Schomburg Center presentation on Dick Gregory, Ase!

MAAFA Commemoration 2022

Masking is required to participate. If you are ill, stay home. Thanks!

Sojourner Truth’s Quest for Freedom

Thurs, Oct 13, 1:30-2:30, Redefining Crazy Conference, Mental Health Association of San Francisco (virtual). Readings from Uncommon Ground and conversation by Tureeda Mikell and Shizue Seigel about staying sane in an unjust world. REGISTER HERE

Sat, Oct 15, 3-6 pm: Write Now! 3rd Saturday Workshop for BIPOC writers & artists Build community by sharing your prose, poetry, or artwork—in progress or finished—with established and emerging fellow artists. Read aloud, show slides, and get the supportive feedback you need. Or just come and listen. SIGN UP HERE.   The BIPOC Hatchery creative working workshop (2nd Tuesdays of the month) is on hiatus.

BOOK LAUNCH – Write Now!’s 5th Anthology is Here!

UNCOMMON GROUND: BIPOC JOURNEYS TO CREATIVE ACTIVISM

Sun, Oct. 23, 2-4 pm LIVE, San Francisco Public Library Koret Auditorium

More info: SFPL.org. 30 Grove St, near Civic Center BART

Prose, poetry, and artwork art by 22 established Bay Area writers and visual artists responding in depth to these questions: What inspired you to pursue art, creative writing, and activism? What cultural, spiritual, and community values have shaped your life? What sustains your creative practice in turbulent times?

Book launch and book signing feature readings and visual art presentations by Salma Arastu • Adrian Arias • Avotcja • Lorraine Bonner • Karla Brundage • Tehmina Khan • CK Itamura • André Le Mont Wilson • Tureeda Mikell • Josué Rojas • Kim Shuck • Shizue Seigel • Kimi Sugioka • Elizabeth Travelslight

Pease Press • 284 pages and 114 color artworks • $22.95

MORE INFO: www.writenowsf.com/uncommon-ground

Free Screening of New Film about Emmett Till October 19 at Jack London Cinema

“Picture Motion is hosting a free community screening on 10/19 in Oakland for the upcoming film Till starring Whoopi Goldberg & Danielle Deadwyler about Mamie Till’s struggle for justice and equality after the murder of her son Emmett. Please click here to reserve your tickets. And contact asif@picturemotion.com for free group sales and speaking opportunities. Learn more about the film here.“

Virtual Townhall on Long COVID

Lecture@ Allen Temple

Black Men’s Group

Book Party!

New Play by acclaimed playwright, Ishmael Reed @Theater for the New City

“The Conductor”, a new play by Ishmael Reed
A Review
By Wanda Sabir

Over 150 years later, who would have guessed there would be a need to revive an old transportation system moving human beings from slavery to freedom? In this instance it isn’t physical enslavement, rather social attempts to capture and eliminate viewpoints that subvert the dominate discourse.

21^st century conductor, Warren Chipp (actor Brian Simmons) is subsidized and Black. Yep, this time the folks on-the-lam are South Asian or Indian. The color is brown. The irony is the person Chipp is helping escape is his ideological enemy—Shashi Parmar (Imran Javaid) in fact, Shashi caused Chipp to lose his job at The San Francisco Chrysalis, a local newspaper, he was columnist for.

A staged reading, hosted by Theater for a New City, it feels like a real play. Somehow the actors make the virtual walls disappear as characters pass newspapers to one another cross screens and a character grabs another character and hits her. I have watched the scene twice to figure out how they do it. Warren Chipp is the resident sage and captain of the railroad ferrying South Asians out of the county. No one wants them, not even Canada.

Ishmael Reed’s new work, “The Conductor,” as in Underground Railroad, is a spin on a system that worked. Within its historic context—California was supposedly a “free state,” however, not according to maverick newswoman, Delilah Beasley in “Slavery in California.” Not according to Biddy Mason, enslaved woman later millionaire, who took her owner to court and sued for her freedom and that of her family and friends and won.

Typically Reed-like, “The Conductor” is a hold onto your hats and get out your pens masterpiece—you will want to take notes and look up references.

The work is located within a context highlighting San Francisco Bay Area political themes with national and global impact– We watch the events of the past election with San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s and the San Francisco School Board’s recall, not to mention the racial tension at Lowell High School between Chinese and Black students.  Facts are skewed or completely ignored as capital driven ideas are dined on voraciously by the American public who swallow without thought.    

Witty and fast paced – there is balance between the sides—far right meets the left in Chipp’s living room on TV and in person. Carla Blank’s direction is sharp—everyone is on his or her toes. I love the reference to the San Francisco Bay View and journalist Melody Wells (Kenya Wilson aka Wanda Sabir) and of course “The San Francisco Chrysalis” and Warren Chipp. TV news stations feature popular anchor: Hedda “Buttermilk” Duckbill (actor Laura Robards) and Gabriel Noitallde (Emil Guillermo). The two anchors (performed by outstanding actors) parade the other side of the opinion poll.  

Though there is much laughter and surprise in Reed’s “Conductor,” the “sorrow songs” provide a sobering chorus as those who know notice how seriously the alt-right take themselves. It is die, not do or die—martyrdom and self-sacrifice, an operative systemic belief that is dangerous to freewill and democracy. No one is safe on the perceived wrong side which switches back and forth depending on who the lynch mob is after.

It is interesting how even as Parmar hides out as he waits to escape, he does not believe his position is wrong despite Chipp’s stream of consciousness tickertape—the guy is always on. Journalism is in his blood, that or African ancestors.  If you get lost, Tennessee Reed’s voice as narrator will get you back on track.

When he can stay awake, Parmar stops Chipp several times to ask his host how he knows so much about race and history including South Asian history. Chipp tells him he has a personal tutor (a funny foreshadowing.)

At one point Parmar who clearly feels himself superior to the “conductor,” says that he would not like a Black man as a brother-in-law when talk turns to South Asian’s who pass for Black American. Parmar looks surprised when Chipp tells him “Krishna” in Sanskrit means “black” or “dark blue” or the “all attractive.”

He can’t pass for a Black person, but his sister, Kala Parmar (Monisha Shiva, actor) can and does.  As if she hears her name called, Kala shows up too at Chipp’s apartment—it is a regular “(a)way station”.  While her brother hides she shares a lot of history about the “untouchables,” Black South Indians and how women are treated in India, especially “dark-complexioned women like her.” As she talks, journalist Melody Wells (Kenya Wilson) learns that this woman sitting across from her looking like a soul sister is “passing for Black.”

We get a crash course in Indian history along with a racial history lesson too. Since when is being a Black woman a radical and preferred destination? Melody is broadsided by this motorcycle-riding California College of the Arts lecturer. A Black-woman wannabee, she kind of coasts through the history lesson.

Chipp says Black folks invented forgiveness. . . we also seem to have no problem with honorary Black people who join the race when politically expedient and then diss the disguise as soon as possible.

Melody does not let the visiting “Black woman” get away with juxtaposing her unique experience with blackness with that experienced by her sisters and ancestors for 500+ years.

I am not feeling pretense Black people either. I don’t care how many bell hooks books they have read or Ntozake Shange poetry they can recite. It was a real twist to see Kala professing Blackness. One wonders if this is a phase. Kala has just escaped her fate or delayed it—if karma is real. She is not in India; she is in America. She is not fighting for women’s liberation; she is here saving herself.

The alliances between Black Americans and the Indigenous people – civilized tribes who owned Black people, Irish and Jews and Chinese and South Asians – Indians, Pakistani, Bengali who stood with Black people until “they got over” is one-sided, “The Conductor” exposes.  Black people do not benefit from the fraternity or in this case sorority expected in such alliances. These connections are forgotten the crisis is avoided or a new landscape is reached. As Chipp says to Parmar, as soon as they can—they all cross over and “become white.”

The Conductor is about getting paid—no one is working for free or enslaved to an idea of a “promised land.” I like Chipp’s attitude. He is a man with values, whose first line of defense is overhead– who is signing the check? Who is looking out for me?

“Reed can always be counted on to explore new territory in film, theater, fiction, and non-fiction. For over one hundred years film, theater, books, and thousands of newspaper articles, which are often cliché-ridden, have defined the racial divide as being between Blacks and whites. Reed’s play, “The Conductor,” shows that Blacks and whites are not the only racial groups contributing to the racial divide” (press release).

For tickets visit https://theaterforthenewcity.net/shows/the-conductor/ Thursday Oct. 13, Friday Oct.14, Saturday Oct.15 at 8:00 Sunday Oct. 16 matinee at 3:00 pm

Tickets are $18.00. For information call: 212-254-1109

Theatre
SF Mime Troupe’s “Back to the Way Things Were” free online screening 10/24-11/6

Poetry Reading: Colossus: FREEDOM

October is Black Panther History Month

Film@ College of Alameda

In celebration of Latinx Heritage Month the COA Ethnic Studies faculty invites you to a special screening of Oakland’s own Fist Up Production’s Bakosó: Afro Beats of Cuba!

Directors Eli and Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi will take us on a musical journey to Cuba to experience the unique and rich traditions of Afro Cuban music and culture. In addition to the special screening, we will provide light refreshments and an opportunity to speak with the directors. All students and faculty are welcome to join in person or over Zoom.

When: Thursday October 13th 12:30- 1:45PM
Where: H building, room # 212 and 213
To join over Zoom please pre-register here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bakoso-film-screening-college-of-alameda-tickets-431269337197

“Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration” @BAMPFA through Dec. 18

A conversation with Xaviera Simmons, one of the artists featured in “Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration” at BAMPFA through Dec. 18, 2022
By Wanda Sabir

Xaviera Simmons is one of twelve artists, invited to participate in an exhibition that queries the concept, incarceration and its effect on the bodies, minds and spirits of those caged and their captors, not to mention the communities they leave, their bereaved families and the social institutions impacted in both positive and negative ways. The exhibit was convened by the Arizona State University Art Museum, which organized and premiered the exhibition in 2021. “Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration” opened Sept. 3 at the UC Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) and features a film festival this October and a variety of panels, conversations, tours and other events in October-November through Dec. 18. This iteration is curated by Guest Curator Julio César Morales, BAMPFA Chief Curator Christina Yang, who coordinated the exhibition’s BAMPFA presentation with Curatorial Assistant Claire Frost. What makes this exhibit unique is the collaborative approach between art makers, activists and historians whose work here once again brings into the gallery space the voices of those vanished and silenced.

When one walks into the BAMPFA and turns left into the first gallery, Simmons’s work greets patrons—walls of words, monitors with words falling across the screen next to giant planks with carefully scripted block letters fill boards of varying sizes. As one walks around the edifice, we see framed portraits, animation on a screen and other images. However, it is the video of a woman shadow boxing followed by another silent or silenced woman arranging flowers in a bowl that drew my attention after I watched the falling words across the screen until I’d made sure I’d seen all its configurations.

Beauty.

Simmons and I spoke a couple months ago before the exhibit opened. We found that we lived on the same figurative block and so were able to shortcut the trivial and get to the bloody truths—exchanging bandages and cleaning fluid as we prayed for water or at least common sense to strike heads of state.

Is there such a thing as “undoing time”? Once time is gone, there is nothing undone except a life(s).

What is beautiful about this exhibition which features nonwhite artists, four artists from the Bay Area, is how it slows one down . . . the lives affected, the magic or medicine that keeps some of us safe and what is sacred. There are a lot of video installations, conversations one needs to wear headphones to listen, writing assignments, thought-provoking questions about how we are implicated or indicted when inattentive and then there is a Cloud room where we get a crash course in the aesthetics of what it means to be human and who gets to decide. All the terminals were not working when I was at the museum, so I will have to return. I hope before the exhibit leaves there will be a transcript of the conversations at the Pizzeria and other exhibits with headphones for those patrons who do not want to put them on.

I liked the openness of the gallery spaces—the white walls, living plants, the giant eagle sculpture. . . string art on a wall, the story of a prison’s closure and the community’s transformation – it was like traveling in another country or world. Who are these people one might ask? They are we, would be the answer. Such injustice is normalized for so many of us— “Undoing Time” is a neutral space to entertain an alternative reality. For tickets and information: BAMPFA, 2155 Center Street Berkeley, CA, (510) 642-0808, bampfa@berkeley.edu. The museum is open Wednesday-Sunday, 11-7. Free admission 1^st Thursdays.

Xaviera Simmons’ sweeping practice includes photography, painting, video, sound, sculpture, text and installation. Her work engages the formal histories of art through the construction of landscape, language, and the complex histories of the United States and its continuing empire building internally and on a global scale.

Simmons received her BFA from Bard College (2004) after spending two years on a walking pilgrimage retracing the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade with Buddhist Monks. She completed the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art (2005) while simultaneously completing a two-year actor-training conservatory with The Maggie Flanigan Studio, NY. 

Recent solo exhibitions include Crisis Makes A Book Club at The Queens Museum (2023) “Nectar” at Kadist, Paris (2022), “The Structure, The Labor, the Pause” at Sarasota Art Museum (2022),  “Convene” at Sculpture Center, New York; “Overlay” at Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University; “The Gold Miner’s Mission to Dwell on the Tide Line” at The Museum of Modern Art- The Modern Window, New York; and “CODED” at The Kitchen, New York. 

In Winter 2021 Simmons worked as the inaugural guest editor of Art Basel Magazine and In Spring 2020 she was awarded the prestigious The Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College. Simmons is a recipient of Socrates Sculpture Park’s Artist Award (2019) Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Award (2018), as well as Denniston Hills’ Distinguished Performance Artist Award (2018).  The artist has exhibitions, performances and projects slated to open globally through 2024. 

I found her articulate and lovely to speak with. Our rapport was immediate cross distance and generation and medium. I am happy to finally share 30 of the 50 minute conversation with you, the rest will be online at wandaspicks.com

Wanda Sabir: There were a couple of moments in your bio, particularly around the pilgrimage that you did I was curious about. I was wondering was that the same pilgrimage tracing the transatlantic slave trade of our ancestors. Was that the same one they made a film from, and it was connected to the East Bay Meditation Center. There was a conversation a while back with participants. They showed a film. There were these different convening points

Xaviera Simmons: The pilgrimage was from 1998 to 2000. It is a small part in the second version of ‘Eyes on the Prize.’  I can’t remember the name of that film at this moment. I mean, I think around that time there are maybe like one or two other types of pilgrimages. but this one was pretty unique, because it was anchored by Buddhist monks, and it was like an interfaith experience. So that’s if that’s the one you know, then yeah, that’s the pilgrimage that I was on.

WS: I have to look through my notes. It’s been a while since I saw the film.  The East Bay meditation center, which is a space for people of color, hosted the dialogue with people from the journey and the film director. The EBMC was founded by an African American Buddhist woman.  Yeah, there was a film, and I’m sure you’d enjoy it. This is a film about the pilgrimage, about how it came together, and what happened in New York, around the organizing. It’s really good. I even had an interview with the director on my radio show. [The premise was to heal those places of rupture. The earth holds trauma and this was to release that energy through prayer and meditation. The pilgrims stayed with community members who hosted them on their travels and then people got on a boat.] I will look for it and send it to you.

Another piece you mention in one of the interviews I watched was about the Executive Order, and the “40 acres and a mule,” and what you said about Spike Lee’s signature: “40 acres and a Mule Productions.” As a child, you queried your family around these topics—What is an Executive Order? What is 40 Acres and A Mule?

Then later, when you became a grown person, and you’re doing your own art practice, the work comes together for you around this query. I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about your practice, because it’s so multilayered—you’re an actor. You’re a filmmaker. You’re an etymologist; you’re a historian. How do you bring all of these threads to this current commission and group show: “Undoing time: Art, and Histories of Incarceration” which ties in really well, unfortunately to the whole idea around captivity and capture and poverty and impoverishment and displacement, which you know some of the things that I read about your work are themes that run through your work too. So that’s sort of what I want to talk about now, just want to get to know you a little bit.

XS: “Thank you. That sounds wonderful. Well, I’m just gonna go into what you just spoke about and try to tease out some of the things inside. I will say that I feel very anchored. My anchoring [as] an artist is really tied to [history].

“When I was in high school, I really took art history very seriously at the same time, I took European and American history very seriously [too], so those convergences I’m literally still thinking through how those things are intertwined, because they are. They’re always tied [together]: the art historical foundations of painting and sculpture are tied to religion and in the Eurocentric sense it’s tied to the church primarily.

“In other people’s cultures it’s tied to their different spiritualities. I think that that’s something that I’m always thinking about, and then how that tie to the kind of contemporary social economic conditions.

“But I want to start by saying that I’m interested in materials.  I really love looking at experience dealing with textures textiles. I used to sew my clothes like doll clothes since I was a kid. I was always in thrift stores, and even when I was really young. I would go by myself, within easy reach to my home there was a vintage store.

“For me, the textiles and the materials and the colors, and the color palette and the historical connotations, and the historical, both art and socio-political and contemporary are the things that are really the seeds of my work. And then everything else is like layers on that.

“So that’s one thing.

“I think every day my ideas around landscape and place, and this country in particular, the United States. I try to be specific in the place that I’m talking about, and for me the United States is a particular space. I try to stick to that language – this is the United States.

“This is the [geography] I’m most familiar with. This is the place the group of people that I grew up with and that I’m culturally kin to ‘our people’ – all descendants of this institution of slavery for the most part.

“The United States is also an empire like any other empire that we understand historically.

It’s the same, and so it’s just a contemporary version of other empires. I think that that’s really important [concept] because empires also destabilize other countries. That means that while I’m specific to the United States in terms of my inquiries, it’s a global conversation, because the United States, even though I am a descendant of enslaved peoples, which are, you know an amalgamation of all kinds of people. Some of us know who we are, and some of us don’t.

“Even as people who live in the United States, we are part of the global domination of others.

I think that I sit in that now and the last thing I’ll say before we keep going is that, ‘40 acres and a mule’ is really critical to an understanding of yourself as an enslaved person no not an enslaved person, excuse me, but a person who descends from that institution.

“Ultimately there’s also a conversation, I mean, and it’s a complicated one, around you know and this is I’m taking this from another artist— being a stolen person on stolen land, which we know. We worked this land, but this land had been stewarded by various thousands of different indigenous peoples before we arrived as captives, intermixed and raped into existence basically.

“As I’m maturing and having deeper conversations, I don’t want to just stop with ‘40 acres and a mule.’ We have not as a group come to terms with our full indigenous conversation and then also the indigenous conversation we need to have with people on the continent of Africa. People who are indigenous to here, and the people who are indigenous to Europe usually get our most wrath (chuckle). You know what I mean, but there’s many conversations that Black Americans who descended from slavery need to have in order to fully experience the kind of ‘freedom’ quote unquote ‘freedom, liberation’ that we keep desiring –their solidarity.

“Those are contemplations I try to put inside of my work inside of the materials that I think about and enjoy.”

WS: I think the query is really important in view the stopping and the starting. We haven’t been able to have a continuous conversation. We needed to be in conversation from the beginning, because by now, if we would have been in conversation these past you know almost

157 years, since we’ve been free, then we be in a better position now as a nation.

I’m talking United States of America, but also globally, because this stuff extends. It’s a projection.

XS: “Hmm!”

WS: As you know as a person who has traveled. You’re sitting right now in Oaxaca and Oaxaca has a particular history as a place, and Mexico, in relationship to California in relationship to Arizona and Texas.

XS: “It’s the same place.”

WS: Yes, exactly the same place. And then you think about the people. You know these are our people.

XS: “They really are.”

WS: It is so interesting to have a philosophy that claims our people even when they don’t want to be claimed. You know how we do. We call people brother and sister, and sometimes the response is—I’m not your sister, we don’t have the same mama. As a diaspora, we claim the whole continent, you know. These are our African people, even if our people don’t necessarily claim us. I was just thinking about New York as a country, and I think about my place of origin, New Orleans as a country with distinction, and I notice that you’ve done some work there and it shows up in the current work, in the conversation, so you know sort of having these interconnections that are unacknowledged, you know.

XS: “Yeah.”

WS: And I think that it’s really good when you’re an artist and you go deep to excavate these connections, and make them more visible. I think that’s what your work does. Please talk a little bit more about that and bring us into this current exhibit, and how you were tapped to be a part of this unique query that was multiple years in its development, you know, for the University of Arizona Museum, which took over the whole museum, this conversation around these people –our people who are disappeared in plain view, those who are incarcerated, who lose their rights of citizenship, and sometimes they’ve lost their rights for the rest of their lives, so they’re slaves forever, even when they’re released. They can’t vote. People can’t live in housing that is supported by the government, yet they pay taxes. They can’t serve on juries.

XS: “Well, my work inside of ‘Undoing Time’ I thought of it as a brain. There’s like many different aspects to it: there’s text works. There are photographs. There are videos.  The whole thing is kind of like a sculptural work. Obviously, none of these conversations are linear.

“I think a lot about the one time I spent at Angola in Louisiana which was catalyzed by Art for Justice, which also helped fund that exhibition and the research around it. Then

having friends, colleagues who have been inside, were formally incarcerated. There’s never a clear way to articulate. We’ve been given language to articulate it through different films that that have come into the fore and different books that have come into the fore.

“But as an artist [what is my role]?  I’m not a documentarian nor am I a filmmaker in the traditional sense. So for me I’m thinking about what’s not legible in a kind of straightforward narration or historical artifact. What came up was thinking about humans and subhumans and how consistently complicating the human itself in the United States literally means a white human being in in the context of the history, you know.

“So, like, how do I talk to that figure? And then how do I also meditate on the contemplation of what the effects of that figure?

“The first kind of like push against is through is the systemic whiteness, the systemic white supremacy, right? We don’t have language that is legible. We have a certain way of speaking about that experience that I think has now become kind of codified in a way in our bodies in some forms, and I think in some ways like as an artist, I’m trying to complicate my understanding of when we say incarceration, when we say whiteness, what does that mean?

“And in a way there’s something about humanness and subhumanness I kept thinking about. Underneath it all, there’s always a concept [of otherness] there even in Angola, right? When I went there with the group, or even during the pilgrimage when I traveled for two years, when we went to all these sites and met all these communities, even inside of those spaces there’s green; there’s blue there’s brown; there’s color. There’s a sun, I think about that when I went to Auschwitz. It’s like there is color. There’s something about understanding the complications of death. Really, I don’t know how to put it any other way of understanding the complications of death, of bondage, of life, of livelihood.

“It’s – what’s the word— ‘incommensurable,’ like it’s not and it’s illegible? But what I do know are that the material conditions that are produced by the systemic circumstances that have been constructed in the United States are ‘A. made up’ and ‘B. unacceptable’ right?

“And so how do I make that visible, while, at the same time how do I make kind of illegible language in my mind from like seeing these places and being inside of captivity places that we call prisons, and jails and detention centers?

“How do I make that? How do I keep bringing language down so that’s the text piece. How do I keep making a language do something that I am not used to it doing? And then also, how do I speak in the language of myself as an artist, but also of art historical, sociohistorical framework?

“But ultimately, even when you see the work, I hope people who engage in the work also obviously look at all the other works inside of the exhibition but then go deeper? Do a little research.  Watch another video, find interest in the artists that you’re looking at and watch another video, because I think if you, for instance, looked at another video of mine, you would realize that like I pretty much for a reparative model— point blank, that’s it. You don’t have to go too far to find where I’m gonna talk about the material conditions.

“Ultimately, I’m interested in a total monetary, spiritual, total reconstruction, total rupture. It’s actually gonna take time and resources. Not too much time. Every community is gonna need resources to even contemplate what that reconstruction can look like. And then you have to implement it.

“You know what I’m saying?  You have to recognize what are the needs on the Federal level?

What are the needs on the State level? What are the needs on the local, county level, city level?

Family level. Then how do you contemplate that?

“That’s the only way, I think the United States will ever experience a liberation. There have to be mechanisms for moments of contemplation, and that’s where artwork comes in, because artworks massage the mind, because they go at a slower pace than the time that we –you and I, are speaking. They sink in later, so you need that contemplation. You need resources poured into artists to contemplate those things. Then you need like an engagement from museums.

You need engagements from city centers, from politicians, and so on, and so forth. So there’s a lot of work that I feel like I’m trying to do when I make one work, and I still always have to think about the respect of material.

“I am in Oaxaca right now and it’s everywhere. There’s a respect for material, even when it is for your livelihood, there is still like a respect for sitting and making. So how do you do those two things? You know one seems short, right? It’s the doing, because you know it by now, it’s a practice. But the other is like, what are you putting in the doing? I think ultimately, what I’m putting inside of the doing inside of the materials is a real desire for a total restructuring, because New Orleans like San Francisco, for me, like the Bay are two of the most traumatizing places I have ever been to; while at the same time showing me what this country is, both historically in the case of New Orleans, like the foundation, and then San Francisco and the

Bay, what’s happening now.

“You could literally, if you, put New Orleans and San Francisco together and you looked at their histories, you would basically get the clearest. . .

“I didn’t get this until you said what you said earlier. I think you would get pretty much the clearest understanding of the United States because of their proximity to the water and their proximity to Mexico and their proximity and the way that in the future –which you could say the future would be San Francisco and the Bay with its Tech craziness, which is how we’re living now, and the conditions that socioeconomic pace is producing.

“And then New Orleans, which is still producing the same, and also historically has produced the same. So, in a way, if you conflated those two states alone, you would pretty much if an alien dropped down, I think I would say, look at the history of New Orleans. Look at the history of the Bay— we could put Chicago in there for fun and you pretty much would get a clear understanding of the United States.” (To be continued)

Cal Shakes’ Season Concludes

“Lear” According to Marcus Gardley, A Review

“Lear” by William Shakespeare, adapted by Marcus Gardley @California Shakespeare Theatre through October 2, 2022

When Marcus Gardley’s wonderful adaptation of “Lear” by William Shakespeare opens, the playwright cautions the audience to forget what they know about the play because his “Lear” disrupts the narrative, invites the disenfranchised into shake the foundations of the west, erase geographies and set new authority in the land. This land happens to be the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically Lear’s castle in the Fillmore, another parcel in Albany and Rockridge in Oakland. In a free verse opening pagentry the Black jetsetters establish their reign, more, their right to reign. Everyone is dressed to the nines, even the servants show up proper. In this world premiere folks buckle up for the ride, unless these are yo peoples and you’re used to holding onto wings and tails.

Co-directed by Dawn Monique Williams and Eric Ting, Cal Shakes Artistic Director (his final production too), the work, which concludes this Sunday, certainly deserved a standing ovation. I followed the crowd down the hill to my car and waited for the traffic jam to subside.  As I stood talking to my companion, Destiny, Harpist from the ‘Hood and Criswell Muhammad walked by.  Of course, I called out a greeting— I hadn’t seen the lovely couple in three years. I don’t get out much anymore and well, it was so nice to see them. One of the many gifts of theatre is its role as convener. There were sprinklings of Black folks in the meadow. I would have loved to hear what the fathers and daughters thought of “Lear.”

For those who enjoy character and story—it’s what we do—we, the people, we, the human family Gardley’s “Lear” connects to “Dem Bones . . . Dem Dry Bones.” We are born, script in hand, writing our lives. Pencils ready and erasers too, we decide which material stays and cut what we decide is unnecessary like King Lear (actor James A. Williams) does when in grief and sorrow he makes a big mistake and almost loses his mind trying to right an error which like a rip in fabric runs away.  

Williams as Lear takes up space in the story—he fills the stage and then shrinks as he is chiseled and challenged by those he loves. Just as the absence of love can erode one’s person, love is also the medicine which heals what is broken.

Sometimes a person gets another chance.

In Gardley’s “Lear,” we meet a Black man, King Lear, recently widowed with three lovely daughters “Cordelia” (actor Sam Jackson), Goneril (actor Leontyne Mbele-Mbong), Regan (actor Emma Van Lare). Grieving, the aged King wants to feel needed by his daughters. When his favorite and youngest child’s declaration is found wanting, Cordelia is tossed from her home and her sisters are given their father’s kingdom. It’s a bad move, because once the two elder daughters have everything, they toss away the old man like a wet rag. He is too much trouble; imagine his retinue is 100 knights! The daughters tell him he needs to cut it down to 4-5. Too many mouths to feed and beds to make ready.

These three powerful Black women actors are magnificent in these roles. It is unbelievingly real. I was aghast! How could they treat their father like this? How could they betray their marriage vows? How could their husbands be so gullible?

Older sisters, Goneril and Regan are regal in their mischief and madness. There seems to be no end to their scheming. They are loyal to no one. They love no one except themselves. However, ruthlessness meets its match in Edmund (actor Jomar Tagatac). Yet, they are beautiful, witty and cunning. They take after Pops who admires them as he fears for his life. Each woman’s strength is both a gift and here a curse. The two conspirators immediately cease their pretense to care as Dad is shuffled between their two homes like so much chattel. The sisters laugh at their younger sister whom they say didn’t know how to play the game and loses her family and her home.

Notes are passed and intercepted. The king goes mad and sees ghosts, while his age-mate Gloucester, (actor Michael J. Asberry) believes ill of his legitimate son, Edgar, (actor Dane Troy), who loves him. Gloucester’s outside child, Edmund wants his father’s wealth and power.  Dad’s love would be okay too, but liquidated power: land and rank— wealth, is a greater consolation prize for Edmund who is moving across the board—mate and check as he beds the King’s daughters to victory.

Senility might be a theme here, old men who are easily duped, but we’re talking King Lear- all hail and his friend, the mighty Gloucester?! It can’t be age. The King is 80, but he is sharp, alert until his ego gets the better of him. Is ill-judgment a byproduct of a questioning heart, a heart that that listens to whisperers of evil who drop poison in serving dishes or cups, sweetened with their bitterness or greed? These “smiling faces”[1] set traps which ensnare these elder statesmen with lies that strangle. All the men are fools—well all the men with power and money. Even the ones with power and no money like “Edgar,” Gloucester’s “legitimate” son, cower rather than stand up. The folks with backbone or integrity happen to be Black women: Cathleen Riddley’s “Kent”; Sam Jackson’s “Cordelia”; Velina Brown’s “Black Queen.”

Perhaps it takes the loss of one’s sight or one’s mind to shake a person into what’s true and valuable—lovingkindness, honesty, humility, truth? Suffering is not something human beings can avoid— we want to believe that change is not coming, no matter what Sam Cooke says to the contrary.  With Marcus Shelby’s score and live performance with musician Scott Larson, the setting a literal upper room—where a Black Queen (Velina Brown) slips in and out as she travels between realms –between what is heavenly and what is not – a spirited presence casting light and shadow on the lives of those she loves—confused Lear and her daughters, whom she cannot save.

Maybe courage is a third value to round out the work, character work these souls must complete before they move on and the story ends. The hill is a slow climb—over two hours. There are rages and a literal thunderstorm, a war and lots of death—it is after all a tragedy. Those who survive are lucky. These characters misstep and fall often as the stakes grow so high one needs a ladder to see oneself clear.

My favorite characters are the fathers, Lear and Gloucester, who allow praise to cloud their judgement. I also love the Black Queen, who is always present—Dressed in white she has a standing gig in the heavenly bandstand— Marcus Gardley writes as only Marcus can Black American characters who are accessible and real.  King Lear in his fedora hat, has agency.  We know him. We appreciate the wise fool character (Sam Jackson). This Elizabethan device used by Shakespeare and so well and Gardley too, is not just for comic relief. In African culture there is the “Djali ya” who knows the stories of a people so the “wise one”[2] can remind us who we are. I love the djali ya’s discourse on the three brothers: Klu Klux and Klan. The djali ya runs into the threesome at a restaurant that doesn’t serve “Negroes.” They tell her that “they will do to her whatever she does to the burger, so she gives it a wet sloppy kiss.”

Though the characters are elite, their problems and issues are not. Greed is something we know. Loss is another feeling many of us know well. Love and loss chase one another across the length and breadth of this work, along with fear and shame. We all know folks like this. It’s Shakespeare so it’s over the top, and it’s a tragedy so lots of people die horrible deaths. Well evil does not go unpunished and even good people die, right?

“Lear” is a father daughter(s) story. It’s a story one doesn’t see enough, Black girls and their dad, Black women and their dad. Gardley’s stories are epic, and he links the land and wealth to a time when Black people were not free and once freed were still not equal. Black families and how we were able to hold onto this institution despite the systemic efforts to dismantle it and undermine its importance is always topical as its currency is still a thing in this nation where Black lives do not matter, so why should Black families?

The fool or jester tells a joke about the complex or compound concept, Black Power and how that makes America tremble. It is the cause of so much legal unraveling of our Black Lives. It’s funny, the Sunday afternoon audience was predominately not us—yet this is an American story. I wonder how many people know about Black removal—we hear a lot about Indian removal acts, not so Black community which is still disappearing as I write this review. This absence from the larger narrative is why Gardley’s “Lear” is so important as was his “Black Odyssey”, “Jesus Moonwalked Across the Mississippi”, “The House That Will Not Stand”, “The Gospel of Loving Kindness,” “Every Tongue Must Confess,” all produced here in the Bay at Oakland Theatre Project, Cal Shakes, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, The Magic Theatre, Berkeley Rep or introduced at Bay Area Playwright’s Festival. Often productions were theatrical collaborations as is “Lear” a joint production between Bay Area Theater Project (formerly Ubuntu Theater Project) and Cal Shakes.  

“Lear” reminds me a lot of Gardley’s “The House That Will Not Stand.” Perhaps because of the New Orleans references and people in “Lear” who migrated to San Francisco. Perhaps it is the strong Black woman motif. Although it is called “Lear,” Gardley’s play clearly centers Lear’s daughters, his departed wife and his good friend, Kent. Cathleen Riddley’s “Kent”, the King’s friend, not only goes looking for him, but she also rescues him and keeps him safe when he fails to recognize danger. Lear’s women are in charge, perhaps because they know intimately systemic racism, sexism and class dynamics and how to place these systems in opposition to one another to their advantage. Typical Black woman stuff—not necessarily healthy, but a behavior we continue to foster. Kent calls us on this undue and unfair responsibility as she thinks about accepting the position—codependency? What happened to cleaning up one’s own messes? She asks everyone.

Remember Betty Wright’s song “Clean-up Woman,”— “take a tip, you better get hip”.  Perhaps “Lear” might inspire some of us to not make a mess in the first place.

The play is not for young children (under 12), there are adult situations, language and besides this, the play is long and kids will not get it. Gardley is exceptional in his ability to take a Eurocentric classic and recast it for the people in service of the people. He never forgets his origin story.

I love it when Edmund, the villain, who does not deserve our sympathy spits a rap. He asks for our sympathy or at least understanding and support. It seems that once a person spills blood it gets easier to spill more. Blood is a metaphor. . . substitute lies, cheating, theft. Many times, in “Lear,” people are fools because they want to be. This is another lesson—there is no fool like an old fool, but foolishness has no age.

In the end, the king’s dignity is restored. I loved it the way his hat is his crown. A great gesture. Those assembled bow as he is offered his hat and then puts it on.

Williams is great mad and humbled.  His fall from grace is huge. I think the ground shifts beneath us, at least I felt it the evening I was there.  The king juxtaposed with Asberry’s Gloucester is an amazing character study and remarkable acting. It was amazing to watch Asberry, because the actor is such a great guy. He is also a real-life dad with a daughter. The same is true for the three sisters—the two older sisters are so bad; the acting is so good and their husbands are so weak – well-done cast! And the plotters, especially the master plotter, Edmund is so over the top! Excellent work!

The setting is 1969. The Black Panther Party monitors police activity in the Black community. In the fight choreography the weapon of choice is a switch blade not a gun or sword. Gardley uses the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense as an alternative system to the one King Lear is a part of. It’s time to dismantle the master’s house. Monarchies are not for the people.

As already mentioned, the acting is great all around, with phenomenal direction, wonderful sets and lighting design and costumes and the music, well the music is also a character and Shelby is a great creative artist, the stage one of his elements. Velina Brown’s singing is worth the ticket all by itself. Kendra Kimbrough’s choreography is also awesome and the dream team direction with Dawn and Eric and of course other designers too many to call—y’all are also da bomb! Without your expertise those wonderful actors would not be able to do their work so well.

The play is closing Oct. 2. Take your white hankies and join the ancestors in the house on the hill— Visit https://calshakes.org/lear/ The Bruns Memorial Amphitheater is in Orinda. It is an outdoor theatre, so dress accordingly. Evenings are cooler. The grounds open two hours before, so patrons are welcome to bring a picnic meal. There is also food served on the premises. There is a Covid policy. Please read in advance. The BART Station is serviced by a shuttle to the theatre. The shows Thursday-Sunday are selling out.

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[1] Undisputed Truth’s “Smiling Faces”

[2] Wise One by John Coltrane