions of what it means to be a free woman.

In “Eclipsed” we meet two, then three wives. Girl makes four; however, in the beginning of the story, we are hopeful, as are Wives #1 and #3 that perhaps the two of them can keep Girl safe. At 15, Girl (Ayesha Jordan) who wandering in the forest stumbles into the women who share their meager food—cassava and sometimes, no cassava. Stacey Sergeant’s “Wife #1” allows her to stay and the two older women, the eldest 24, enjoy the youngster.

Girl has fond memories of her mother and father, school where she learns to read and compute. However, the idyllic home life is interrupted once Girl is captured. She accepts her lot with Wife #1 and Wife #3, who shelter her until Girl is presented with an alternative: Wife #2 (actress Adeola Role). The Girl hears about this outlaw “wife,” who is bad news, according to Wife #1.

As the days move into weeks and months, the girl tries to acquiesce or submit to the fact that she is someone else’s property to do what he wishes with her. Each day the three wives line up when the commander comes by to choose his dessert for the night. Girl is chosen over the others, Wife #3 (Joniece Abbott-Pratt) is pregnant and Wife #1 is older than the other two and not attractive to the commander, who nonetheless needs her to run his compound: feed him and keep the wives in order.

The women keep a bowl for the returning wife who wipes between her legs, as if this gesture can erase memories of violations.
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The unwelcome, Wife #2 (Adeola Role) returns. She courts the girl, exploiting her fears and desires. She buys Girl gifts—pink fingernail polish, a dress, and then an AK-47. Wife #2 — warrior name: Disgruntled, romanticizes war and life as a soldier. Girl thinks “rape” is the epitome of hell until she stops collecting firewood to collect contraband to feed hungry beasts. She learns too late that the beasts also bite her, that just association with them makes her eventually one of the pack.

We see the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder in both “Disgruntled” and “Girl.” Rita asks them to say their names. The Peacekeeper who is one of the hundreds of Liberian women who push for peace talks with the warring forces to stop the violence and end the war. The women wear white and set up a vigil outside the president’s palace and pray. Other women visit the guerrilla army in the forests to talk peace. It is here she meeting the wives.

Bossy and fearless, Akosua Busia’s “Rita “coaches the women soldiers to say their names, the names their mother’s called them. Girl and Disgruntled point guns at her instead.

The speaking of their names calls the child soldiers back into their bodies and for a moment the veil lifts, and they can see ahead, the eclipse behind them. Yet, the memory lingers, settles like a cloud, darkness, a place more comfortable than the light.

Girl says in tears to Disgruntled that she is cursed, that she cannot see her mother’s face or hear her voice. Truly alone, the girl child falls to her knees and tries to remember her prayers. This eclipse covers more than the moon or large star we call the sun. Girl realizes in this moment the enormity of what she has traded her life, that she is all alone in her haunting thoughts and the world she has made. With each raid, with each killing, with each witnessing of atrocities like gang rape and execution, she retreats further into a hard, barren, solitary, cell space.

Those of us seated literally on the sidelines find it difficult as pedestrians to say what her choices might be given the same circumstances. There is an authenticity present in the work. Perhaps we hear the voices of the women the playwright met in Liberia: the mothers, sisters, soldiers, children born to sex slaves, survivors.  This play is about the ones who made it despite the difficulty then and perhaps now.

Gurira says in a NPR interview that she hadn’t known about the conflict in Liberia until she saw a photo and article about child soldiers. Her play was going up in at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, DC. “I didn’t know anything about women fighters in African wars,” Gurira tells Jennifer Ludden. “And just to see these women standing there, you know, in their jeans and … fashionable tops and their hair is all done, and they’re all carrying AK-47s, was just an image I couldn’t get out of my head.”

“Gurira, who was born in the U.S. but raised in Zimbabwe, knew that one day she’d try to get behind the eyes of the fighting women, to tell their story. So in 2007, she journeyed to Liberia to learn more. On her trip, she met women fighters — as well as women who promoted peace.

“I met women who would tell me about how they would just walk into the bush and talk rebel soldiers out of their guns, and encourage them to look at school and to think about their future,” she says. ‘I was amazed. I mean … [the women peacemakers] were really fearless.’”

Stacey Sergeant’s Wife #1’s compassion and attachment to the younger wife, a glimpse of the child she once was, is beautiful to see as she otherwise steels and guards her emotions. Both Wife #1 and peacekeeper Rita’s ability to be vulnerable with one another heighten the emotion in certain scenes—one such scene is when Rita teaches Wife #1 to write her given name. Adeola Role’s Wife #2 is hard, yet it isn’t until we hear her story, that we learn why she has chosen her position even if she knows it puts her at risk. What Girl has to decide is, can she forgive herself? Can she end the war inside?

When the play continues after the final bow. After the ovation, the audience is told about other girls, other women, recently kidnapped or abducted in Northern Nigeria. We repeat the name of one of the girls after the person on stage, and by this collective naming and acknowledging of this girl who is missing, we commit ourselves to holding the space for her return.

Listen to a recent interview with Stacey Sargeant and Joniece Abbott-Pratt.

Other plays closing soon:
Port Chicago 50 (closes 3/19) at Berkeley Rep; Without Mercy (closes 3/25) at The Phoenix in SF and Leaving the Blues at New Conservatory in SF (closes 4/2).

Happy Women’s History Month!

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At the Women’s March on Washington, Sen. Kamala Harris told constituents, she “had our backs,” and since she has been in office Sen. Harris has certainly been a vocal and active participant in standing up for the constitutional rights for her constituents in California against presidential legislation which undermines core human rights and values. Her track record in providing a safety net for the most vulnerable in our community, exploited children, especially sexually trafficked minors, is unparalleled as are her views on capital punishment, police accountability and the rights of the undocumented.

The daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, Sen. Harris is the first Indian American woman and second Black woman in the U.S. Senate. She was born in Oakland and graduated from Howard University and Hastings College of Law.

Wanda Sabir: Reflect first on the 91^st anniversary of Carter G. Woodson’s Negro History Week, now Black History Month, and your position as senator. You have moved through the ranks, steadily increasing the control you have over the menu at the table. What were your goals and objectives when you decided to take that responsibility on?

Sen. Kamala Harris: (She laughs at the “table” reference.) Listen, I stand on the shoulders of great people, some names you would recognize and some names you would not recognize. I was raised in an environment with a sense of responsibility to serve and to be a voice for those things that needed to be spoken and heard. That is what led me to run for DA of San Francisco (2003). That is what led me to run for attorney general of California (2010), and now to be in the United States Senate (2016).

When I look at where we are in the year 2017, I know, as we all do, that the challenges are still great. There is still a real need to fight and speak very loudly about the issues we care about. That’s what propelled me to run for senate and is certainly my reason for being here – from my participation in the Women’s March on Washington, D.C., one day after this president was inaugurated to being a part of a protest in front of the White House against the Muslim Ban, to just speaking against two of the presidential nominees to the cabinet, Sen. Sessions for attorney general and Betsy DeVos for education secretary.

When I look at where we are in the year 2017, I know, as we all do, that the challenges are still great. There is still a real need to fight and speak very loudly about the issues we care about.

It is the reason I have been working on why law enforcement needs to be trained on implicit bias. It is all that. Now that we have Black History Month, as far as I am concerned it is all year round, we rededicate ourselves and remember where we come from, our reason for being and responsibilities we have going forward.”

WS: I was reading about your committee assignments; you have a lot to do – Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; U.S. Select Committee on Intelligence; U.S. Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works; U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget – five committees. Is there anything happening now we can support you on?

Sen. Harris: Thanks for asking. Certainly, when we look at the marches that have been happening, it is important for people to speak out, show up, not just in Washington but all over the country. I encourage people to stay involved and support folks like Rep. Barbara Lee and others in the Bay Area.

It is important to talk with all our friends and relatives and encourage them to pay attention to what is going on. Pay attention when we are talking about Russian hacking of our country’s electoral system. Pay attention when the president of the United States says we are going to shut our borders to people because of their faith.

It is important to talk with all our friends and relatives and encourage them to pay attention to what is going on.

What I need people to do to help me is to educate themselves and each other about what’s going on and to know we have to fight for our country and fight for our ideals. These things that are happening right now are contrary to our ideal.

WS: As the second Black woman senator historically and one of only 10 Black senators ever, how do you do the work in the face of such hostility?

Sen. Harris: It is about working with the Latina U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto from Nevada on issues like immigration [and] fighting the Muslim ban. [It is about] working with Corey Booker (D-N.J.) on criminal justice reform. It is definitely working across the aisle where we can but building bridges among people who have more in common with us than differences – people like Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on immigration reform. It is about working with a lot of folks around our collective need to focus on the economy, so people have jobs, a place to live.

Another big issue, which is a coalition building piece, is to work with all sorts of people around the need to maintain the Affordable Care Act, known as Obama Care, and not get rid of it, to protect it. Another thing people can do is reach out to their representatives to make sure they fight to keep the Affordable Care Act from being repealed.

We closed with the senator speaking about the Muslim ban and the potential deportation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA kids. She said, “That is a big issue because it’s happening in real time now in addition to everything else.”

She said she is also, “active on the Intelligence Committee, but I couldn’t talk about the confidential work, except to reiterate that they are looking at Russian hacking.”

We concluded the short interview with a promise to do this again when her schedule opens up. This interview was unsolicited, a first for me, and frankly I am pleased that our representative is conscious of the pivotal and important role the Black press has in setting policy and disseminating news not covered in the same way by the corporate press.

Sen. Harris: Thank you very much and give everyone my best.

Unsung Hero: Bob Moses

In a recent visit to Oakland, to speak at the Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series, his presentation titled, “It is now what it was then: Organize!” Robert Parris Moses, president and founder of the Algebra Project, addressed the three eras and the preamble of the Constitution, especially the phrase “We the people.” Who are the “constitutional people,” he asked, and how is this designation connected to citizenship claims in the 14^thAmendment?

The scholar then opened the floor for a conversation about the work in front of us – how to make sure that all children are given 21^st century tools. The son of a sharecropper – figuratively speaking, his dad was maintenance man at the 369 Armory in Harlem – Moses’s life could have paralleled so many others except his parents had a vision for their children which involved higher education. Moses’s father wanted to attend college, but when his father became ill, his parents and siblings’ welfare fell on his shoulders. They were able to attend university; however, their brother was not.

Moses, civil rights movement maverick, is a hero to many. However, few people clearly understand the personal risks involved while he was stationed in Mississippi with sharecroppers like Sister Fannie Lou Hamer under the tutelage of NAACP President Amzie Moore (1911-1982), architect of the Mississippi Freedom Summer.

Born in Harlem, Moses was able to translate his parents’ and grandparents’ legacies into a 20th century demand for justice and freedom for Black people. Well-educated, Moses, 25, volunteered for a movement inspired by Martin King, linked to the invisible populations still enslaved in the South – Black sharecroppers who were both uneducated and disenfranchised.

Through a strategic and well-implemented platform and program initiated by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Moses, prepared by Moore, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership in Cleveland, Mississippi, and Ella Baker, movement mother and SCLC lead organizer, began to meet with the Blacks in the fields to articulate the problem, so that together with other volunteers, the objective – full citizenship rights – would be met, beginning with the right to vote.

“Gregory Moses’s Armory post was considered a worthy job, [but] he derived little satisfaction from it; his main activities consisted of operating switchboards and shoveling snow. Fifty percent of Harlem Blacks worked in the service sector, but those were generally jobs without further career prospect,” biographer Laura Visser-Maessen states in her new book, “Robert Parris Moses: A Life in Civil Rights and Leadership at the Grassroots.” Moses Sr. did not allow his position to determine his participation in society. He claimed his inheritance outlined in the “preamble” and demonstrated to his son that a high school graduate could be politically savvy.

After parent-teacher meetings and other such public debates, Moses Sr. “would teach his son how to ‘read’ people to figure out what was ‘real’ about them.” Moses says his father “was always willing to look for and respond to the human qualities of the person in front of him [so he was not disposed to put that person down]. This played a part in [his son’s] lifelong identification with the common man,” writes biographer Visser-Maessen.

From his work in the ‘60s when Moses left Harlem at Bayard Rustin’s urging to join the “sit-in” movement, then was assigned to survey the Southern states, which led to his work in voter rights in Mississippi and to his present work at The Algebra Project, where a current initiative is to make quality education a civil right, his views on organizing remain true: ‘‘Leadership is there in the people. You don’t have to worry about where your leaders are, how you are going to get some leaders. The leadership is there. If you go out and work with your people, then the leadership will emerge’’ (Carson 303).

Moses stated that to move ahead in society Black kids need the kind of literacies necessary to navigate the economic terrain – Algebra is such a language. It is a tool, similar to the ballot’s pivotal role earlier.

At a time when colonies were throwing off their chains and demanding freedom, the internally colonialized peoples in the United States also “got a measure of political voice,” Moses states. Voter registration and concurrent literacy workshops taught in Freedom Schools dismantled the “cotton curtain.” Mississippi sharecroppers excluded from the conversation were calling the meetings and staging critical actions which merited local, national and international attention. These new literacies shifted the power and redistributed political wealth.

Investment in Black community development is of national urgency. Moses recognized this once again when he was in the classroom when he returned from Tanzania where he’d taught math in a village school, his wife, English. Bob Moses, Ph.D., and his wife, Janet Jemmott Moses, M.D., founded The Algebra Project to prepare children for the shift in industry from labor to information technologies. Algebra is the basis for mathematical literacy. It is also a gateway medium to other disciplines like chemistry, dentistry, psychology, food and computer sciences. It is similar to Latin when learning English. Nearly 60 percent of English words come from Latin.

Algebra literacy also increases brain function and literally lights up the visual cortex. “People born without sight appear to solve math problems using visual areas of the brain,” reports NPR on All Things Considered. “’A functional MRI study of 17 people blind since birth found that areas of visual cortex became active when the participants were asked to solve algebra problems. … And as the equations get harder and harder, activity in these areas goes up in a blind person,” says Marina Bedny, an author of the study and an assistant professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University.”

In a recent interview, Moses points to a report, “Rising above the Gathering Storm,” which lists the 10 most important things this nation needs to do to educate its citizenry for the shift in economic policies. The researchers state: “Having reviewed trends in the United States and abroad, the committee is deeply concerned that the scientific and technological building blocks critical to our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength. The team recommends this nation “Annually recruit 10,000 science and mathematics teachers by awarding four-year scholarships and thereby educating 10 million minds.” This first of 10 recommendations was not addressed by Bush in 2005 or Obama in 2010.

Black people’s needs have never been central to this government, Moses said at the recent Lee-Harris talk in Oakland. “We didn’t get what we needed from previous administrations, [so] the current administration is a distraction,” he stated. This comes from a man who was key in the development of the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party (1964) in opposition to the racially biased Democratic Party.

An innovator to the core, Moses said we need to articulate the problem, figure out what we want to happen and develop steps to get there. In addition to the ongoing problem of math and science literacy in academically underserved communities, Moses said we need to stay abreast of what is happening to the undocumented. “We need to develop an underground railroad.”

‘Levinsky Park’ about African refugees in Tel Aviv

Filmmaker Beth Toni Kruvant (“Heart of Stone,” 2009) returns to Cinequest with her new compelling documentary feature film, “Levinsky Park,” a fascinating portrait of the myriad complexities and repercussions of one of the defining global controversies of our time, refugee migration, through the lens of African refugees who live in Tel Aviv. Its world premiere is Thursday, March 2, at 7 p.m.

This film couldn’t be more timely. After Trump’s executive order banning citizens of seven Muslim countries from entering the US went into effect, Kruvant set up a “temporary office” at Newark Airport, lending her own attorney skills to families in need.

‘Without Mercy,’ a play on a murder victim’s family’s dispute over the death penalty

Patricia Milton’s “Without Mercy,” directed by Richard D. Harder, at the Phoenix Theatre in San Francisco. Joanna is devastated to learn her daughter, Mercy, who disappeared six years before, was murdered. Returning home from alcohol rehab, Joanna finds her surviving daughter, Bethany, bent on a personal agenda: Bethany has hired a legal advocate and insists on supporting a plea bargain for Mercy’s killer. Their clash of deep-seated beliefs pits Joanna and Bethany against each other, and long-held resentments erupt around the family’s tragedy. Their advocate, Sam, swears he’s neutral, but his actions contradict his claim. Piece by piece, the truth unfolds as the past collides with the present. Challenged by a terrible trade-off, the three struggle to reach a resolution.

“Without Mercy” runs Feb. 24-March 25, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., plus a Sunday matinee March 12 at 3 p.m., at the The Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason St., Sixth Floor, San Francisco, between Geary and Post). Tickets are $40 general admission, and senior, student and group discounts are available by contacting 800-838-3006 or www.offbroadwaywest.org. For information, contact 510-835-4205 or info@offbroadwaywest.org.

On the fly

African Film Festival is March 9-April 28 at Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, 2155 Center St., Berkeley. The 2017 Poetic Address to the Nation is Saturday, March 11, 5-6:30 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theatre, 700 Howard St., San Francisco, $10 in advance, $15 at the door. SJDANCE presents “ChoreoProject Awards” March 17 and 18 in the Spartan Complex building on the San Jose State University campus, near Fourth Street and San Carlos; tickets are $18-$30 at the box office, 408-520-9854, or sjDANCEco.org.

“Now is the Time: Healthcare for Everybody” film screens Sunday, March 5, 12:30-2:30 p.m., at The New Parkway, 474 24^th St., Oakland, $10-$20. Playwrights Foundation Rough Reading Series continues Monday, March 13, at Roble Hall, 374 Santa Teresa St., Stanford University, and Tuesday, March 14, at Custom Made, 533 Sutter St., San Francisco.

Theater of Others presents Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” March 16-April 2, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays 8 p.m., Sundays 2 p.m. at the Kelly Cullen Community Auditorium, 220 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco. Tickets are pay-what-you-will. For reservations, click on http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2706436.

Don’t miss CAAM Fest 3/9-19 in San Francisco and Oakland: http://caamedia.org/welcome-to-caamfest-2017/

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at wanda@wandaspicks.com. Visit her website at www.wandaspicks.com throughout the month for updates to Wanda’s Picks, her blog, photos and Wanda’s Picks Radio. Her shows are streamed live Wednesdays at 7 a.m. and Fridays at 8 a.m., can be heard by phone at 347-237-4610 and are archived at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks.

Theatre:
There are a couple of plays you might want to check out; Port Chicago 50 (closes 3/19) at Berkeley Rep; Eclipsed at the Curran (closes 3/19) and Without Mercy (closes 3/25) at The Phoenix in SF and Leaving the Blues at New Conservatory in SF (closes 4/2). 

Sonja D. Williams, Author of Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio and Freedom, at AAMLO, 3/11, 2-4 p.m.

Though pioneering journalist, Richard Durham (1917-1984) made Chicago his home, the subject of Professor Sonja D. Williams’s “Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio and Freedom” (2015) offers a portrait of a man who was not contained by geography—spatial or otherwise. Williams will be in town this weekend to share the Durham story at the African American Museum and Library, 659 14th Street, Oakland, Saturday March 11, 2017, 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.

The story of how Williams, winner of three George Foster Peabody Awards as a radio producer and professor in the Department of Media. Journalism, and Film at Howard University is about as amazing as the product on the other side of the14 years it took to get from idea to University of Illinois Press.

In a recent interview, the author says, she hadn’t known Durham’s work “until the mid-1990s when she had a chance to work for the Smithsonian Institute in the National Museum of American History. At that time they had a documentary unit for television and radio and it looked at various aspects of American history. “Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was” was a series Jacquie Gales Webb created which looked at blacks in radio from its earliest days into the 1990s. One of three producers, Williams says she was responsible for writing and producing a show about the Golden Age of Radio, that is, radio during the 1930s and ‘40s. Williams talked to some of her colleagues at Howard University and one person mentioned the series, “Destination Freedom” which aired in 1948, written by Richard Durham, whom she had never heard of or the series up to that point, she said.

While radio was the more popular medium in the 1930s and 1940s, it was also a segregated medium, that is, “you barely heard black voices on the air. If you heard them they were stereotypes: Amos and Andy, Beulah, maids, butlers, comic relief and negative depictions of black life and culture.” Williams said. Richard Durham’s tenure in radio was unique—he was one of the few men, black men, writing for the media. Black people were rarely featured in local or national dramatic broadcasts then.

So for black people listening to radio, to have such a program, where ancestors who resisted and fought injustices was inspiring. The popular series which aired 1948-1950 featured the stories of: Harriett Tubman, Denmark Vesey, Frederick Douglass, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, Sojourner Truth, Matthew Henson, Charles Caldwell, James Weldon Johnson and others. These African American heroes, men and women of all backgrounds and disciplines had made significant contributions not just to black people but to the nation.

Williams found the work amazing. Her initial “trepidation about [her assignment to explore] African American contributions during radio’s ‘theatre of the mind’ heyday of the 1930s and 1940s [vanished] as she listened and was “struck by [Durham’s] series’ lyricism, dramatic flair and fiery rhetoric” (xvii). The more research she did, “it was ‘oh yeah,’ he needs to be more widely known.”

Durham didn’t make it into the National Museum of African American History and Culture; however, Professor Williams’s book made it into the gift shop. He was inaugurated into the National Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago, his hometown, where there is also a permanent exhibition, while the Chicago Public Library, which includes the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, hosts his extensive archives. This was a gift of his widow, Mrs. Clarice Davis Durham (98) who still lives in Chicago with their son, Mark, also a writer and musician.

Mentored by Langston Hughes and Chicago Defender editor-in-chief, Haitian scholar Metz T. Lochard, Durham used media as an organizing tool (54). A Depression era baby, Durham learned radio as a part of the WPA’s Illinois Writers’ Project where the rookie journalist, also a published poet and writer, “rubbed shoulders with published authors such as Arna Bontemps, Nelson Algren, and Jack Conroy. He also joined the ranks of up-and-coming writers like future Nobel Prize – winner Saul Bellow and future Pulitzer prize honoree Louis ‘Studs’ Terkel” (38). Under Bontemps, Durham authored his first IWP chapter for the Negro Press in Chicago study: Don’t Spend Money Where You Can’t Work (39).

Later in his career Durham worked as editor for “Muhammad Speaks,” the newspaper for the Nation of Islam. There he met and became friends with Muhammad Ali, whose book, “The Greatest,” he co-wrote. The book was edited by Toni Morrison, who like others has fond members of both Durham and the Champ.

The Harold Washington defeat of the entrenched Richard M. Daley machine in 1983 was in part due to the work of “Dick” Durham; however, Durham’s worked took him outside Chicago too. News clippings find Durham in San Francisco where he and W.E.B. Dubois covered the All Nations Conference in San Francisco. “Durham’s articles,” Williams states, “reflected the political posturing, turmoil and progress that eventually led to the UN’s birth” (58).

The word warrior, Williams states was “a practical optimist who analyzed the dilemmas of the day, searched for a way to bring positive social change, and inspired others to do the same. Throughout his life Richard Durham remained a dedicated warrior who used his wordsmith skills like a weapon.” It was a conscious choice. (181).

Ms. Williams will also be speaking at UC Berkeley School of Journalism, Tuesday, March 14, 6-8 p.m.  This event is presented by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) – UC Berkeley chapter.

The conversation will be moderated by Pendarvis Harshaw (MJ ’14). Click here to RSVP for the event.

Just like a Woman Returns to the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley,
Saturday, March 11, 8 p.m.

Curated by Ms. Rhonda Benin, this year’s “Just Like a Woman, a Celebration of Bay Area Women in Music” is scheduled for Saturday, March 11, 2017 at the Freight & Salvage featuring: 

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The orbit black people or Reflections on Black Bottoms

Black people operate on another frequency, an energetic system outside the normative one we’ve pledged our allegiance too.  It is time to check parachutes and make sure they open on cue. We need our own escape plan with enough water and bleach and canned goods to see us through the floods and storms—no one is coming for the Negro, not even other Negros.  People are running because they are frightened and guilty.  We walk because we have nowhere to go.  People with rooms close their front doors at twilight after guests finish their tea, rocking chairs hitting the back of limbs as arms and legs stretch as elders are assisted from their seats. We look up and realize the light or guidance we need is within.

Playwright Robert O’Hara’s work “Bootycandy,” is nothing if not outrageously provocative.  Even his humor cuts deeply.  His work is what thinking audiences desire—he impales or splays norms to a whipping post in the public opinion square then dares us to strike the first blow-his hand on the cat-o’-nine-tails.  In a rarely performed work, “Bootycandy,” directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe for a limited engagement at Brava Theatre in San Francisco, we stroll down memory lane with a chocolate boy who like Michael Jackson, theatre, literature, and boys. Misunderstood by mom, who wants a “normal” son, he finds refuge in Granny for a time and then in an older man who picks him up after school.

Raucous laughter, ’60 soul music, disco, and the black gay scene during a time when closet doors were very much closed and locked make the dichotomy between the two world strident when it need not have been.  Looking for romance with the wrong people, understanding with those who would exploit him, changes the sweet chocolate boy. He develops and edge which cuts deeply.

Thought provoking, “Bootycandy” is not dark like Woodsman (2004), more an interrogation of blackness and maleness and a juxtaposition of the artistic nuances. However, Bootycandy is also about sexuality—bodies, boobs and sex and names which do not correctly always express intention.  At the center of the work is a boy, Aejay Mitchell’s “Sutter,” growing into himself; however there are other stories or constellations in this universe where we see women giving birth, preachers coming out in the pulpit – actor, Rotimi Agababiaka, mamas, friends and Sutter’s little sister (actresses: Kehinde Koyejo; Indiia Wilmott), and a not so innocent bystander (actor Aaron Wilton) trying to box blackness up and sell it. Anything black is always marketable – talent oozes out of us as we sleep.

There is a great scene where the artists are invited to a conference where they are both audience and guests. At one point the guests turn to the moderator and tell him that the themes and topics regardless as to the characters seen on stage are always tackling the notion of blackness: the black body and how that translates along a trajectory of otherness, since a “black reality” or “peopleness” does not exist in the dominant narrative.

Audiences are intimidated by the title of the play, however, get over your fear and get to the theatre to see this brilliant production. The cast and direction, stage, lighting and soundtrack is marvelous. The evening I attended the fantastic Ms. Rhodessa Jones was in the house. Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience teams up with Brava! For Women in the Arts for this show which ends this Sunday, March 5. Visit https://www.brava.org/all-events/2017/2/15/bootycandy

Shola in concert @ the Black Cat Tonight!
Shola Adisa-Farrar returned home to debut her new CD, “Lost Myself” last month and if you missed her there is an encore performance at the super club: Black Cat San Francisco, 400 Eddy, Sunday, March 5, 6:30 and 7:45 p.m.  The two February gigs were sold out, not quite standing room, rather – at the Sound room in Oakland, one could lean against the wall as long as exits were not obstructed. The lovely singer was in fine form, despite her sore throat and inability to hit those high notes, Geechee just let his trumpet travel there instead as Shola kept us delighted with her stories and reflections on the music and really phenomenal voice.

She’s all well now, acclimated and ready to give us one more show for the literal road—she is off to Paris and then Nigeria and then to Congo Brazzaville.  For those unfamiliar with Shola’s artistry, perhaps you remember her from “The Ultimate Hustler” reality television show she starred in October 4-December 13, 2005 while she was in New York? Maybe you recall how much fun you had with Shola as guide in the Walking in the Spirit: Black Paris and Beyond tours while there?  No, then it had to be at the Annual International Maun Arts Festival in Burkina Faso in October, 2014 where the US Embassy Music Ambassador performed with her band and then taught songwriting and/or production workshops there and on subsequent trips in Mauritius, Burkina Faso or Cape Verde?

A global citizen, Sister Shola gets around, and it all started with a challenge. Tired of New York, the accomplished singer, songwriter, actress, decided to move to Paris in 2011 for a few months. It was just before her 26^th birthday, she writes in a book co-authored with her mom, Opal Palmer-Adisa and her sister, Teju Adisa-Farrar entitled: “Fame, Money, Power, Not Required.”
In the e-book the three women share how they came to live the lives they love. Through personal stories and practical wisdom, the enticing journey is within reach if we reflect on their 12 Credos.  “Self-Investment: Your Mental Foundation” and “Be Your Own Heroine,” are juxtaposed with “Let Your Passion Give You Wings.”  The Palmer-Adisa-Farrar women show how they kept the launch pad clear while they cultivated the wealth to finance the flight. The stories are fun and lighthearted, yet packed with examples of how these women have conjured visions of the selves they have become. Shola speaks about the fear she felt until she reframed it: “I told myself that what I feared held my greatest gift my boundless potential and ultimate power.”

Although the serendipitous aspect of “Lost Myself” can’t be denied, it didn’t hurt that Shola had been singing for a year at La Reservoir’s Sunday Jazz brunch and HOT Casa Records’ Duo DJ liked her sound and introduced the vocalist to his friend, Florian Pellissier, a Parisian pianist, composer and arranger.  Creatively, that day, Shola met her artistic soul mate. From “jazz autobiographies, swapping music and improvising together, a studio collaboration was born,” Shola writes, “in the hidden basement of Colorblind Studio on Paris’s Left Bank.”  Whether it was naughty and nice or just naughty, “Lost Myself” was born almost a year ago, April 2016. Look for an EP Remix on the one year anniversary late this spring.  Magical—“Lost Myself” gives celestial evidence to an artistic union. It’s available at Amoeba Records in Berkeley, online at sholajoy.com and at the concert.

The ten tracks feature Shola’s original work and several standards: “Feeling Good” with a new arrangement and “I Have a Dream,” a Herbie Hancock number, with Shola’s original lyrics. Florian, a New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music graduate, known for the hard-bop style he brings to his music, cites Hancock as an important musical influence.

“Lost Myself” sets a new artistic standard whether that is reflected in originals: “Evolution,” “Flow,” “Blue Chord” or one of my favorites the Fela Anikulapo Kuti cover: “Sorrow, Tears and Blood.”  The song stylist says she chose the song to honor the linguistic lineage of her Yoruba name, “Shola,” which means “one who is blessed.” STB was also chosen for its political resonance and the connection to the continent, more specifically a country, Nigeria, she will visit in April wearing her Music Ambassador hat.

Riding in on pianist Florian Pellissier and drummer Tibo Brandalise’s opening chords, the vocalist sings: “Everybody run, run, run. Everybody scatter scatter. Police dey come, army dey come. Confusion everywhere.”  The song reminds us of fear, the kind of immobilizing fear or terror that keeps one trapped or in bondage.  This work is really dynamic, Christopher Panzani’s baritone sax right there going toe to toe musically with Shola, her voice one of the instruments—

Ku Klux Klan, an Alternative Culture? Accidental Courtesy Explores this Notion

When Dr. Martin Luther King addressed the white clergy in his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” Good Friday, April 3, 1963, their response was not immediate.  Critical, they questioned the necessity for direct action, civil disobedience and protest. Seated in a solitary prison cell King responds to the letter, writing on scraps of paper and then having the speech smuggled out. The issues raised by King have not disappeared, “that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” – there are still two Americas.

In the film “Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America,” dir. Matthew Ornstein, the activist quietly befriends the philosophical offspring of the white supremacists who made Dr. King’s job so hard from Bombingham to Selma. The musician’s archival cache of twenty-five robes given to him by former Ku Klux Klan officials runs counter to attorney and founder, Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson’s plans for a Lynching Memorial in Alabama’s state capital; however, there is room in the discourse on race and justice for both.

Daryl Davis, black man, holds the unique distinction of being an expert on the Ku Klux Klan, though not in the same way Mark Potok, Senior Fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, is.  No, the SPLC “doesn’t go in and have coffee,” rather it was established in 1971 to destroy or marginalize the Klan and what it upholds.

Davis, on the other hand, is often consulted by Klan friends who, not clear on their duties or obligations ask him to clarify.  The bluesman known for his boogie-woogie piano style, invited a Klansman to his wedding, and visits others in their homes. Yep, Brother Daryl has, let’s say, a different hobby, one some black folks believe is a waste of time.

California has its share of white supremacists and racists. Lee Williams’s son was hung in Concord by one, and there is a photo of a Klan march in downtown Oakland in the Oakland Museum exhibit: “All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50,” (through Feb. 26). There is a robe in the showcase nearby.

We get to travel across the country with Davis as he introduces us to his people—white supremacists and racists.  The question he poses is, “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” gets him into the room. Perhaps his challenge opens the door to the beloved community Dr. King spoke of?

Davis tells us about a gig in a white bar playing country western music. At the break, he’s invited to have a drink. The patron mentions that it’s the first time he ever sat and drank with a black man. When Davis asks why, he learns that the guy is Imperial Wizard Roger Kelly.  Kelly then gives Davis his card and tells him to call him when he is in town again. Davis does. The next time his new “friend,” brings more friends and they all laugh, dance and have a good time. Davis says, when Klansmen come to party and leave their costumes at home. This was 34 years ago.

The son of an international diplomat, Davis learns about segregation and bigotry while marching in a parade with the Boy Scouts when he is ten. As he carries the American flag, bottles and cans come heralding at him. Soon the adults surround him and move him away from the fray. When he gets home and he shares how he was hurt, his mom and dad have “the talk” with him. After living abroad in many countries, Davis cannot believe someone would hate him because he is black. This lesson lies dormant until stimulated that evening in the bar.

With a KKK collection which includes pins and knives, buttons, flags and of course robes and hoods, Davis writes a book in 1998, “Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man’s Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan,” which chronicles these developing relationships. He speaks to patriotic Klan members called “traditionalists,” whose credo is “the crow and the eagle are both birds, they just don’t fly together.” These KKK members do not believe in miscegenation, although, Davis’s wife is white. Traditionalists do not hate others, Frank Acona, Imperial Wizard of Missouri, says in “Accidental.” They are Christians and Americans. He also speaks to Rachel Pendergraph, National Organizer of the Knights Party and Pastor Thomas Robb, National Director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Neither budge on the issue of white supremacy.

The National Socialist Movement supports white power too and wants a separate state for white people, whom they feel are oppressed. Inspired by Hitler, Jeff Schoef, leader of the neo-Nazi group, says the first order of business is to eliminating Zionist Jews. When Davis compares the NAACP to the NSM, Schoef states the NSM is for white people. Davis then shifts to a question about music and learns Schoef likes rock, which Davis tells him was created by black people.

It was an accidental courtesy—for a moment, Kelly responded to another human being with integrity— he saw a black man, whose music he enjoyed and he wanted to show his appreciation.  And then he noticed himself sitting with this man at the table and was like wow.  Davis probably could not have predicted the trajectory a drink with Kelly would take him on, but three decades later he is still on the road. Outside of W. Kamau Bell’s CNN hit: “United Shades of America,” not many black men have tea with Grand Dragons at the top of their “to-do lists.” Nonetheless, Davis’s query and face to face interactions make these white supremacists and racists critique their positions, and after reflection find racial hatred without merit. Scott Shepherd, former Grand Dragon, now Reformed Racist, has dedicated his life to undoing racism. This is one of many reasons why Davis has so many robes.

The humanitarian continues to sit across the table from men who hate him. He is patient, and lets the men talk. In his reaching across the aisle, Davis has opened a necessary dialogue. Funny, how racists have a megaphone while descendants of formerly enslaved Africans have no platform, no reparations—economic or philosophical. Davis challenges the white supremacist ideology spewed forth without thought. Within this context the audience witnesses the complete absence of thought of concern for the token black man seated in front of them. The white supremacists might not hate Davis, at the end of the dialogue, but there is no curiosity expressed. It is all about them and their loss, not the collective loss on both sides.

When Davis tries to translate his work within the Black Lives Matter (#BLM) paradigm, it fails. Not only is he disrespectful of the work young people like Tariq Touré, poet, author, and Kwame Ross, #BLM activist and speaker, are engaged in to save black lives, he calls the youth names and fails to see how at the heart of police brutality and use of force is the legacy of slavery and at its legal conclusion, the birth of the Ku Klux Klan, Dec. 24, 1865 – a gang that continues its legacy of terror today. When Ross asks Davis if he knows anything about trauma, the kind of intergenerational trauma a Klan History Museum might trigger in black visitors, he has no answer.  The efficacy of Davis’s work is challenged, perhaps something he not used to.  Black people are not his audience, which is okay. We just need to be clear about it.

The reason why Trump won the election was because white identity felt and continues to feel threatened; Davis acknowledges this and gives these men and women and children space to speak. In a democracy all voices supposedly have a right to be heard; however, we know there is censorship within the discourse. We also know the dominate narrative is shaped by white power not popular opinion. In some ways, Davis plays into this with “Accidental.” Nonetheless, one robe at a time, this man is unraveling a thread stitched into this often contentious tapestry called the United States of America. The film will be available online beginning Feb. 14 at pbs.org

 

Happy Black History Month. Knowledge is power, something black people from Frederick Douglass to Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks to Kamala Harris have never taken for granted. If white people would kill a black person for teaching someone to read, not to mention knowing how to read—enough said! The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s organization, has chosen the theme: “Crisis in Education” for 2017.

Happy Birthday dear brother Fred Batin one of the best fathers I know, a man whose children Wilda and Wilfred are honored each February by the Mayor’s office in San Francisco for their academic excellence. Widya is the subject of a film and was honored by the National Council of Negro Women, Golden Gate Section, as a Youth Leader, for her work in developing the Buchanan Mall.

We will miss our dearly departed ones: Great Auntie Olivia Samaiyah Beyah-Bailey (12/1/1918-1/19/2017) and Lee Williams (9/2/1937-1/1/2017).

27^th Annual Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry

Join us for the longest consecutive public program in the Oakland Public Library system: “A Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry,” Saturday, February 4, 1-4 p.m. We have adopted the ASALH theme: “Crisis in Black Education.” Perhaps James Weldon Johnson was thinking about educational access and equity when he was a high school principal at the segregated Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida? In 1900, “Johnson wrote a poem that would become the lyrics to music written by his brother, John Rosamond Johnson. ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ was first performed publicly at his school during a celebration for Abraham Lincoln’s birthday Feb. 12.” Only 37 years earlier, Lincoln ended slavery by signing the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. In 1919 the NAACP adopted “Lift Every Voice” as its official song.  1918 WWI ended, yet in 1919 nothing had changed for black Americans. That year saw increased racial violence in the United States documented by history professor and author David F. Krugler in his book, 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back.

The African American Poetry Celebration is at the West Oakland Branch Library, 1801 Adeline Street, in Oakland. It is free and open to all. We are looking for footage from the previous 26 years. If anyone bought copies from KTOP and can share these VHS tapes with us, for our archives, we would really appreciate it. The featured program which Wanda Sabir hosts, includes many renowned poets like Avotcja, Steve McCutchen, Paradise, Karen Mims, Charles Blackwell, Gene Howell, Jr., Halifu Osumare, Karla Brundage, Leroy Moore, Andre Wilson, Ayodele Nzinga, Darlene Roberts, Tyrice Deane, Nicia Delovely, Chris Harris. This year we will also honor the memory of Lee Williams (Sept. 2, 1937-Jan. 1, 2017).

There is an open mic at the end and refreshments throughout the program which is family friendly. For information or if you want to help at the program call (510) 238-7352 or info@wandaspicks.com

Maafa San Francisco Bay Area – February 25 National Libation for the Ancestors

We are asking everyone to pour libations Saturday, Feb. 25 for African Ancestors of the Middle Passage to coincide with NCOBRA or the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America’s “Reparations Awareness Day,” 2/25. We could pour at 9 a.m. Pacific Time for Umoja or Unity. In the East Bay, we will meet at Alameda beach: Grand and Shoreline at the water. Wear white.

21^st Annual Maafa Commemoration San Francisco Bay Area

The 21^st Annual Maafa Commemoration 2016 was really wonderful! As usual there was magic on the beach—we witnessed a reverse rainbow. As we looked up, the bow was translucent, the color below on our faces. Osumare was telling us that we were the blessing that morning. There were a lot of youth. King Theo brought some of his drummers from Oakland and the young men really made the ritual strong and powerful.

Sister Bisola’s ring shout was awesome as we surrounded the youth and anyone who needed special healing. Dr. Marcus had us touch each other’s shoulders as we did an ancestral meditation.

Visiting from Elmina, Ghana, Seesta Imahkus Okofu brought affirmation, poetry and greetings from One Africa, we then toasted flowers on the waters. The Doors of No Return situated behind the altar the view gave us a different angle and level of contemplation. The day had a sepia hue.

Several of us stayed and talked long into the afternoon with several young men who were from Richmond, California. One young man shared how he’d been shot recently in a drive by as he stood speaking with friends, some coworkers. Just out of high school, he was working and had the day off that afternoon. We spoke about getting together monthly to talk, perhaps participate in a recreational outing. So far, this has not happened, but we can talk about this and other items when we meet and share. It is to our collective interest to safeguard the well-being of our youth. The first words from my mouth were safety. The youth said he lived with his mom and that he did not feel safe, but had nowhere else to go.

I would like to have a gathering this month to share Maafa Commemoration experiences, photos and talk about plans for 2017.  We could certainly have a film and discussion night, Ubuntu Council Night to share and resolve issues of concern, have skill building workshops, for harm reduction, trauma and trauma healing.  We could go to cultural events as a group. “Native Son” at the Marin Theatre Company is one such show, as are Ubuntu Theater Project and the Lower Bottom Playaz performances.

All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50

I have met at least three people since October—one sister had on a Commemoration button at the Black Panther Conference at the OM (smile).  Don’t miss “All Power to the People:Black Panthers at 50” which closes Feb. 26 with a member event. I love David Huffman’s “Traumanauts,” Hank Williams’s “We the People” (constructed from prison inmate clothing) and “Black Righteous Place,” Artist Sadie Barnette’s excavation of her father, Rodney Barnette’s history through COINTELPRO documents is also touching as is Carrie Mae Weems location dislocation installation. Weems work is always provocative. Her soundtrack narrates the story unfolding on the screen then we get up and look at the black and white prints of the Assassination of Medgar, Malcolm and Martin (2008)— where once again Weems enters and interrupts an historic narrative.  Curated by Rene Guzman, the marvelous exhibition also employs listening stations where patrons are treated to a revolutionary soundtrack and invited to get on the mic and speak their own truths. Actual pieces of buildings are in cases, evidence that there was something there, before it was no longer there—like a people, erased from collective memory. There is an exhibit which maps the Black Panther Party geographically.

From the opening gallery where we read the 10-Point Platform boldly printed on the wall, while the iconic peacock chair invites guests to sit and take a photo, to the thoughtful use of space –All Power to the People is an engaging walk through history which is interactive as well as informative. As patrons read the stories of powerful party women when youths juxtaposed with reflections captured in Bryan Shih’s portraits. Artifacts lie disturbed in display cases while footage rolls nearby with more of the story, like that explored visually in the photo and actual Klu Klux Klan capes worn by participants in a march in downtown Oakland. There are also dashikis and berets, posters, signs and of course lots of old newspapers with headlines ironically still appropriate today. There is a section on newspaper artists, Gayle Dixon’s work is highlighted, as is of course, Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture. The Oakland Museum of CA is located on 10^th and Oak Street, across the street from Laney College and the Lake Merritt BART Station. Visit http://museumca.org/exhibit/all-power-people-black-panthers-50

 

Maafa Commemoration San Francisco Bay Area con’t.

I am so happy to have seen so many brothers and sisters whom I met at the ceremony last year October to now. One sister hopped out the car the other day when she saw me crossing the parking lot at a store we were both shopping at.

I walked the ritual circle and gave everyone a button. The buttons were for the 20^th Anniversary but I forgot them at home in 2015, so throughout October 2015 until I ran out, I kept buttons in my purse, car and pockets. I ordered another one hundred for 2016. Let me know if you need one and I will bring several to Crab Cove beach in Alameda, Feb. 25, 9 a.m.

If you do not hear from me, leave me a message: 510-255-5579. I am thinking about a late February, early March get together. If anyone wants to host it, let me know that too. I was thinking about Keba Konte’s Red Bay Coffee, a lovely space in East Oakland near Fruitvale Avenue.

After Dark Every Thursday Night @ The Exploratorium in San Francisco Continues Its In-the-Balance Series with a Panel on Solitary Confinement

Thursday, February 16, 2017 • 6:00–10:00 p.m.

“In My Solitude”: The Detrimental Effects of Solitary Confinement on the Brain with David L. Faigman, Chancellor and Dean, and the John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law, at the University of California Hastings College of the Law at 7:00 p.m., Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery, Pier 15 (Embarcadero at Green St), San Francisco, (415) 528-4444.

Panelists include: Dr. Robert H. King, Craig Haney, J.D., Ph.D., Jules Lobel, J.D., Michael Zigmond, Ph.D., and Brie Williams, M.D.

Theatre
Ubuntu Theater Project presents: Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Fri 2/10 @ 8pm, Sat 2/11 @ 8pm through Sun 3/5 @ 7pm at the Brooklyn Preserve, 1433 12th Ave., Oakland. Ubuntu is theatre by and for the People. Visit ubuntutheaterproject.com Tickets are sold online for $15-35, and at the door each night on a pay-what-you-can basis so that no one will be turned away for a lack of funds.

This season Ubuntu explores the human side of significant political and cultural shifts across the globe: As numerous communities cry for mercy in the midst of suffering, how can we, in an increasingly polarized society, find the grace needed to hear—and respond to— the cries of others?

“Death of a Salesman” is an American classic that delves inside the soul of a middle-aged businessman who cannot come to terms with the reality of a changing America. Arthur Miller’s prescient masterwork is a dire warning of the hollowness at the heart of the American Dream. As suicide rates among middle-aged white men in the United States rise faster than among any other demographic; promises to reclaim an America of yesteryear found resonance among a large portion of American voters in November. We are once again at a moment when attention must be paid! But, how? To who? From whom?

Ubuntu frames this American classic as a fever dream of a dying salesman, revealing how Death of a Salesman is both a timeless myth speaking to the current crisis of American identity, and a radical call for compassion uniquely suited to the current moment.

On the Fly:
The Art of Living Black (TAOLB) At the Richmond Art Center, opens Jan. 10, and will
run until March 2. The reception and artist talks will be held on Sat. Feb. 4th,12 noon to 5 PM. RAC is at 2540 Barrett Ave. Richmond www.richmondartcenter.org  A Call for Beauty, a 3.9 Art Exhibit is up through Feb. 28 at Root Division, 1131 Mission Street, San Francisco. Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 2pm to 6pm, 415.863.7668 / info@rootdivision.org. Second Sat. Reception, Feb. 11, 7-10 p.m. with the Broun Fellinis Live Jazz Event. Where is Here at the Museum of the African Diaspora. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents Clas/sick Hip Hop: A dance and music double bill featuring Amy O’ Neal’s Opposing Forces and UnderCover Presents: A Tribute to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill February 16-18. V-Day at UC Berkeley! The Vagina Monologues, Thursday-Friday, February 9-10 7:20 PM – 10:00 PM and Sunday, February 12, 1:30 PM – 5:00 PM PST in the Pauley Ballroom, ASUC MLK Student Union, 2495 Bancroft Way at the Intersection of Telegraph and Bancroft, Berkeley. The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler. It is performed in communities and on college campuses across the nation to raise awareness to issues that affect women. Proceeds from the event are donated to local organizations that support and provide resources for survivors of sexual violence and other forms of gendered violence. This year one of these organizations is California Coalition for Women Prisoners. The theme for this year’s UC Berkeley production of the Vagina Monologues is “Healing as Resistance: Stories of Radical Self-Love.” ADA accessible. For information: vagmonsucb@gmail.com  Black Virgins Aren’t for Hipsters is back! Feb. 10 (8 p.m.), 11 (8 p.m.) & 19 (5 p.m.) at Tribe Oakland, 3303 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. Black Choreographers Festival Here and Now 2017 February 11-26 in Oakland and San Francisco features: Feb. 11 – 12 (Oakland @ the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice Street and in San Francisco at Dance Mission. Book Events:  David Billings, author of “Deep Denial,” will be speaking at the North Berkeley Library at 2-4 p.m. on Sunday, February 19.  (The library is being opened especially for this event.). He’s then speaking that evening, 6-9 p.m. at the Eric Quesada Center, 518 Valencia Street, San Francisco.  Sunday February 12^th, “Jazz in the Neighborhood presents: Eclectic Squeezebox Orchestra with AVOTCJA & SCHOOL OF THE ARTS LATIN BIG BAND led by Melecio Magdaluyo, at 5:30 p.m. – 9 p.m. at DOC’s LAB, 124 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, $10   Tickets: http://www.ticketfly.com/event/1410547-electric-squeezebox-orchestra-san-francisco/ Music of the Word at Cesar Chavez Library in Oakland, 3-5 p.m. Sat., Feb. 25, 3301 East 12th Street @ 33rd Avenue. Visit http://www.avotcja.org/upcoming-events.html Kahil El’Zabar & the New Ethnic Heritage Ensemble at EastSide Arts Sunday, Feb. 5, 6-8 p.m. 2277 International Blvd, Oakland, www.eastsideartsalliance.org  Tomye: Living Artist presents: Artworks that include Goauche Paintings, Fused Glass/ Mixed Media, Photo Prints & Prints embracing humanity at the Laurel Bookstore, 1423 Broadway, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3, 5-8 p.m. is the reception. Oakland Museum’s All Power to the People:The Black Panthers at 50, closes Feb. 26. Don’t miss it or the special programs. Visit museumca.org

Can We Design Freedom? At Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Feb. 18, 2017

Can we design FREEDOM? As our nation enters a new political era, this question is more urgent than ever. Born from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 Summit, the bi-annual Public Square gathers our community’s collective imagination around a big question. In this case: Can we design FREEDOM? For several months, this question has been deeply investigated by a cohort of YBCA Fellows. On February 18th, their answers to this question will be revealed and offered up for community response. Join us for an afternoon designed to provoke societal change at a time when it’s most needed.

Art Exhibit
Fouladi Projects— Coming Clean San Francisco in collaboration with Lava Mae, On view January 10 – February 25, 2017

Coming Clean San Francisco, is a multi-media exhibition amplifying the intimate experience of homelessness through the artist’s lens. A cultural intervention and a first time collaboration between Fouladi Projects + Lava Mae based on a shared belief that art as a cultural tool has the capacity to elicit a visceral, almost cellular reaction in a way information cannot, challenging us to push beyond the stereotypes that frame our current perceptions. Coming Clean: SF will feature weekly evening programming at Fouladi Projects, 1803 Market Street @ Guerrero, San Francisco, 415.621.2535 gallery, 415.425.2091 cell. Gallery hours are: Tuesday – Saturday 12 – 6 p.m.  Artists include: Amy Wilson Faville, Elizabeth Lo, Danielle Nelson Mourning, Ramekon O’Arwisters, Joel Daniel Phillips, Yon Sim, Kathryn Spence.

The Wattis Institute presents: Tongo Eisen-Martin  
February 21, 2017
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David Hammons (artist) has spent a lot of time with poets over the years. Darius James, Steve Cannon, Ben Okri, the late John Farris, to name a few.  San Francisco poet Tongo Eisen-Martin spends a lot of time with other poets. For this event, he brings together his community of peers for an evening poetry and performance.  This event, Feb. 21, 7 p.m. at California College of the Arts Wattis Institute, 360 Kansas Street (between 16-17 Streets), in San Francisco, features performances by poets Josiah Alderete,Tongo Eisen-Martin, Raina Leon, and Andrea Murphy, and music by Lewis Jordan and Akinyele Sadiq.

This is the seventh event in CCA’s The Wattis Institute’s year-long season about and around the work of David Hammons.

Concert
From Oakland to Paris: Shola Adisa-Farar Returns for a CD Release

Shola Adisa-Farrar performs live in California for the first time since the release of her debut album, “Lost Myself.” She has two Bay Area dates: Wednesday, February 15 at the Black Cat, San Francisco, two sets, first at 9:30 p.m. Reservations to be made via website or by calling: 415-358-1999 http://www.blackcatsf.com/event/shola-adisa-farrar

The second show is Thursday, February 16 at the Soundroom, Oakland. The concert begins at 8pm. Doors open at 7 p.m. For tickets: http://m.bpt.me/event/2777325

 

The Mighty Ring Shout and Its Spirituals @ the West Oakland Branch Library,
1801 Adeline Street, Saturday, February 18, 2017 – 1:00pm – 3:30pm

This Friends of the Negro Spirituals (FNS) education program consists of a presentation on the amazingly exciting, often high energy, and almost forgotten Ring Shout, which includes African traditions of call and response, dance, storytelling, African spirituality, communicating in code, and honoring the ancestors.

With audience participation, Angela Thomas, FNS’ Education Co-Chair and Song Leader, will demonstrate singing the shout spirituals, handclapping, and beating the stick that takes place in the Ring Shout; there will be video clips of it also.

Come prepared to learn what the Ring Shout is.  What are its origins and meanings? Was it a new song created by enslaved Africans and African Americans to replace older traditions outlawed by their captives?

African American Quilt Guild of Oakland’s Annual Demonstration
1801 Adeline Street, Saturday, February 25, 2017 – 1:00pm – 4:00pm

Celebrate African American History Month with the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland’s Annual Demonstration and Workshop. Supplies will be provided so that you can make your own quilt. For all levels and ages.

Star Trek: 50 Artists. 50 Years at Chabot Space and Science Center

On Friday, February 3, from 6 to 10pm as part of the $5 First Friday, Chabot presents a galactic night of exploration into the Cosmos and beyond, celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Star Trek and the opening of 50 Artists. 50 Years. Visitors will participate in fun, interactive and family-oriented activities exploring the intersection of art and science throughout the Center.  On Saturday, February 18, from 6 to 10pm, adult visitors will have their last chance to experience Star Trek: 50 Artists. 50 Years during a themed closing reception with space-inspired cocktails, a hands-on Theremin live musical performance and space music-making demonstration highlighting the evening. Visitors will also learn about the possibility of life on other planets from Berkeley SETI Research Center Chief Scientist and Star Trek fan Dan Werthimer among other activities sure to “engage” the most avid Star Trek fan. The February 18 event is ages 21+ only. Stay updated on additional event highlights soon to be announced at www.chabotspace.org
Oakland Symphony Essentials Preview Event Feb. 7 at Oakland Intertribal Friendship House

Music Director Michael Morgan and the Oakland Symphony continue their annual exploration of world orchestral music traditions this season with Notes from Native America, Friday, February 24, 2017, at 8 pm at the Paramount Theatre. The concert will feature music by award-winning composers Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate and John Wineglass plus Northern California’s own Su-Nu-Nu-Shinal Pomo Dancers. The Symphony will perform “Clans” and “Hymns” from Tate’s Lowak Shoppala’ (Fire and Light) with narrator and men’s chorus and Wineglass’ Big Sur” The Night Sun.  Completing the program will be Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9. The Symphony’s Notes from . . . series has become a popular mainstay of the Bay Area music scene and annually explores symphonic music both new and traditional from cultures that may be less well known to audiences. Free lobby entertainment, no-host drinks and pre-concert talk begin at 7 pm. Tickets are priced $25-$80 and may be purchased at www.OaklandSymphony.org.

In addition to the concert, Oakland Symphony will present a special pre-concert Essentials event Tuesday, February 7, 6:30-8:30 pm. The free admission evening will feature talk and performances by flutist Emiliano Campobello, vocalist Kanyon Sayers-Roods, Vincent Medina, Michael Bellanger, All Nations Drum and Yvonne Marshall. Food will be provided by Wahpepah’s Kitchen Intertribal Friendship House is loated at 523 International Blvd in Oakland. The event is free but reservations are required at Oakland, CA 94606. The event is free but reservations are required at   https://oaklandsymphonyessentials-notesofnativeamerica.eventbrite.com
Film:
I Am Not Your Negro, A Review

Raoul Peck, director, reflects on James Baldwin’s ability to articulate the cognitive dissonance he felt as a Diaspora man born in Haiti, who came of age in Patrice Lumumba’s Democratic Republic of Congo. Tossed abroad on waves of political uncertainly and unrest, young Peck (8) and Baldwin (24) both knew exile. Though he attended schools in the United States, France and Germany, the splayed root worker finds his voice in the work of Baldwin, a place where Peck says “he was not just a footnote [,] Baldwin . . . one of the few writers who was speaking of a world [the youngster] knew. [Baldwin] was telling stories, describing history, defining structure and human relationships which matched what Peck was seeing around [himself].” He says, “I could relate to [him].”

“I Am Not Your Negro,” which opens theatrically February 3, nationwide, presented an opportunity for the director to play it forward, to salute Baldwin at a time when no one but a James Baldwin would admit, the emperor has taken off his robes.  Just this truth stated in Baldwin’s matter-of-fact tone or uttered similarly by Samuel Jackson (narrator) makes the film refreshing. Equally compelling is Baldwin’s voice reflecting aloud what it meant to lose his friend Martin, after losing Medgar and Malcolm. He says he is not going to weep at King’s funeral, then stumbles into Harry Belafonte’s arms.

A man of strong emotions, we feel the loss as Peck moves the lens from then to now, from Mississippi to Ferguson. Baldwin states: “The story of the Negro is the story of America,” as the activist’s voice collides with lyrics: “I am a black man in a white world. . .” while images of white youth holding bats face Martin Luther King and other freedom fighters ready to die for democracy—if this is what it would take.

This discovery of a text, a forgotten, unfinished, unpublished text of his hero is the stuff of fairytales and wishful thinking. Could Peck believe his good fortune? What spin would he put on the Baldwin’s words? How would he translate the work into a visual medium? For ten years, Peck has access to Baldwin’s writings and the blessings of Baldwin’s sister Gloria Karefa-Smart who after giving Peck keys to the treasure, shared a “pile of neatly (and partly crossed out) typewritten pages and letter,” with the director. This last bit of writing what just what Peck needed and forms the nexus of the work. These typed words open the film, give it context and history, the prelude the story of a nation, a nation built on a legacy of racism and white supremacy.

What house does Baldwin reference in his working manuscript title? He speaks often of houses in his work whether that is a solitary room in a house, a street that talks about houses and the people that live in them or the absence of many houses on mountain tops.

Death sets up a certain dilemma, art often a way to unpack the heaviness attached to grief and loss. In 1979 Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent about a new project, one where he would examine the lives of three men who were killed within five years of one another: Medger Evers (June 12, 1963), Malcolm X (February 21, 1965) and Martin King (April 4, 1968).

Not only does Peck give the 30—page manuscript a place to stretch, the film also hosts Baldwin as interlocutor along the thematic tightrope he has walked all his life. Peck’s film is perhaps a sequel to the powerful tribute to Baldwin: “The Price of the Ticket” (1989), dir. Karen Thorsen.

“Remember this House” stands as kindling is stacked against the barn next to the kerosene next to a box of matches. If Baldwin’s seminal essay collections, “The Fire Next Time” juxtaposed with “Notes of a Native Son” and the “The Price of the Ticket” serve as prelude, then what Peck has crafted here in Baldwin’s words against a backdrop of historic and contemporary images and music, is a call to action fueled by pertinent yet unanswered questions.
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The film is methodic and slow. It is as if we are on a train, perhaps a Mule Train, like the one assembled for the Poor People’s Campaign Settlement at the capital in Spring 1968— a trip Martin King missed, felled by an assassin’s bullet.

Baldwin is such an analytical thinker that “I Am Not Your Negro” requires a certain commitment to truth. Peck’s film and Baldwin’s words are an American history primer For DUMMYS ®—it is a civil rights march through a history papered by black bodies hanging, buried and butchered. Peck’s “I Am Not Your Negro” challenges audiences, a challenge significantly lightened by a charismatic Baldwin who appears often on screen in the film with his lovely laugh, humor and riveting eyes.

He has a way of laughing the initial sting away; however, the grandson of enslaved Africans does not forget or let anyone else forget what it feels like to be black and American then or now.

Theatre
Nambi E. Kelley’s “Native Son” at MTC

For those who don’t know author, Richard Wright, his seminal text “Native Son” looks at the made in America phenomena, the American Negro. Both Wright and Mary Shelley situate their tales in bleak, dark settings where the protagonists: Bigger Thomas and the creature (Adam) are pawns in creation mythologies authored by devils: the Daltons and Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Perhaps more native or indigenous because of its patent, the protagonist Bigger Thomas has issue with the psychic occupation he feels every day of his life. There is no slumber, no rest. He says, “They own the world,” as whiteness intrudes his waking dreams. Frankenstein’s creature agrees when he learns sadly that his master both fears and hates him.

Playwright Nambi E. Kelley’s adaptation of Wright’s novel (1940) for stage, under the direction of Seret Scott at the Marin Theatre Company with a cast handpicked for the synergy created in their portrayal of this iconic, historic character, resonates a century later at a time when black lives still do not matter. The world young Bigger (20) was being birthed into was not one he looked forward to.  His mother Hannah recalls her boy’s reticence to enter a world meant to destroy him—if not his life, then his dreams. Her son did not want to leave the sanctity of the womb, a place where there was comfort, love and safety for a place he knew instinctively he would not find the same nurturing or support. Home for Bigger is a place where he is surrounded by enemies whom he was powerless to defend himself against—he could not even escape them in his dreams, as whiteness seemed to control everything his mind touched. Similar to other iconic black warriors castrated during puberty rites, like Malcolm Little and even the fictional Walter Lee II, Bigger doesn’t stand a chance.

When Bigger is offered a job by his slumlord apartment owners, he is not grateful; he takes the job because his mother all but forces him into it. Driving rich white people around does nothing for his ego – it’s not his car, and white people make the youth nervous, especially his boss’s daughter, Mary and her communist boyfriend, Jan: both drink too much and both want to be his friend.

As the two sandwich Bigger between then and offer him a drink from a decanter, he wishes they would stop intruding into spaces carefully designed to keep the races apart. He is well-rehearsed in his role and knows such familiarity can only lead to his destruction. His stage manager is The Black Rat, a clever creature whom Bigger knows intimately.

Bigger tries to kill or silence the rat who keeps showing up in his apartment, but the creature won’t die. Similar to a whiteness which colors his aspirations or life, Black Rat advises Bigger, rehearses his lines with him, like a catechism—“you are nothing, you will amount to nothing . . . . The two are connected at the hip, conjoined, inseparable—yet even here, Kelley and Wright’s Bigger is allowed agency. The murders he commits real, yet also symbolic.

Though Bigger knows his role well, there is a part of him that refuses to settle for such a dismal life—he remembers his father death. He went out with a blaze, like a comet. Yet, all the native son feels is fear. He is so frightened by a life shrouded in blackness.

Giulio Cesare Perrone’s set is stark, empty – the scaffolding suggests a psychic and material interior we do not see. There is nothing between Bigger and the world—no insulation, no walls, no heat, no love. He lives in the “between,” neither here nor there. His only solace is following the rules which Black Rat reminds him of. Bigger is subject to all the elements—freezing cold when we meet him and blazing heat when he gets the position at the Daltons.

The Daltons’s system of economic exclusion as property owners and developers incubate a reality which produces boys like Bigger Thomas. How can the black boy dream when he cannot see beyond the confines of the prison he and his family are entrapped? Yet, if not for himself, Bigger dreams for Buddy, his brother, who is smart. He dreams a legitimate life for his gifted sibling.

It is almost as if Mrs. Dalton, like Oedipus, blinds herself. However, the self-mutilation is not out of shame. She and Mr. Dalton are blind to their systemic acts of terrorism. Hannah, Bigger’s mother knows there are other more attractive apartments available, but Dalton Associates will not rent these flats to black people. Mr. Dalton’s gifts to the NAACP and to local recreation centers where Bigger plays pool have no impact on the trajectory Bigger and other Biggers find themselves tumbling into. Reminiscent of Illinois Poet Laureate, Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem, “We Real Cool” (1960), Wright’s nemesis is “real cool. He left school. Lurk(s) late. Strikes straight. Sing(s) sin. Thin(s) gin. Jazz(es) June. Die(s) (all too) soon.”

Actualized only by his criminal behavior, Bigger is anonymous until he is “wanted.” OJ Simpson suffers similar fate when he is accused of killing his white wife. Murder is his claim to fame. It is as if this monstrosity is central to black manhood. Even Jan, Mary Dalton’s communist friend, fails to own his part in the tragedy. Whiteness does not ask for self-reflection, so as Bigger and Black Rat reflect on circumstances and try to do a bit of damage control themselves and can’t, they realize that the world Bigger occupies means nothing but trouble for the black man.

That Mrs. Dalton so easily jokes with Bigger about her blindness and how easily it was for her to give it up, points philosophically to an innate callousness and carelessness of the system of white supremacy and racial hatred.

Bigger is beaten physically by the police when he tries to protect his mother, and psychologically by the world which only works for white people— There is no reward, so Bigger runs, chased by nightmares all too real. Even if he is the only one who can see and hear Black Rat, whom the family thinks is dead, until Black Rat reappears like a talisman. Black families on Chicago’s Southside know there is no poison strong enough to rid their lives of this pestilence. Black Rat’s reincarnation is guaranteed by societal circumstances then and now. It is what W.E.B Dubois calls double consciousness – the public and the interior self – The Rat vs. Bigger Thomas.

Bigger despises not just the white world, more so he despises his cowardliness, that is, until he musters nerve to slay the ghost which haunts him. Only then can he stand as a man, and stop running. Only then does the fear dissipate like the filament of a bad dream— Rat and Bigger struggle for life—however, Black Rat has to die for Bigger to live. Rat is an accomodationist, while Bigger wants to be a man. Rat would settle for being a Negro, a manufactured concoction no one respects, not even other Negroes, but given the duality, when Bigger disappears so does he.

From Chicago native, Jerod Haynes in title role and his alter-ego, William Hartfield’s “The Black Rat,” to Rosie Hallet as “Mary,” the rich girl who tips the cart over, she and her boyfriend “Jan” (Adam Magill) responsible for the immediate mess; to Ryan Nicole Austin’s “Bessie,” Bigger’s girl whose love for the “monster” gives her a hangover—then there is Dane Troy’s “Buddy,” Bigger’s kid brother who sees through Bigger’s bravado to his fears and C. Kelly Wright’s “Hannah,” Bigger’s mother who pushes her son and pushes her son until he backs into himself. The Bigger Thomas story situated in the rest of the world, the part that counts is occupied by other—others like Mary’s parents, the intentionally blinded Mrs. Dalton (actress Courtney Walsh) and her husband and the detective (actor Patrick Kelly Jones). There is no compassion for Bigger or his family or his community. In fact, some black people are angry and afraid Bigger’s criminal behavior will further reduce the size of the Negro world and make it harder for them to live in communities white America has allowed them access. They have gotten used to going without, not so Bigger who is a lot like his dad.  Don’t miss this riveting production at Marin Theatre Company through Feb. 12 which put Nambi E. Kelley’s “Native Son” at the center of its 50^th Anniversary Season. MTC is located at 397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley. Visit marintheatre.org or call (415) 388-5208.

Britney Frazier Stars in Cutting Ball’s Stunning Ibsen Classic
By Wanda Sabir

Britney Frazier is stunning as “Hedda Gabler,” in Cutting Ball Theatre’s current production of the 19th-century Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen’s classic.  Hedda is a spoiled girl who settles on husband, Jorgen Tesman, because he demands, she says, the least emotionally from her. Francisco Arcila’s “Tesman,” a scholar, remains preoccupied with his work, yet delights in his wife’s choice of him. Not quite able to afford her, Tesman buys her a house contingent on an appointment at the university he has yet to secure. The story is deceptively simple, but then so is much of life.

What is the stunningly beautiful Hedda to do with herself? She likes to ride horses and shoot at the firing range. At the center of her own constellation, Hedda’s striking entrance into the theatre smoking a cigarette, demands attention.  In her late 20s, Hedda sees Tesman as a bonus initially. However, the emotional desert she cultivates which spans the distance between the two, backfires. Hedda finds in the end, that she wants to belong, to feel integral to their union, but it is too late. Jorgen finds support in another. Hedda ends up strangled by her own untempered growth.

Director, Yury Urnov places his Hedda (Britney Frazier) in a flower conservatory, where all the central characters– aunt, husband and former beaux, are gardeners. Hedda is their collective project, perhaps an archetypical divine feminine or receptacle for western society. However, Hedda is “the Explorer,” fearful of being trapped or made to conform.

Nonetheless, circumstances cause Hedda to surrender to the patriarchal norms which strangle her, rob her of will and agency, render her life meaningless and void of substantive content, future delight or satisfaction. The botanical dilemma Henrick Ibsen’s Hedda encounters is not unusual. She is among a classic sorority on a block peopled by characters: Mrs. Louise Mallard in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” (1894) and Edna Pontellier in The Awakening (1899), and the unnamed narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892).

I am not sure if this is a white woman’s story or a story tied to class, which means the issues suffocating Hedda have wider cultural applications. Ibsen did not write the work with the marvelous Britney in mind, but this does not lessen the impact she has on a role, which challenges audiences to see the character through a different lens. This is complicated by the fact that not only is Hedda snipped, so is Ibsen’s work. The play is tighter and lean in this staged interpretation. The musical direction, mobile set and scene changes, especially the set changes, infuse lightness into the drama.

Actors who latch and unlatch, push and turn the wooden frames to create larger or more intimate spaces wear black derbies and kind of dance along to the cool, hip, new age music with floral lyrics at its core. The set itself imprisons Hedda who never leaves. She walks between the rooms but seems confined to its interior mechanisms. Even her foil, Mrs. Carla Pauli (actress Thea Elstead), leaves the known world behind. But Hedda is trapped by the comforts of what she knows to be true, even if this knowledge is not satisfactory.

Fallen petals, branches and leaves depict Hedda’s unmet desires. Hedda is framed by other women who stand outside the garden looking in: Aunt Juliane Tesman (Heidi Carlsen), the maid, Berte (Michelle Drexler) and Thea Elstead, a former classmate Hedda tormented (actress Carla Paulias). These women attain the freedom that eludes the beautiful Hedda.

Auteurs amputate and plant seeds, hoping for a bounty Hedda desires not. The newlywed wilts before our eyes. As Jorgen grows stronger and more assured, his Hedda grows weaker, prey to weeds which also populate the garden. Hedda’s manipulation of the brilliant writer and scholar, Ejlert Løvborg, backfires in a way she cannot imagine. The play is up through February 26 at Cutting Ball Theatre in San Francisco, 277 Taylor Street, (415) 525-1205.

“Hidden Figures,” A Film Review

Scientists Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, profiled in “Hidden Figures” (2016), exemplify what writer Margot Lee Shetterly calls “everyday courage,” a kind of imaginative power that filled these women – Black women, white women, invisible women – with a sense of pride and purpose even when deserved recognition went unstated. Director Theodore Melfi’s film is all the buzz, tying at $22 million in box office ticket sales its opening weekend, Jan. 6-8, with “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” a nod to the Academy Awards all ready for the women in leading roles.

Set during a time when the United States was in a space race with Russia, the story is about “smart” – let’s rephrase this – “brilliant” Black women – mathematicians and engineers, who took advantage of an opportunity to advance intellectually and economically at a time when the only integrated government branch was the military – thanks to the pressure of Asa Phillip Randolph’s March on Washington Movement (1941-1946) pressure on President Franklin D. Roosevelt to ban discrimination in the defense industries during World War II. Executive Order 8802 opened doors for Black women to work in the space industry as mathematicians, engineers and (human) computers.

When the film opens, all the women are working in the computer pool in the segregated West Area Computers division of Langley Research Center, where the women solve equations while they wait for more permanent assignments. Mrs. Dorothy Vaughn (mathematician) has been at NASA the longest and sort of inherited a supervisory position without the pay.

The other two members of the trio, Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (physicist, mathematician) and Mary Jackson (engineer), are beautiful, sharp and understand the etiquette of the period as Black women in the segregated South; however, they do not put up with nonsense – at least not for long. They all worked professionally at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which later became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958, when the newly minted entity marked a shift from military to civilian peaceful use of research and technologies.

Scientists Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, profiled in “Hidden Figures” (2016), exemplify what writer Margot Lee Shetterly calls “everyday courage,” a kind of imaginative power that filled these women – Black women, white women, invisible women – with a sense of pride and purpose even when deserved recognition went unstated.

That day, Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) goes to work in engineering for a Jewish scientist who encourages her to go back to school for her engineering license, while Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) goes to work for the lead scientist, Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), director of the Space Task Group. Johnson is assigned the task of checking the math of all the engineers and other mathematicians. Of course the men resist, especially her supervisor, whom she outsmarts.

Johnson creatively overrides the security protocols while simultaneously having to fight racism and prejudice muddied even further by sexism. We see her demand to be a part of the debriefing meetings since the men are discussing her calculations.

She is the only woman in these rooms filled with white men, and she is quite able of holding her own as she demands their respect. It is her calculations which secure the landings of several early missions: 1962 for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth and the trajectory of the space flight for the first American in space, Alan Shepard in 1959, and his later Mercury mission in 1961.

Her expertise was charting backup navigational charts for astronauts in case of electronic failures, which we witness on screen. “Hidden Figures” follows closely what writer Margot Lee Shetterly documents in her book, on which the film is based.

The three actresses together, Taraji P. Henson as Mrs. Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Mrs. Dorothy Vaughn and newcomer Janelle Monaé as Mrs. Mary Jackson, are a creative tsunami. How do the women make it?

Perhaps the shared comradery eases their burdens. The women know how to laugh and have a good time too. The system of white supremacy and racism does not deter their spirit, belief or faith in something greater; rather the opposition inflates it.

They are doers. At a time when buses are being blown up and Black people beaten at lunch counters for demanding civil rights, Mary Jackson sues the state of Virginia to allow her to attend college to get her credits for engineering school.

These are career women who challenge social norms at work and at home, which makes peace tenuous and ever shifting; however, none of them give up. When we meet Mrs. Vaughn, she has been a part of the Colored Computer Pool for 15 years.

All the women are married with children, except Johnson, who is a widow. The mother of three girls, she is being pursued by decorated military veteran Jim Johnson (Mahershala Ali). A little romance spices up an already simmering national brew (smile).

The three actresses together, Taraji P. Henson as Mrs. Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Mrs. Dorothy Vaughn and newcomer Janelle Monaé as Mrs. Mary Jackson, are a creative tsunami.

“Hidden Figures” put the human face back on technology. Computers then were people, more trustworthy than IBM mainframes, which might be fast but whose accuracy needed verification. This is what John Glenn (actor Glen Powell) requests when he asks for Mrs. Johnson specifically to run the numbers one more time before takeoff. She does this for several other space missions before shifting completely to digital computers.

This powerful work shows Black girls that not only are Black women scientists capable, they are critical to scientific advancement. If it weren’t for these particular women, early space exploration outcomes might have been quite different.

Author Margot Lee Shetterly says she didn’t think it odd that her dad worked at NASA, her mother was a college professor or that she knew Black women engineers. STEM was her life; it was Hampton, Virginia. “Growing up in Hampton, the face of science was brown like mine.”

Pharrell Williams’s dynamic, pulsing score makes the story, which is serious, entertaining. The creative team uses the artistic legacy of the period as a launching place to write new work. Audiences laugh aloud as they bear witness to whomever will listen – “Hidden Figures“ invites testimony.

This powerful work shows Black girls that not only are Black women scientists capable, they are critical to scientific advancement.

Don’t miss it! Don’t let any Black girl miss it.

They Call Us Monsters, Film Review

Though the story of incarceration is always hard, it is more sobering when those effected are children.  What if those youth convicted had an opportunity to reimagine their lives and interrupt and rewind the script? What would the scenario look like? Who would star in the feature? Ben Lear’s “They Call Us Monsters,” (2017) is an invitation into such a story. There we meet Jarad, arrested at 16, Juan, arrested at 16, and Antonio, arrested one month after his 14^th birthday. All the young men are facing minimally 90-life, Jarad 200 years.

The Compound, where LA County boys are held, is a jail within a jail at Sylmar Juvenile Hall in Chino, San Bernardino County. The boys are separated from general population for the severity of the violent crime they are convicted of; nonetheless they are still kids: playful, immature, and filled with regret but without the inherent gravity that comes with maturity. The boys don’t seem to grasp what these pending sentences mean. What does 25 years, not to mention 90 years feel like to someone so young? It is incomprehensible. Sentencing children as adults when violent crime in this population is misdirected. Why not put the investment in the public sector: better public schools, after and before school programs, housing and job training and skill development for parents? Instead the boys and girls end up at Sylmar in The Compound. We see one participant get shipped off to an adult prison. We meet his father who shares a letter where the child describes the roaches and other vermin in the cell he shares with a 50 year old man. The boys writes, “I would cry, but I can’t do that in here.” Instead, his dad cries.

The morning I spoke to director, Ben Lear, it was Martin Luther King Day, apropos to discuss crime and punishment and the draconian judicial system in place that tries children as adults. Funny, I thought of a lot of things before I made the call like asking if the director was related to Norman Lear, creator of All in the Family and a series of TV sitcoms which framed a discussion about race and class that Americans were not talking about. There we saw characters who looked unlike the stereotypical ones occupying a horizon which was less complex and easily dismissed.

Such is the case with the three boys we meet in “They Call Us Monsters.” Guilty by association or circumstances, all the boys have confessed – seated in a room facing a policeman without council the boys are all on tape admitting to the crime(s) they are being held. If these children are being tried as adults for the severity of the crimes they are charged, why do they not have council and their parent present at the interrogation? The imbalance in power is evident and perhaps scary to the boys who are familiar with what happens to those captured who do not cooperate.  Perhaps this is another film?

The children who end up in The Compound have witnessed violence or have been victims of violence. One father shares his son’s witnessing his attempted suicide. He’d stabbed himself twice and was about to stab himself again when the child approached. Another boy witnesses a shooting. The person right next to him is shot multiple times in the head and body. The fact that these boys and others we do not see react to their world with violence reflect a reality consistent with the norms they see daily.

Post-traumatic stress is not addressed as psychic triggers are charged and released regularly—a deadly extension of the autonomic nervous system which regulates the body’s unconscious actions. We are generally speaking about those actions that keep us alive like breathing, circulation, heart rhythm, the body’s temperature regulation and elimination system. ANA is also responsible for deciding when we need to fight or run; it controls decisions regarding self-preservation, that is, who lives and who dies. In Monsters we meet children whose lives are impacted by structural violence – racism, classicism, sexism, and poverty, a violence Band-Aids and kisses cannot heal, an inherited legacy which brands them targets in a capitalist crap game. These kids are vulnerable, because their families are vulnerable and thus all associated with these boys (and girls) are at risk.

Even though they admit guilt, American society is the real culprit. We hand the child the gun, the drugs, as we keep them psychically and emotionally and spiritually undernourished. Certain populations are groomed for incarceration. Yes, it is a choice, but is a terrain littered by landmines fair?  The children imprisoned in The Compound are there because of a psychologically and physiologically heightened response to social-political variables which put them at risk to perceived and actual threat.

Monsters centers on the workshop with Gabe Cowan and the boys who over 20-weeks write a screenplay. Professional actors are brought into the workshop, the film is shot; however included also are the stories of the boys and their families—a film within a film. The embedded work is of the boys sharing their vision of change and what they wish for other youth faced with similar choices.

The work has had a profound effect on the film teams’ lives from 2013 when Lear started to now, and the reception the film met when screened at The Compound, validates the artistic process. It does transform. It gives the boys and others in the Compound an opportunity to exorcize the demons which haunt them. Put them on paper, splatter them on the screen, resist and defuse their power.

Politically at the time the film is shot a lot of legislation affecting juveniles (14-17) in the criminal justice system were being debated, especially Senate Bill 9 (2012) which eliminated the “life without the possibility of parole” sentences for (most) juvenile offenders. SB 260 (2013) which provides parole hearings after 15 or 25 years for juveniles with defacto life sentences and lastly, raises the age with the passage of SB 261 (2015) from 14 to 22-years.

“They Call Us Monsters” (82 mins) is unprecedented in the access Lear is allowed. He stated in a recent interview that his access to the boys and their legal documents was directly connected to whose court the boys were property of. Lear, who stays in contact with the three boys, also now volunteers as a teacher with InSide Out Writers, one of the collaborators with the team. The director says California has more legislation directed at its youth and true rehabilitation over incarceration than any other state. The film opens at Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post Street, in San Francisco January 27. The director will be at the 7 p.m. screening, January 29, for a Q&A.

Barbara Lee & Elihu Harris Lecture Series: Bob Moses
For those who were not able to attend. It was live-steamed and is archived: https://youtu.be/16vqR5tpHaQ

President and Founder of the Algebra Project. Also the Director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s Mississippi Voter Registration Project, 1961 – 1964, and a Mississippi “Freedom” Summer lead organizer.

For more information on The Barbara Lee & Elihu Harris Lecture Series and The Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center, please visit:  http://www.mlkfreedomcenter.org