Wanda's Picks Friday, May 17, 2013 Art Transforming Lives Special

Our program opens with Quinn DeVeaux. Quinn is from Gary, Indiana, has packed houses and astounded audiences in the bay area for years with his smooth and dirty spank you voice and cool melodic songwriting. First he started an early Chicago Blues band and then a New Orleans soul and gospel band. Both groups had audiences clamoring for more. Now he has combined it all in the Blue Beat Review a self-styled crossroads of his many musical roots. He and Meklit Hadero have a show Saturday, May 18, 2013, 8 p.m.with Bhi Bhiman at St. Cyprian's Church, 2097 Turk, San Francisco. Visit http://quinndeveaux.com

Hamlet (Luke Padgett);  Polonius (Johnathan Wilson)

Next Marin Shakespeare Company's founding managing director, Lesley Schisgall Currier joins us to talk about inmates at San Quentin State Prison who will have the rare opportunity to see fifteen of their peers performing in Shakespeare's problematic comedy "The Merchant of Venice," a play about commerce, love, revenge, and mercy.

Marin Shakespeare Company, which produces an outdoor summer festival of plays at Dominican University's Forest Meadows Amphitheater in San Rafael, also offers year-round arts education programs for students ages 5 to adult.

Under the direction of Currier and Suraya Keating, the San Quentin troupe has been studying this year's play, creating characters, learning lines, practicing fight choreography, and preparing for the performance for the past eight months. The lead role of Shylock will be undertaken by inmate Luke Padgett, who has appeared in previous S@SQ productions as Hamlet, Malvolio, Lysander, Mercutio, Don Pedro etc. Padgett is serving a life sentence for murder, arson and robbery. She is joined by former company member, Johnathan Wilson (JW) who speaks about the transformative power of art now that he is on the other side of the prison walls.  Music: Nina Simone, Leon Thomas, Meklit & Quinn.

Quinn DeVeaux, from Gary, Indiana, has packed houses and astounded audiences in the bay area for years with his smooth and dirty spank you voice and cool melodic songwriting. First he started an early Chicago Blues band and then a New Orleans soul and gospel band. Both groups had audiences clamoring for more. Now he has combined it all in the Blue Beat Review a self-styled crossroads of his many musical roots.

Next Marin Shakespeare Company's Lesley Schisgall Currier joins us to talk about inmates at San Quentin State Prison who will have the rare opportunity to see fifteen of their peers performing in Shakespeare's problematic comedy "The Merchant of Venice," a play about commerce, love, revenge, and mercy.

Under the direction of Currier and Suraya Keating, the actors have been studying the play, creating characters, learning lines, practicing fight choreography, and preparing for the performance for the past 8 months. The lead role of Shylock will be undertaken by inmate Luke Padgett, who has appeared in previous S@SQ productions as Hamlet, Malvolio, Lysander, Mercutio, Don Pedro etc. Padgett is serving a life sentence for murder, arson and robbery. She is joined by former company member, Johnathan Wilson (JW) who speaks about the transformative power of art now that he is on the other side of the prison walls.  Music: Nina Simone, Leon Thomas, Meklit & Quinn.


Surprise guest, Johnathan Wilson joins the conversation with Lesley. He is a former participant or company member of Shakespeare at San Quentin. The conversation is uplifting and speaks to the power of art to transform lives.

SHAKESPEARE AT SAN QUENTIN

Started in 2003.

Weekly Shakespeare Classes for Inmates.

Inmates rehearse a Shakespeare play for 8 months and give one performance.

The audience is made up of inmates and invited outside guests.

The inmates also write and perform autobiographical plays inspired by themes from the Shakespeare play.

This year, Marin Shakespeare Company has added a second class, to share this work with an additional group of men.

Shakespeare at San Quentin is led by Lesley Currier and Suraya Keating.

Suraya is a writer, actor, and director and also a licensed Drama Therapist.

Shakespeare at San Quentin also provides internships each year for students working on Masters degrees in

Drama Therapy; this year three interns are working with the program.

To see past performances visit: http://www.marinshakespeare.org/pages/outreach_SanQuentin-Videos.php

Visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2013/05/17/wandas-picks-radio-show

Let the Fire Burn

This weekend is the anniversary of the Philadelphia police departments bombing of the MOVE organization where 11 people died, adults and children. The story is the topic of a new film Let the Fire Burn, dir. Jason Osder.  Osder uses archival footage to retell a story too few know about the events of May 13, 1985 (Mother's Day weekend) where under the orders of then Mayor Goode, a bomb was dropped on a house in a residential neighborhood on Osage Street, the resulting fire allowed to burn down an entire community. I saw the film last night at Pacific Film Archive as a part of the 56th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival.

The only survivors were one adult and one child, Ramona Africa and Birdie Africa. Both were alive, though injured. Everyone else was killed. Though I knew the story, seeing it on the screen, hearing the inquiry held to evaluate the call to "let it burn," coupled with antagonism against MOVE members by Philadelphia police and municipality which had already been charged with excessive use of force when arresting nine members in a previous altercation, made the atrocity and the callousness of the perpetrators, more horrific. It was worse than Rwanda. Men charged with saving life, let a building with living people inside burn to the ground with no apparent regret or remorse when queried later at the hearing.

Only one officer, after seeing the child, Birdie Africa come out of the basement through the flames, decided to rescue him when he sees Ramona unable to get to him. This officer later quits the force because of PTSD. At the hearing, his testimony was the only one that conveyed sincere regret over what happened. From the police chief to the fire marshal, to individual officers involved in altercations with MOVE members, no one cared enough to put the fire out or at least protest the tactics used to stop this "terrorist group"

As one resident said as she watched her home burn to the ground, "It was war."

We remember these fallen comrades 28 years later, the MOVE 9 who are still being denied bail, and Mumia Abu Jamal whose sentence to death was commuted to life behind bars. He was one of the journalists covering the unfolding story 28 years ago.

There was supposed to be this huge arsenal of automatic weapons, and even after the search did not yield any such weapons in the MOVE house, the police chief would not admit that his men were the one's responsible for shooting other officers, not MOVE members whose cache consisted primarily of props: inoperable guns.

The hearing found the police and fire department guilty of wrong doing, but no one was imprisoned or fined or even lost their jobs while innocent lives were permanently disrupted, from little Birdie who is interviewed at length (in a separate query, in the judge's chambers) about MOVE that day and in general. He is quite an articulate little boy.

What emerges is a collective who cares about its children, believes in natural clean living and in the primacy of life and truth over darkness and deceit. There was a lot of love in this community which ate raw food, lived simply and didn't believe in hurting others.

Though young, Birdie understood the assault against his family and who the enemy was. After the officer(s) rescue him, he says to them, "Please don't shoot me."

The director said in a Q & A after the screening that his hope is to show the film in October to facilitate a healing conversation for the residents on Osage Street whom still have not recovered.

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Friday, May 10, 2013

Dr. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

Dr. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, author, visual artist, drummer, and Zen Buddhist priest, lives in Oakland, CA where she teaches at East Bay Meditation Center and leads a small practice group in her home. Zenju, her dharma name meaning complete tenderness, was ordained by Zenkei Blanche Hartman, former abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center, and her priest training is being guided by Abbess Kiku Christina Lehnherr. She is also the author of the Black Angel Cards, "a book of messages accompanied by a deck of 36 cards to help us recognize, she says, wisdom and unearth our true nature which is innately awake and filled with healing capacities." See www.blackangelcards.com

Her book Tell Me Something About Buddhism (Hampton Roads Publishing, 2011) includes a foreword written by Thich Nhat Hanh, with poetry and illustrations by Zenju Earthlyn. In addition, she is contributing author to many books, including Dharma, Color and Culture: Voices From Western Buddhist Teachers of Color (Parallax) and Record of the Hidden Lamp: 100 Koans and Stories from 25 Centuries of Awakened Women (Wisdom Publications) edited by Florence Caplow and Susan Moon and and “What Unknowing Things Know: The Zen Liberation in the Art of Romare Bearden in the International Review of African American Art.”

She holds a M.A. degree from U.C.L.A. and a Ph.D. in Transformation and Consciousness from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She had been guest teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Green Gulch Zen Center, and the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland. From http://www.sfzc.org/zc/display.asp?catid=2,6,127&pageid=1885


Monica Anderson,  the founder and owner of Sankofa Events Project Management. www.SankofaEvents.com joins us to celebrate the successful Oakland premiere of Shola Lynch's Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners, Tuesday, May 7, 2013. The venue was sold out and Dr. Angela Y. Davis was in the house and entertained a few questions afterward. The film has another screening Sunday, May 19, 2013 at the New Parkway Theatre in Oakland, at 3 p.m. There will be poetry and a panel discussion with the audience preceding and following the film.

Ms. Anderson created Sista to Sista in 2009 to connect Queer Women and Gender Variant Folks to free wellness workshops. Each workshop included a special awareness of the needs of those most marginalized within the LGBTQ community. During her Taboo Tuesday workshops, Monica used films and other forms of multimedia to seed discussion about topics that Queer folks rarely spoke of and yet often experienced. Films like Kortney Ryan Zeigler's Still Black, which takes a close up and never before seen look at realities encountered by Black Transmen, were paired with an open group discussion. Each workshop offered direct access to organizations that address issues raised by the topics.

Monica launched SPECTRUM Queer Media last year to offer LGBTQA films on a weekly basis here in the Bay Area. A demand to see her work expand has yielded screenings which include other U.S. cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York and Boston.

Monica also is touring those same cities and reading her poetry - some of which is part of the published anthology "Letters to My Bully".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kergan-edwardsstout/letters-to-my-bully_b_1807212.htm


Our next guest Mia Pascal is a woman with many talents. She joins us to talk about her 30 minute solo piece,  "Heartbreak Velocity", in two group shows, one at DIVAFest in San Francisco, week 2, May 18, 8 p.m. at the Exit Theatre on Eddy, www.theexit.org and the second performance, at The Marsh in Berkeley in its Tell It on Tuesdays solo performances, May 28, 7 (music, 7:30 (show) http://www.tellitontuesday.org/

She says, "Heartbreak Velocity" is a dark comedy about love, linguistics, and swinging your heart as hard as you can, like a funky marching band all up and down the street.

Mia Paschal, Actress, Solo Performer, Playwright

Born in Marvell, Arkansas, Mia Paschal moved to San Francisco from Milan, Italy to study with Ed Hooks.

As an undergraduate at Harvard, Mia studied acting with David Wheeler; she later studied with Bill Hickey at the HB Studio in New York. In Paris, Stockholm, Helsinki and Milan, she appeared in a number of independent films and video projects. In San Francisco, she has also studied with Bruce Williams and David Ford.

Mia has performed in a number of plays and independent films in the Bay Area. She produced and performed in Heroes Theatre Company's St. Valentine's Day Massacre, a collection of comedic and dramatic scenes about dysfunctional relationships. She produced, directed and acted in After the Fall by Arthur Miller (Maggie), Harold Pinter's The Lover, and Antony and Cleopatra (Cleopatra). Mia also acted in several productions of the Rough Theatre Company's Daytrippers, one-acts conceived, written, rehearsed and performed in 24 hours, one of which won Best of the SFFringe, as well as Best New Fringe Idea, at the 2001 San Francisco Fringe Festival.

One of her most personally gratifying theatrical experiences was performing in A Loud Little Handful, Greg Beuthin's site-specific production of works dealing with the aftermath of war and violence, directed by Emily Koch. She also wrote, produced, and directed the digital feature The Art of Etiolation which premiered at the EXIT Theatre's DIVAfest in May 2004. She made her singing debut in On the Sixes, a cabaret by Sean Owens and Don Seaver, which was part of the EXIT Theatre's 2006 DIVAfest, and her songwriting debut the following year, for the EXIT’s DIVA Cabaret.

In September 2004, her first solo show some life, directed by Emily Koch, won the Best Female Solo Performance award at the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Her next work, This Lily Was (Fontana), received the Best of the Fringe - Best Female Dramatic Solo Award at the the 2006 San Francisco Fringe Festival, and was performed at the Marsh in San Francisco, as part of the Marsh Rising series in January 2007, and at the 2007 Rogue Performance Festival in Fresno, where the Fresno Bee selected it as a Top Five Pick of the Rogue.

Her latest solo play, Along the Path of Larks and Swallows, premiered at the 2008 Rogue Performance Festival and was chosen as a Top Ten Pick of the Rogue by the Fresno Bee.  In April 2008, Theatre Bay Area awarded Along the Path of Larks and Swallows a CA$H grant for its extended production.

Mia participated in the Performance Initiative at the Marsh in San Francisco, where she was commissioned to write "My Soul for Rubies", a solo piece exploring exile,  loss, and linguistics, and "The Slaughterhouse Trapeze", an examination of sex and death.

Publications: "Some Life: three plays for solo performance",  a volume containing "some life", "This Lily Was (Fontana)", and "Along the Path of Larks and Swallows" is available for purchase. To make your order, please visit: www.lulu.com

Meklit & Quinn

Meklit Hadero hasn't graced our airwaves in quite sometime. We are excited to have her join us to speak about two creative projects, one with artist, Quinn DeVeaux, from Gary, Indiana, who with Meklit have released a new album Meklit and Quinn where the two friends share some of theirs and our favorite songs, sort of the staple diet of any healthy rhythm and blues fan, the songs that underscore this American soundtrack we live daily. Visit http://www.meklitandquinn.com/about.html

The two artists perform quite a bit this month and over the summer, beginning tonight, May 10,  at Davies Symphony Hall's After Hours, post concert music event with artwork by sculptor Cyrus Tilton, "The Cycle," "A Place In Between," and "Absence," courtesy of Vessel Gallery in Oakland. The artist's work express his concern for the environment and human psychological complexity.

This concert is free to ticket holders and is a part of the closing week of a two weekend festival May 2-11, of Beethoven's early music and lasting influence with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus with guest soloists. Program 3: MTT and Missa Solemnis. Meklit and Quinn will present a musical response to the piece. Should be interesting, Meklit's New York Jazzy with West Coast Funk meets traditional Ethiopian melodies juxtaposed and combined with Quinn's joy, grit and catchy crossroads Chicago Blues stirred and served a la New Orleans soul and gospel. Visit www.sfsymphony.org , http://www.meklithadero.com/ and http://quinndeveaux.com/site/

We will probably catch Beethoven smiling his approval tonight, as he was all about access, his music inspired by events of the day and its people (smile). 

Mina Girgis, Executive Director,
Co-founder The Nile Project

We then shift personnel a bit and Mina Girgis joins Meklit and the two of them talk about their joint venture, The Nile Project, an organization that brings musicians from the 11 countries which call the Nile River Valley home together to exchange and share cultural values connected to this important tributary, as well as make music which reflects a plan for a sustainable Nile River -- this relationship emblematic of this goal, Africa vision for the continent beginning with these 11 nations. Visit http://www.nileproject.org/team/mina-girgis/

Mina speaks about how these two Africans meet in the Diaspora, San Francisco to be exact and begin the planning for this project one which though in its infant stage at barely four months old, is a precocious child that will probably skip walking and just start running (smile).

Born in Ethiopia in the early 1980s, she grew up in Iowa, New York, and Florida. After studying political science at Yale, she moved to San Francisco and became immersed in the city’s thriving arts scene. Her debut CD On a Day Like This party in San Francisco was one of those moments that really changes one's heart.  She was big before the release, but afterward, the travel began and nods from some of the industry's grandparents keep her at the top of the charts. It is not often that one can see a person make the Pan African connection between what is now and what was then, let alone what is to come, yet Meklit is an able conduit on this shifting platform with her embodiment or honoring of all that has come before.

Her work with other Ethiopian artists in diaspora through the Arba Minch Collective, a group of devoted to nurturing ties to their homeland through collaborating with both traditional and contemporary artists there or The Nile Project, her latest venture with co-collaborator Mina Girgis, this woman's creative life, whether that is as a 2009 TED Senior Global Fellow or the Co-director of the Red Poppy Art House, epitomizes ashay.  

Meklit and Mina's The Nile Project is a way to proactively affect what is to come--preservation of regional cultural values as the cultivation of new ways to enhance and preserve African antiquities is applied though technical resources we in the Diaspora often have easier access to.

Fatoumata Diawara from Mali shared as much when she took the audience in Berkeley last month (in April at Zellerbach) to her village and through both music and dance showed how one rhythm like our hearts connected those of us dispersed worldwide in the European slave trade as well as colonialism still remain one.

If you miss Meklit and Quinn tonight, she headlines with her band, the Charity Water Fundraising Event to dig wells in Ethiopia, May 22, 2013, 9 p.m., at Public Works in San Francisco:https://www.facebook.com/events/442572812503765/ 

Music: We open with an excerpt from Victoria Theodore's "I'm Your Angel" (Grateful); Meklit & Quinn's "This Must Be the Place" and "Salaam Nubia" from The Nile Project. Meklit who is one of the soloists on the tune, introduces "Sematimba ne Kikwabonga," but we are kicked out of the studio before it airs. Stay tuned, I will play it on the Wednesday, May 15, show.

Show link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2013/05/10/wandas-picks-radio-show

Tour de Cure for The American Diabetes Association

The Tour de Cure in Gold Country Saturday was grueling. I am still recuperating. But as the hills seemed unending and the sun grew hotter, I kept thinking about my dad and I'd say, "I'd riding for you Daddy," and from somewhere I'd get another burst of energy to keep going. . . not the 62 miles I'd planned to ride or even the 31, but 17 miles for a Cure for this dreadful disease.

A friend commented later on that Daddy was the wind (smile). My colleague, Stefanie, who is fifth generation diabetic was also with me as was Arvid who just retired, fell and now has just three months to live. (Just found out he died May 2.)

There were children with parents with diabetes, coworkers with a friend. I rode for a minute with the Funk Town Team. Our leader was born with diabetes.

The rest stops were fun, especially the second one where there was a wading pool filled with icy water for bikers to take towels and drip water on their faces and necks. There were bubbles and another pool with plastic fish for us to go fishing literally. This is where the 31 mile riders turned around for the ride back. I think we were the blue team. At times near the end, I had to get off my bike and walk it up the hills. My legs were like, nope, not another inch on two wheels (smile).

The snacks were good here too. Besides the oranges and red licorice candy, which I cannot eat, there were these vegan, gluten free energy bars. I got cashew butter, which were really yummy. There was also no sugar added almond milk.

Riders dealt with heat stroke, discourteous drivers--one hit a biker, and heat heat heat, with smiles. I was so sleepy when the ride was over and they'd run out of lunch, I had to pull off the freeway twice. The last time, I bought a cup of crushed ice and drank and chewed my way through Davis and into Fairfield (smile).

The old trick of sticking one's hand out of the window so the cold air will wake one up, doesn't work when the temperature is in the 90s. When I pulled off the first time I thought I was on International and High Street--the store so like Fiesta, the parking lot a bit too busy to close one's eyes (smile). So I ate my dinner and then drove back to the highway.  

That night my legs were killing me and yesterday, the soreness was gone, as I went for a short ride around town. The memory of all these folks riding for a cure, will never leave me. I put my badge: 135 on my altar next to my picture of Daddy and me when I was three.

For just under $200 I will meet my $500 goal. Please send a pledge to: http://main.diabetes.org/goto/wandasabir

Wanda's Picks Radio Friday, April 19, 2013

We open with a rebroadcast of our interview with Keith Josef Adkins on his latest play, The Patron Saint of Peanuts, which honors George Washington Carver.

We then shift to an interview airedd two years ago with Camille T. Dungy, editor of black nature: Four Centuries of African Nature Poetry.

We celebrate with author Judy Juanita the publication of her first novel, Virgin Soul. The novel is a tour de force featuring Geneice Hightower who takes us on a journey through the Black Arts & Revolutionary Movements of the '60s, most notably the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Up close and personal, this old soul in a young body, smart and cute and hip, when she needs to be, innocent and fierce yet always honest is a for real foot soldier movement woman, who attends Oakland City College, hosts Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) at her flat, which becomes a SafeHouse, learns to clean and assemble guns, dodges police bullets, graduates from SF State, feeds kids breakfast, tutors in Bayview Hunter's Point, recites poetry, gets laid, and ultimately finds herself (smile). Yes, it's that exciting.

We close, if there is time, with an interview with Rachel Rosen, Program Dir. for the San Francisco Film Society, presenter of the 56th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival which begins April 25-May 9, 2013 http://www.sffs.org/  See http://sf.funcheap.com/ for information about Earth Day Activities Friday-Monday, April 19-22, 2013.

Wanda's Picks Friday, April 26, 2013

We open with Gina Breedlove, who will talk about her new CD and concert, Sunday, May 5, 2013, in Berkeley at Freight and Salvage. Visit http://www.ginabreedlove.com/

Next we speak to Jacque Barnes, a Bay Area Keeper of the Culture AfroBrazialian style who is recovering from open heart surgery. There is a benefit for her medical expenses Sat., April 27, 7-9 show; 10-2 party, at BrasArte Casa de Cultura, 1901 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley:  ww.brasarte.com 

We then shift to speak to Dr. Gabriela Lena Frank (composer) and Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize winning playwright) about the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra performance of the World Premiere of Journey of the Shadow, Friday, April 26-Sunday, April 28 in various venues, the first, Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., 8 p.m. Visit www.sfchamberorchestra.org

We close with a prerecorded conversation with Victoria Theodore, pianist, composer, who is featured with her trio at the Oakland Public Conservatory's Music SHE Wrote benefit for OPC's youth who also perform, Friday, April 26, 2013, 8 p.m. at OPC 1616 Franklin Street, Oakland, 510.836-4649, $15 advance tickets, $20 at the door. Visit http://www.opcmusic.org/.

Wanda's Picks Radio Show Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Father with daughter Coumba

Rachel Rosen is the director of programming for the San Francisco Film Society. She was director of programming for Film Independent and the Los Angeles Film Festival for eight years. Previously, Rosen was associate director of programming for the San Francisco International Film Festival where she programmed for seven years.  She has worked in various capacities for the New York Film Festival, New York’s Film Forum, and Tri-Star Pictures. A graduate of Stanford University’s Master of Arts program in Documentary Film, Rosen directed Serious Weather, a short documentary that was shown at the Vancouver and San Francisco International Film Festivals, and the British Short Film Festival. She is an occasional contributor on the subject of documentary film to Film Comment magazine.

Amaday, Coumba's classmate
and friend

Younger Sister Debo

Jeremy Teicher, Director writes:

Coumba's Mother

Tall as the Baobab Tree is about standing up for your beliefs and doing what you feel is right, no matter what. To me, the film speaks to the energy and idealism of youth while portraying a very stark and realistic world where change is two steps forward and one step back, where the invincibility of youth bends beneath the harsh realities of life – but is not stamped out.

Inspired by my work with local students, I wanted to tell a story that captures the emotions of the traditional and modern worlds colliding.Jeremy Teicher, Director / Co-Producer / Co-writer bio

Jeremy Teicher is a Student Academy Award-nominated director whose first feature film, Tall as the Baobab Tree (Grand comme le Baobab)   (2012), is garnering acclaim from festivals around the world. Tall as the Baobab Tree won the “Best Feature Narrative” award from the Doha-Giffoni jury at Doha-Tribeca Film Festival and was ranked in the top 20 out of over 170 feature films by audience vote at International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Tall as the Baobab Tree is inspired by Jeremy’s ground breaking documentary short, This is Us (2011), which was awarded a prestigious Lombard Public Service Fellowship, supported by Kodak, and earned Jeremy a nomination for a Student Academy Award.

Both films were shot on location in a rural village in Senegal, Africa, with the documentary premiering at the American Embassy in Dakar to international media coverage. Jeremy graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College where he studied Film, English, and Theater.

The cast is made up of local villagers playing roles that mirror their own lives: the two main characters, Coumba and her sister Debo, are played by real-life sisters who actually are the first kids from their family to go to school. The role of the mother is played by a local woman who was herself a young bride. A young man who never had the opportunity to get an education plays the older brother, a character who has never gone to school.

http://tallasthebaobabtree.com/photos/

The Whipping Man

L. Peter Callender as "Simon"; Tobie Windham as "John"

I'd really been looking forward to playwright Matthew Lopez's The Whipping Man, especially after speaking to Tobie Windham about his role as N-(expletive) John, so while certainly Tobie Windham and L. Peter Callender, two of my favorite actors were phenomenal, the story was not. Granted, the addition of Judaism made the mix interesting if for nothing but the persecuted Jewry's participation in another person's persecution, in this case enslaved Africans. And the fact that I am not a Jew made the rituals Elder Simon, formerly enslaved, officiated with such finesse from memory truly one of the perhaps many scattered jewels in the work.

Former owner Capt. Caleb (Nicholas Pelzar) meets a startled Simon

It was strange though that neither Caleb nor Simon sympathized with John when they found out what kind of trouble he was in, nor did either man offer him guidance regarding this new suit called freedom he'd sent to the tailor for adjusting. It is an interesting dilemma to find oneself shackled to the enemy; which means for John, in order to save himself he has to save his captor too. Hum. What a provocative conclusion. One suggestion raised during the talk after the play, was to have the playwright, who is a television writer, start a series where each week TV audiences could learn more about the men and their lives post-freedom.

Is this the new Roots? The perspective is certainly not an Alex Haley worthy sequel. That said, it might be cool for a season to see where this goes if the same cast is also used for the sitcom. The playwright is certainly getting a lot of play, literally on this work, with it appearing simultaneously on multiple stages throughout the country. The MTC production comes here after a month run in Norfolk, Virginia from February 26-March 17, 2013. Tobie said they met a man whose ancestors were enslaved African Jews. He showed them letters and other artifacts from his family. The story is as much about the injured former owner who is dependent on the kindness of men whom he was not too kind too. We can guess how this scenario will play out. . . . Of course the black men are forgiving, at least Simon is, initially. Why Simon believes he can trust a person who enslaved him to do right by him when this "Master," lost the war, is a bit of a stretch I am still trying to perceive. Maybe I need a better prescription--I just can't see it.

Freedmen John, Simon, Caleb at Sacred Meal or Passover Seder
All photos: Samuel W. Flint

John is what happens when a person is without guidance or without a role model. He is smart, yet, he doesn't know what to do with the knowledge he has acquired. A child in a man's body, he doesn't realize until it is too late what consequences result in his withholding information from Simon.

Simon says freedom as not a state rather the prize one gets from labor. The shackles don't just rust and fall off, one has to turn the key. John gets close, but some dreams evade slumbering souls, just because it's hard to wish for something one cannot imagine.

The Whipping Man has been extended at the Marin Theatre Company through April 28.

Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in Association with the AAACC present a staged reading of Marcus Gardley's Black Odyssey

Saturday morning my plans were many: ride my bike, finish hanging curtains in the living room and kitchen, go to the First Annual Halal Festival at Masjidul Warith Deen, but time slipped away and I just got to two out of four before time was up and I had to head over to San Francisco by way West Oakland BART to pick up a friend, and together head over to the LHT staged reading of a Marcus Gardley original, Black Odyssey.

Marcus is brilliant, and at almost 30 his light is shining so brightly, at the end of the two act play, not only as I blinded, I was speechless--so full of emotional was I. And I was not alone, men and women were wiping away tears as Ulysses Lincoln made it home.

Based loosely on Homer's Odyssey, this journey was one most in the audience recognized, yet perhaps had not articulated it so masterfully prior to this production. We know the trail of bones, whether it is Black Mary Wilkes following Aunt Ester Tyler: a former slave and a "soul-cleanser's" instructions so that Citizen Bartlow can get right with himself or Great Aunt Tina (Athena) pleading with her dad, Great Grand Daddy Deus (Zeus) to talk to Great Grand Paw Sidin (Percedian) to save her kin from drowning.

It is interesting that like Citizen, Ulysses Lincoln, a Gulf War veteran who has blinded Polyphemus, a one eyed cyclops, Great Grand Paw Sidin's or Poseidon's son, which is why Sidin is trying to drown him, also has to go to the City of Bones. He needs to find his story or learn his history so he can get home.

As he travels, he meets friends and foes--even family. Maps are etched in hands and he finds paths or trails similar to his own. These familiar markings make the journey, if not less, harrowing, certainly satisfying for Ulysses who has been lost so long his memories are legends he shares with his new friend, Nella Pell.  She saves his life. Stranded people with limited rations are not the most sympathetic rescuers, but the child Nella Pell convinces her dad to not shoot him and her mom to let him stay.

There is a lot of water imagery, floods and heavy rains--Ulysses's is at first confused, until he realizes that he is in the future, the journey a memory past, one previously inaccessible, thus the forced journey. He will not get a pass home until he knows where he comes from, not physically which when asked he'd say, New York City, but deeper who are his people? How many generations can he name? What ancestors' stories does he carry in  his bones?

Gardley writes of blood memories, trapped energy, clotted or stuck souls unable to get home. Ulyssey's meets a family floating on a roof--there is a flood and Artez and Alsendra Sabine wait as the water rises for the "government" to save them. Ulysses's a bit less optimistic tries to get them to notice the water rising and abandon the hope of something outside themselves saving the couple and their daughter, Nella Pell.

What is blood but water? First blue and then when air hits it the color changes? The human body is 90 percent water and if the planet is a metaphor for our vehicles for this journey, then what does this memory-blood-water connection mean?

The sibling rivery between Paw Sidin and big brother Daddy Deus is so amusing, as are the relationships between other characters, I guess too numerous to name that the actors portray, yet are absent from the program.

The major characters are nine (9), yet many more fill out the story like Malachi (Telemachus), Ulysses's son who is born while his dad is away and does not know him; Ulysses's wife, Benevolence Nausicca Sabine (Penelope). 

In the world these characters inhabit, while gods technically can't cross each other, Great Aunt Tina , leaves home to go to stay with Ulysses while he is away. Hanging with human beings changes her. She loses her looks and the human container starts to give her pain and trouble. Magic ceases to work in this realm or perhaps what she notices how hard the life her Ulysses and others trapped in this realm manage.

Ancestors speak to Ulysses. He dreams and in this state he and his wife Benevolence speaks.

There was much to recommend Black Odyssey: the staging, which was marvelous, especially the various songs and choreography (smile). The cast, which was stellar. When Aldo Billinglea's Ulysses makes it home to Benevolence (Britney Frazier), one sees tears rolling down his cheeks. And then there is the single mother, Benevolence--she wants to believer her husband is gone, but something makes her continue to hold on even after 14 years she gives up.

Margo Hall as Great Aunt Tina, exemplifies how much our ancestors love us and how hard they work for Great Uncle Paw Siddin, portrayed by Darryl V. Jones, our salvation and happiness even if their advocacy doesn't work out for the best. Aunt Tina begs her dad to stop Paw Siddin, but his hands are ethically tied.

Black Odyssey covers the period Ulysses's been lost, black people from our earliest memory of enslavement to the present. Stranded on rooftops waiting for a savior, Ulysses's sees the Four Little Girls from Birmingham, Emmit Till from Chicago, Martin King and others. Is this his fate to be stranded?

If Ulysses's represents post-Apocalypse or life after captivity, then how much longer must we wander as a people? When will our choices open the the hinges which are rusted shut? True, like Ulysses we've inherited trauma--mother dead before he was born, Ulysses is without family or at least he thinks he is an orphan until he starts traveling and realizes how much family there is waiting to claim him.

The memory is in the blood and perhaps one has to spill the blood to release the spirit trapped inside? Sounds like what happened with Jesus--the trapped divinity wasn't released until crucifixion. That's when the magic begins--water becomes buoyant whereby Jesus can walk on its surface. What does he learn while blue that he didn't know when the water was red?

Paw Siddin admits to his stirring the waters, yet, Ulysses does have choices. Paw Siddin reminds me of Olukun, the orisha who rules the deepest waters. Post traumatic slave syndrome, this genetic memory and our participation in its continued perpetuation that is, our own enslavement is no skinny dip.

The cast is rounded out by: Steven Anthony Jones is director and plays the role of Artex Sabine; Halili Knox is a number of characters, her primary one is Alsendra Sabine; Kehinde Koyejo as Nella Pell; Dimitri Woods as Malachi; Carl Lumbly as Great Grand Daddy Deus; Bert van Aslsburg as stage manager.

Visit www.lhtsf.org or call (415) 474-8800 to find out about subscriptions, other free readings. The next one is May 4, 2 p.m., at MoAD We Are Proud to Present by Jackie Sibblies Drury.

The playwright's work was a part of Bay Area Playwright's Festival about two years ago. Listen to the interview: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2011/07/15/wandas-picks