Karamu goes Freaky-Deaky with The Blacks

The promotional material warns: "Do not come alone." The audience members will be issued a mask to wear. The language gets so raw, the stage manager can’t make herself say the lines. The cast does freaky things with a corpse. The playwright was a thief and male prostitute serving a penitentiary life sentence – not to mention a bizarre white dude. How many ways can Karamu get "in your face" this week? Can we say "Must See Theatre?"

Artistic Director Terrence Spivey laughs. "[The Play House’s] Michael Bloom said to me, "I can’t believe you’re doing The Blacks! Nobody touches that." But this has been on my top list of the plays I’ve wanted to do ever since I came to Karamu. It reminds me of The Rocky Horror Show gone extra-wild, but in a deeper, darker way. And the more we rehearse, the more contemporary things I see in the script, from the governor with the call girl to O.J. Simpson." Not bad for a nearly 50-year-old script so politically incorrect, it might as well be radioactive.

Spivey had been enticed by Jean Genet’s surreal play for years, if only for the roll call of greats associated with it. "James Earl Jones, Lou Gossett, Roscoe Lee Brown, Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou, William (Blacula) Marshall -- this is the play that sparked ALL their careers, and more." Then in 1999, his fascination peaked after a conversation with Larry Routledge, a venerable actor who had understudied in the 2nd company.

"I ran into Larry at a production of Jar the Floor at Second Stage. It got us both so keyed up about black theater, and its possibilities and history, that we walked to McDonald’s afterwards and talked from 10:30 pm to 2 in the morning -- they were mopping up around us," he recalls. Routledge shared unpublished lore about the original Obie-winning production of The Blacks, which ran at St. Mark’s Theatre from 1961 to 1964. "Genet hadn’t wanted to bring the show to New York – he didn’t think Americans would get it -- but he and James Baldwin were good friends, and Baldwin convinced him to bring it from Paris."

The stories went on and on. Martin Luther King came to an early performance. Ionesco walked out of one. "There were so many feuds between those early absurdists, it reminded me of rappers," laughs Spivey. "And of course, Genet’s own life was as fascinating and dramatic as his plays. Jean-Paul Sartre helped get him out of prison."

The Blacks is one hell of a stretch for Karamu. Genet wrote it at the request of a black actor, creating one of his patented multilayered rituals. A troupe of black performers must reenact the death of a white woman for two audiences: the on-stage "Court" and the actual viewing audience. Between the poetry-of-the-gutter language, the play-within-a-play-within-a-play structure, the sexual innuendo, and the surreal and shocking images, it’s miles from the gospel-inflected musicals or kitchen sink dramas that is their more typical fare. But for Spivey, it’s all about growth – especially for Karamu’s artists.

"I probably shouldn’t say this," he says, "but I don’t care whether this is a success or a failure. It’s a chance to challenge myself and the artists and audiences here." Taking risks is something Spivey feels is part of his mandate at Karamu, and a recurring theme -– one he alluded to in a recent interview for the upcoming book, Artists and Influence.

"We should be able to do things 'out of the box'," he says. "Some of us want to pretend to be 2 lizards having a conversation with a couple on a beach, too."

Karamu opens The Blacks this Friday, April 18. For more info and details on showtimes and tickets, visit http://www.karamu.com

From Cool Cleveland contributor Linda Eisenstein LindaATcoolcleveland.com
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