Behind the Curtain: Ishmael Reed’s The Amanuensis Exposes America’s Fantasy Machine

By Wanda Sabir

The October engagement closes Sunday, October 18, at Berkeley's Black Repertory Group. The play returns November 13–22 to kick off BRG's 64th Mainstage Season.

In the year marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, playwright Ishmael Reed makes another wall fall. What we discover behind it is not pretty, despite the beautiful music, dancing flowers, animated animals and smiling faces we have been taught to love.

In The Amanuensis, now playing at the Black Repertory Group in Berkeley, Reed asks us to examine not just the theft of Black labor, but the theft of Black genius. We are accustomed to hearing how enslaved Africans built America with their bodies. Reed reminds us that it was also their intellect, imaginations, stories and cultural knowledge that made enormous fortunes for others.

Hollywood is one of America's great fantasy machines. And Black intellect has been part of its circuitry from the beginning.

An amanuensis is a person who takes dictation, a note-taker, not necessarily an author. Joel Chandler Harris collected the stories of African people enslaved on a Georgia plantation, published them as the Uncle Remus tales, and became famous. The storytellers, including Aunt Crissy, Old Harbert and George Terrell, remained largely invisible while the white man who recorded their stories became a celebrated literary figure.

Enter Walt Disney.

Disney adapted Harris's tales into the 1946 film Song of the South, combining live action and animation. The film generated substantial revenue and later inspired theme park attractions. The original African storytellers received neither recognition nor payment.

In Reed's play, however, the storytellers return to collect.

The work is excellent! Bobby Clements's direction is clear, and the performances are strong. My one reservation is the opening narrative, which is a bit long. Too much tell and not enough show. However, when I began doing my own research into the wee hours of the night, I understood why this information was there. The history matters.

Reed's theater is for a thinking audience. It is funny, sometimes absurd, historically provocative and intellectually demanding. You might leave wondering, "What did I just see?" Then, as you travel home, the questions continue.

The seductive power of the lie

I found Song of the South on the Internet Archive. Beneath the film were comments from viewers remembering how much they loved it.

I watched James Baskett, the extraordinarily talented Black actor who portrayed Uncle Remus, moving through a world of singing birds, flowers and beautiful animation. He sings "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah," and for a moment everything seems wonderful.

But I kept thinking: How do you make something as brutal as slavery beautiful?

The film is set after emancipation, yet it preserves an idyllic vision of plantation life. The formerly enslaved Black man becomes the emotional caretaker of a white child whose family is experiencing difficulties. His stories comfort the child, protect him and help restore the white family's happiness.

I thought about Shahrazad in One Thousand and One Nights, whose storytelling becomes a means of survival. Uncle Remus also uses stories to prevent a catastrophe. But whose survival does his wisdom serve?

In Disney's universe, the Black storyteller's intelligence becomes another service rendered to white people.

We have encountered this fantasy before in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and Victor Fleming's Gone with the Wind. These films differ in their storytelling, but each helped convince audiences that white supremacy could be noble, romantic or even benevolent.

This is the seduction of cinema. Once we enter the theater, the world outside disappears. We accept the director's version of reality. Like the Wizard of Oz, the person behind the curtain controls what we see.

And we willingly participate.

I remember the children wearing mouse ears on television, the Disney programs, the fairy tales that became part of our childhoods. We passed these stories to our children, who passed them to theirs.

How much of what we believed about ourselves and one another was manufactured inside a studio?

We think we are living in the real world. Perhaps we are living inside a studio set.

The mask comes off

In The Amanuensis, Reed refuses to let the plantation fantasy stand.

One of the most powerful moments comes when Aunt Crissy, portrayed by LaTarsha McCoy, confronts Miss Sally, played by Sherry Davis, who believes the affection between them was genuine. The woman seems wounded to discover that the person she regarded as devoted to her did not share her feelings.

Aunt Crissy tells her otherwise.  She speaks of sexual exploitation, of caring for white children while being denied the freedom to nurture her own, and of the things she could never say aloud. Her enslavers did not know her. They knew only the person she had to pretend to be.

I thought immediately of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, "We Wear the Mask."  The mask was not evidence of contentment. It was a means of survival.

Another unforgettable moment comes when Raymond Nat Turner, portraying Uncle Terrell, recounts the physical violence he endured. He gestures toward his back and leg, identifying where he was deliberately injured.

There is no need for theatricalized suffering, no trauma pornography. The words and gestures are enough.  Reed trusts the audience to imagine what happened.

The people onstage are not simply victims. They are thinkers, observers, artists and human beings who understood their circumstances even when they could not safely say what they were thinking.

When the tricksters take the stage

Then there are Br'er Rabbit and Sis Fox.

Their presence takes the play beyond historical reenactment and into folklore and philosophical comedy. These fictional characters enter the world of their creators, bringing their own personalities and unpredictable behavior.

The lovely Nina Causey, as Sis Fox, is not surprised by the antics of Br'er Rabbit, played by Jahn Overstreet. Sis Fox understands something the others initially overlook: Br'er Rabbit is a trickster. This is his nature. Why should anyone expect him to behave differently?

I love this scene.  There is something wonderfully philosophical about Sis Fox's acceptance of the Rabbit's character. Understanding someone's nature does not mean surrendering to their behavior. It means knowing whom you are dealing with.

Reed gives us another lesson in power: Knowing the rules of the game matters, but so does knowing the character of the person sitting across from you at the poker table.

Nina Causey's beautiful rendition of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" also reminds us that the art itself is not the enemy. The music, the humor and the stories have their own value. The problem is what happens when they are taken, repackaged and used to conceal the lives of the people who created them.

California is not innocent

Reed's creative work has long been connected to California. It is fitting that The Amanuensis is being performed in Berkeley, in the state that gave us Hollywood.  In her wonderful 1918 essay, Slavery in California, Black journalist and historian Delilah L. Beasley documents a history many Californians still do not know.

California became a state on September 9, 1850. Yet during the 1849 Constitutional Convention, delegates attempted to prohibit free Black people from entering and settling in California. The provision was removed from the final constitution, but the effort did not end there. After California became a state, legislators continued trying to pass laws excluding Black people. Imagine that. Even as California prepared to enter the Union as a free state, some of those writing its laws wanted to keep Black people from living here. And Black people were already here!

People of African descent were part of California's history long before statehood. They helped establish early California communities, including Los Angeles, San Jose and San Francisco. Some of these early Californians had both African and Indigenous ancestry. And we should not forget that some Black Californians are Indigenous to this land as well.

California's Black history did not begin with the Gold Rush, the Great Migration or Hollywood.  So what kind of freedom was California offering in 1850, and to whom? This is the same state that eventually became home to the world's most influential film industry. What does that tell us about the stories Hollywood would later manufacture and sell to the world? Reed makes the fourth wall crumble. We can see the machinery behind the illusion and who actually powered it.

The casual arrogance of power

One of the most chilling aspects of the play is the casual arrogance of those who benefited from the theft.  John Bramhall portrays the Ghost of Joel Chandler Harris, the writer who published the Uncle Remus stories. Harris sits tied to a chair, confronted by the very people whose stories made his literary reputation possible.

He offers explanations, qualifications and excuses. What about the kind enslavers? What about those who cared for the people they enslaved? Wasn't slavery responsible for bringing African people Christianity and civilization?  The justifications are familiar. They are also absurd.

Disney's theatrical counterpart is especially revealing. His long explanation of how the enterprise benefited from these stories sounds almost like a confession without remorse.

Yes, it happened. Yes, money was made.

So what?

That is the question hanging over the production.  What happens when the truth is known but the wealth remains untouched? What happens when the people whose ideas created the wealth have no meaningful way to recover what was taken? The original storytellers are long dead. Copyright law offers no straightforward remedy for the appropriation of their oral traditions. Yet others continued making money from their stories for generations.  And here we are, celebrating 250 years of American independence while still struggling with the question of who has truly enjoyed freedom.

Who pays for the fantasy?

I also kept thinking about James Baskett.  He died in 1948 at just 44 years old, two years after the release of Song of the South. He received an Honorary Academy Award for portraying Uncle Remus, yet racial segregation prevented him from attending his own film's Atlanta premiere.  What must it have cost Black actors to bring their gifts to an industry that so frequently required them to portray their own people as contented servants?

We cannot know the full private cost of Baskett's performance. But the contradiction remains. His talent helped bring a distorted world to life, while the real world denied him the dignity granted to his white colleagues.

And this is why The Amanuensis matters. The Black people whose stories were taken were not simply bodies performing labor. They created stories filled with humor, philosophical wisdom and knowledge about survival. The trickster tales showed how people without physical power could use their intelligence to outwit those who held it.

Hollywood did not invent this genius. It profited from it.

And with Reed, the original storytellers finally get to speak. 

Theater cannot undo history, but it can challenge the stories we have been told. It can expose a lie so thoroughly that we cannot comfortably return to believing it. It was Black genius that helped power the ship. Call it Jesus—yes, the slave ship Jesus of Lübeck. Call it capitalism. Call it wrong!  Ishmael Reed has given us another opportunity to look behind the curtain. His play makes us laugh while challenging us to rethink everything we thought we knew.

There are only three performances left in the October engagement, which closes Sunday, October 18. Fortunately, The Amanuensis returns November 13, 14, 16, 20, 21 and 22 as part of Black Repertory Group's 64th Mainstage Season.

Don't miss The Amanuensis. Take someone with you. And afterward, talk about what you saw. Because once a wall falls, it is difficult to pretend you cannot see what was behind it.

On November 14, three MacArthur Fellows—Juan Felipe Herrera, Ishmael Reed and Charles Johnson—gather for a free afternoon conversation, Reading and Writing in the Age of AI. Ishmael Reed has invited me to moderate this conversation. What a fitting prelude to Reed's play, which asks us to consider who creates, who owns and who profits from another person's intellectual work.

The Amanuensis is the evening work. It is perfectly situated for reprisal, revival, resurrection.

The check is not in the mail.

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Production notes

The Amanuensis, written by Ishmael Reed

Black Repertory Group
3201 Adeline Street, Berkeley, California

October engagement: Closes Sunday, October 18, 2026.

November return performances: November 13, 14, 16, 20, 21 and 22, 2026, as part of the Black Repertory Group's 64th Mainstage Season.

Creative and technical team

• Director: Bobby Clements

• Stage Manager: LaTarsha McCoy

• Sound, Lighting and Technology: Baron and Austin

• Archival Footage: Ishmael Reed, Jahn Overstreet, Sean Vaughn Scott, Bobby Clements and LaTarsha McCoy

Cast

• John Bramhall — Ghost of Joel Chandler Harris

• Nina Causey — Sis Fox

• LaTarsha McCoy — Aunt Crissy

• Jahn Overstreet — Br'er Rabbit

• Raymond Nat Turner — Uncle Terrell

• Josea Morgan — Old Harbert

• Sherry Davis — Miss Sally

• Emil Guillermo — Narrator

For performance information: Black Repertory Group or (510) 652-2120.

Special FREE Event: Reading and Writing in the Age of AI

Saturday, November 14, 2026, 3–5 p.m.

Admission: FREE

Three MacArthur Fellows in conversation: Juan Felipe Herrera, Ishmael Reed and Charles Johnson.

Moderator: Wanda Sabir, independent scholar, writer, journalist, arts editor emeritus of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, and host of Wanda's Picks.

Location: Black Repertory Group, 3201 Adeline Street, Berkeley, California.

This conversation is part of Defying Boundaries: MacArthur Fellows at 45. Throughout 2026, the MacArthur Foundation is celebrating the groundbreaking work of its Fellows and inspiring public dialogue through nationwide events and conversations.

Free event registration: Reading and Writing in the Age of AI — Eventbrite

More information: macfound.org/fellows-45

Wanda's Picks Podcast with Deborah Vaughan, Co-founder, Dimensions Dance Theatre

 

Nengi Omuku’s The Gathering, A Reflective Encounter by Wanda Sabir

 

Nengi Omuku’s The Gathering,
A Reflective Encounter

By Wanda Sabir

Nengi Omuku, 2024. Photo: Todd-White Art Photography.

I attended the conversation between Nengi Omuku and curator Natasha Becker virtually. Traffic was prohibitive again crossing the Bay Bridge, but Sunday I got out and was able to spend over an hour in the African Art Gallery with Nengi Omuku’s work.

I enjoyed its conversation with the antiquities. It was like an embrace. Her work centered, the larger elders embraced her.

Nengi Omuku, Gathering, 2020. Oil on sanyan. Collection of spaghetti western, Michael Sherman and Vinny Dotolo.

As I walked through the gallery, I could hear the conversation between Nengi and Natasha playing. Their voices become a soundtrack before you even reach the place where you can sit down and watch the interview.

Musical...

Film: How artist Nengi Omuku paints new worlds

Omuku’s paintings rested among centuries of African sculpture and ceremonial objects. It could have felt like an interruption—a contemporary artist inserted into a historical collection. Instead, it felt like an embrace. The galleries became less a museum than a family reunion.

Yorùbá maker, Pàkà egúngún (ceremonial dance garment), 1930–1970. Cotton, synthetic fibers, vinyl, wood, printed cloth, patchwork, appliqué, embroidery, mirrors, amulets, coins and shell buttons. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

There are several rooms partitioned with Nengi's work and glass panes we can see through to the other sides of the very large and spacious open except where noted room. It is as if the centuries and the dispersed African Diaspora once again gather here to recollect old times.

Nigerian artist Nengi Omuku’s first solo US exhibition, Nengi Omuku: The Gathering, opened at the de Young museum June 27, 2026 and will be up through May 14, 2027.

Omuku’s work is historically and philosophically layered. Using a classical medium as canvas, sanyan, the artist incorporates folk art into a fine arts medium.

Sanyan is cloth traditionally woven from silk and cotton which was used for ceremonial clothing. Omuku first repurposed clothing made from sanyan. Now she employs weavers who make the cloth which the artist has treated so it can hold the oil paints she favors.

Asante weaver, Kente (man’s wrapper), 20th century. Cotton, strip weaving and supplementary weft patterning. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

In a lovely filmed interview, patrons see Omuku paint wearing gloves as she alternately smiles into the camera as she shares how she met the weavers.

Unhurried one feels a deep inhale as the paintings hanging from the ceiling invite speculation.

The cloth has a sculptural presence. Figures emerge from lush gardens and dream landscapes where memory is less an act of recollection than a way of being.

Nengi Omuku, 2024. Photo: Todd-White Art Photography.

I resonated personally with the artist and her work and the vision of curator Natasha Becker in placing contemporary artists in conversation with these antiquities. I hadn't known until the talk that she is also a Black woman. I have enjoyed all her collaborations. I think I have seen them all.

I loved hearing the curator speak of her time with Nengi Omuku at home. Nengi is a diaspora African returned home changed. She has a vision. I also love it that she grew up in a home with a garden and a gardener.

Omuku spoke about her work with patients and caregivers in mental health institutions in Nigeria. She understands that painting can be more than representation. Creative tools are how we heal and recover.

She also spoke about growing up in a home where her mother was a horticulturist. After graduate school, she returned home and worked in the family business. Gardens were not simply places of beauty. They were places of work, learning, and livelihood.

In Nigeria, sculpture is everywhere. As one sits at a traffic circle there is a bust on the center island. As you drive down the street, you see monuments in city parks. Guys sitting around a table talking—ordinary, right? It's just they are forever stone.

It is the African Art Gallery in real time.

For real origin stories.

Baga artist, Nimba mask, early 20th century, Guinea. Wood. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Omuku said she first imagined herself as a sculptor before one of her teachers encouraged her to pursue painting. Her paintings still possess a sculptural presence. Painted on handwoven sanyan, the canvas has the quiet authority of sculpture. Woven and then sewn in strips, the fabric has holes so bodies can breathe in the African heat. The cloth is not simply a surface. It is a stitched narrative.

Horticulture adds another layer of meaning.

I recognized the landscape she paints, not because I had seen these exact gardens before, but because I have walked parts of the world that nourish them. I have traveled through Lagos, Benin City, Ile-Ife, Abeokuta, Oshogbo, the Osun Grove, and Badagry. My own ancestral journey has led me across Nigeria in search of stories and homecomings.

I wasn't able to travel to northern Nigeria as I knew no one there. I have Yoruba and Fulani ancestry from Northern Nigeria. I wanted to see my heritage sites (smile).

So many philosophical resonances with the Monet in Venice and the Botanical Gardens nearby and the lush landscape that is Golden Gate Park where Lift Every Voice is proclaimed in neon just across the street at the Spreckels Temple of Music (smile).

Remember the 350 African Women Ancestors, dana king’s work?

I was the person who organized the procession and poured libations. I also built the altars, organized the choirs, and hired the women drummers. It was the first Freedom Day in SF. Mayor London Breed officiated.

What a day!

I am interested in art for Social Change and artists as change agents. I think creative tools are how we heal and recover. I appreciate that aspect of Nengi’s work.

Memory is a story we tell ourselves. Sometimes those stories are imported. Sometimes those stories are untrue. Sometimes we need a reset.

The Gathering, oil on the ancestral cloth sanyan, is this reset conversation. The stories are a collective rememory. It is more than recollection and then again it is a collection or opportunity to pause and reflect.

Nengi Omuku, New Haven, 2025. Oil on sanyan. Courtesy of the artist and Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery.

Nengi Omuku, Fire for Fire, 2025. Oil on sanyan. Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London.

As we wait for pandemics to quiet and for petrol to fill yellow buckets 🪣 and fires to quiet and rages to simmer...there they wait in the eternal gardens.

We missed the turn over there, down the road, turned left at the pasture. Circling back now—the signs are missing. We forgot the tune. Mothers stopped humming.

Hum.

Storytime.

Nengi Omuku’s The Gathering is storytime. If you're lost, pull up a chair and listen.

If You Go

Nengi Omuku: The Gathering — de Young museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco. Through May 14, 2027. Museum hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 9:30 a.m.–5:15 p.m.

Tickets and visitor information: de Young tickets

Ticketing and general inquiries: 888-901-6645 (24/7) or 800-777-9996 (daily, 9 a.m.–9 p.m.).

Artwork identifications and interpretive information: de Young / Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco exhibition labels and wall text supplied for Nengi Omuku: The Gathering.