Displaying items by tag: Dominique Morriseau

Six spectacular actors bring deeply moving performances under director Cheryl Lynn Bruce in Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline.

The capacity crowd who braved six-degree weather to show up at the Biograph Theatre on Lincoln Ave. were richly rewarded by this exceptional production. But you kind of have to go when a Morisseau premiere beckons. I for one am invested in her work now, having been wowed by two of her three Detroit cycle plays - Skeleton Crew at Skokie's Northlight Theatre last year and Paradise Blue at the tiny TimeLine Theatre on Wellington the year prior. (Just by coincidence, Morisseau's 2017 play, now having its Chicago premiere, was also broadcast nationally by PBS last night from another ongoing production - the one at Lincoln Center in New York.)

Pipeline is lauded for its topicality around the current issue of young black males too easily at risk of entering a pipeline to jail. And it also touches on the merits of inner-city public community schools versus private education.

But perhaps even more powerfully, it highlights the debilitating effects of our society's racism-based social dysfunction. In Pipeline this adverse miasma infiltrates the emotional lives of the middle class parents of a teenage boy, Omari (a kinetic performance by Matthew Elam). A slight, sensitive poetic youth who seems an unlikely candidate to become a thug, Omari gets into trouble after inexplicably assaulting his high school English teacher.

Pipeline also showcases Morisseau’s prowess for examining the inner lives of interesting personalities, the forces that energize them as people, all against the contemporary societal backdrop. In Pipeline there is a specificity to these characters – six fully-formed individuals, no tropes or archetypes.

You will be touched by these exceptional people, and by the compelling performances that bring them to life. When the play opens on a sparse stage, Omari's mother Nya (Tyla Abercrumbie – who is devastatingly good), a public high school teacher, is leaving a voice message for her ex, and Omari's dad, Xavier (Mark Spates Smith), detailing their son’s predicament: that he may be expelled from his private school and possibly be charged criminally with assault.  

Nya leaves a lengthy voice mail in which her language stumbles and runs aground – a sets a tone for the remainder of the 90-minute show. Repeating and rephrasing that 60-second message, Nya shows her inner self and internal conflicts. The scene cues the audience to listen to the language for the rest of the show, for it will communicate on multiple levels.

Pipeline is also literary, revisiting at several points Gwendolyn Brooks in a poetic remix of We Real Cool – the 24-word masterpiece the perfectly captures a cry of lost youth: 

We Real Cool

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL. 
We real cool. We
Left school. We 
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We 
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon. 

Courtesy The Poetry Foundation

The event that triggered Omari’s rage was also literary: a classroom discussion in which his teacher over-aggressively called on him to discuss Richard Wright’s Native Son character, Bigger Thomas. “He was asking me in that room, in that way,” Omari tells his mother, his language suggesting that as an African-American, he is a rarity in his class. “I don’t want to be the token respondent.”

And in fact, as Omari later tells his father about the incident, he says he was feeling upset that his dad sent him financial support like clockwork, but never delivered his love. “Guys say they want their dad, but it’s overrated,” Omari says. The child support he gets from him “does the biology, but it doesn’t do the soul.”

This is a play for actors, because Morisseau gives each of the characters a show-stopping soliloquy, or ranting digression. You’ll want to stand up and cheer for Security Guard Dun (Ronald L. Conner) in “I Do My Job,” weep after Omari’s double-barreled unloading to his dad Xavier. Or laugh and applaud, for Aurora Real De Asua’s Jasmine – Omari’s girlfriend; and Janet Ulrichs Brooks as the teacher, Laurie - both of whom provide measured lightheartedness to the show. 

This production of Pipeline runs through March 1 at the Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago. It’s highly recommended that you don’t miss it.

What drew me to this play is the powerful message around civil rights and the negative impact it had on the children of activist. Sunset Baby is about a women named after Nina Simone whose parents were a part of the Black Panthers. After her mother passes away, her father comes back into her life after what seems to have been a long stint in prison. playwright Dominique Morriseau, who landed the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for her previous work, Detroit '67, comes back with another fine effort Sunset Baby a story of generation gaps and healing old wounds.

As I walked closer to the stage at Timeline Theater, I saw large signs of many individuals who have contributed to the civil rights movement such as Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Malcolm X, Tupac Shukar, Nina Simone, and DeRay Mckesson who works with Black Lives Matter. The short descriptions of these individuals were informative and appreciated and also helped set the tone for this play.

The plays opens up with Nina, played by Anji White, getting ready to go hustle and make some money with her boyfriend, Damon (Kelvin Roston Jr.). As she is getting ready, she gets a buzz from downstairs thinking it was him but it is instead her estranged father Kenyatta (Phillip Edward Van Lear). Nina blames her father for the addictions her mother had which ultimately led to her death. What is uncovered through this encounter is Kenyatta's desire to locate unsent letters from Nina's mother, Ashanti X, while in prison. 

Although the play had a lot of ups and downs to keep the audience busy, I still left wanting more. There could have been more about the political activism around Kenyatta. I believe more details should have been explored a bit more as well as character development. The acting itself was very strong. Phillip Edward Van Lear's demeanor throughout the play was calm as Kenyatta but when he talked about his experiences, he did a great job of appearing physically agitated, making his role even more believable.

Sunset Baby will be at Timeline Theater from January 21st through April 10th. Visit http://www.timelinetheatre.com/sunset_baby/ for more details on obtaining tickets to see this powerful cast.