Until the Flood

This is one of the rare mornings where I write directly before I post. I had to give yesterday’s experience, today’s topic, some time to sink in. Some 12 hours later I am still reverberating.

I went to see Until the Flood at the Armory last night, a play written and performed by Dael Olandersmith, directed by Neel Keller, with sets by Takeshi Kata (see today’s photographs.) The play immerses you into the minds of the people of Ferguson, Missouri after the Michael Brown shooting. It opens with the audiotapes of the dispatcher calling police patrol on an apparent theft of cigars from a convenient store and you eventually hear the shots from the gun of police officer Darren Wilson – too many for me to count, six of which hit Michael Brown fatally.

Olandersmith morphs across the 70 minute, uninterrupted, brilliant performance into 8 or 9 different personae, telling their story about the interaction of past and present in a place deeply affected by racism, poverty and race relations. Place plays a dominant role, many of the characters repeatedly name locations, both those to which they are chained and those to which they dream to escape. It made the characters more real but it also was a useful tool to make the audience feel how distant we are from all this, not just geographically, but separated from the, in this case, Southern experience in our safe, little White cocoon.

That experience itself, of course, varies, as Olandersmith brings intensely across. Being White or Black, old or young, educated or not, shifts your perspective. Shifts your judgement. Shifts your feelings. In ways I still try to wrap my mind around, the playwright and actress manages to infuse each and every character with humanity, or glimpses thereof, even when the most abhorrent White nationalist, supremacist or gun loving characters are portrayed. Without patronizing she is able to show how the White sickness affects Whites themselves, although the focus is of course on the devastation it reeks on the lives of the Black community – a devastation that goes beyond the immediate danger of being killed, faced by young Black males, extending into the internalization of stereotypes of inferiority and lives lived within boundaries set by the power of others.

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The characters, a retired Black school teacher, a White retired cop, a young enraged Black male, a young “good liberal” White schoolteacher, an older Black barber, a White supremacist fantasizing about lining Blacks up and shooting them to make Ferguson white again, a frightened Black high schooler, and a Black bi-sexual minister are composites that the playwright created after interviewing many people in Ferguson. How she was able to face some of those used as models for her monologue, spewing hatred or justification for state-sanctioned violence is beyond me.

It has been 5 years this August since Brown was killed. It has been 2 years since documentaries came out questioning how the events were described in the official reckoning. Wilson was never indicted, although he had been previously accused of racial discrimination and use of excessive force. The link below is to a 2017 documentary Stranger Fruits discussing the issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbdW2H0caMs

The recent deaths of 6 men tied to the Ferguson protests gives rise to more speculation.

Deaths Of Six Men Tied To Ferguson Protests Prompt Fear Of Sinister Connection

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Last night’s play pivoted on flow. The flow experienced in people’s lives, cultivated in their language. Flow oscillating between anger, resignation, and questioning one’s faith for the Black teacher; flow of tears of frustration for the White one who simply didn’t get it – why did race relations destroy her friendships? Gushing accolades towards the right of “self-defense” with guns. Small streams of humor and pride in one’s existence. Flowing sexual identities, flowing hand movements, cleansing prayer. Hatred, condescension, homophobic streams of associations. A deluge of supremacist rantings. Waves of fright, down to trembling physical movements for some, trickles of anger merging into suicidal, flowing rage for others. Until the flood.