It’s impossible to turn on the news or open social media right now without seeing debates about race playing out in heated, often combative, dialogue. Questions of identity, representation, freedom, and justice are intertwined with Americans’ daily lives, in ways we can easily see and some that we can’t.
Discussions of race inevitably find a voice in theater as well. Two shows currently playing at the Capital Fringe Festival tackle such ideas in particularly interesting, noticeably different ways.
POWER! Stokely Carmichael, written and performed by Meshaun Labrone, returns to Fringe after winning a bevy of awards at last year’s festival. As the prominent 60s civil rights activist, Labrone delivers a monologue that touches on the expected topics—activism, equality, prejudice—but eventually broadens into a wider-ranging discussion of black life and black culture. He shimmies and shakes as James Brown’s “I Feel Good” convulses over the loudspeaker; invites a young woman from the audience onstage to discuss the politics of hair and fashion; and re-enacts an imagined conversation between a white plantation owner and his struggling slave. The result is a complicated, nuanced portrait of a culture often reduced to antiquated stereotypes.
The most impressive feat of Labrone’s chameleonic showcase is his confrontational approach to the material, often addressing the audience directly even if he doesn’t expect a response. By involving the audience in his words he insists that the viewer consider his perspectives, even when they express contradictory emotions. A particularly gruesome monologue, in which he attacks the notion that non-violence ought to be his natural activist instinct, has a powerful effect because Labrone is speaking to the audience, not just at or front of it.
No words are necessary during the multimedia elements of Labrone’s performance, though. Grainy images of police officers battering black people simply for existing on the streets a half-century ago call to mind the equally tenuous relationship between racial minorities and law enforcement officers in recent years, months, and days. The show’s spirit of confrontation reaches its sickening climax during this portion, with the knowledge that these photos depict actual events that remain ingrained in American society today.
Photo via Capital Fringe.
While POWER! tackles race issues through the grim lens of history, fellow Fringe offering An Indian Comedian: How Not to Fit In is its polar opposite, but its subject matter strikes many of the same chords. Stand-up comedian Krish Mohan begins his act by telling the audience matter-of-factly, “I’m Indian.” Just when you’re thinking, “I wonder why he thought he had to start with that,” Mohan explains why: Many people he encounters in everyday life know nothing about his culture, and they often can’t even discern which culture he belongs to. He faces the same large-scale erosion of his people that Labrone bemoans in his performance.
The best solution to stemming that erosion, Mohan argues, is to talk about it, loudly, confidently, and with good humor. He does just that in his 40-minute set, touching on ludicrous stereotypes and media exaggerations. There’s also frank and welcome commentary on sex, relationships, animals, and television news. A riff on the insidious effect of law enforcement’s position within American power structures begins with “I’ve gotten some resistance for this in the past.”
And indeed, at Saturday’s performance on the patio of the Argonaut, resistance arrived right on cue. A young black woman appeared near Mohan during the bit about the police and heckled him until he was forced to respond to her. “They’re killing my people,” she said repeatedly, before making a show of sitting down as two restaurant employees struggled to usher her away. Eventually, after a few more interruptions, the employees succeeded, and Mohan finished his set without further interruption. But the mood in the crowd never quite recovered.
For his part, Mohan told a few stragglers after the show that, while he’d never experienced something like it before, the interruption didn’t bother him. He wouldn’t be performing comedy if he didn’t think it could elicit strong reactions, he said. And the vibrant conversation that resulted from the heckler’s initial point only reinforces the importance of speaking about complicated issues out loud.
Even without a one-time phenomenon like that, Mohan’s message resonates. In an era defined by the racial tensions of an increasingly diverse nation, sometimes it feels like the only thing to do is wallow in despair. POWER! Stokely Carmichael and An Indian Comedian: How Not to Fit In offer another solution: using performance to deliver a message that everyday conversation can’t convey.
POWER! Stokely Carmichael is playing at the Logan Fringe Arts Space on July 12 at 7:45 p.m., July 16 at 4:45 p.m., July 20 at 8:45 p.m., and July 23 at 6 p.m.
An Indian Comedian: How Not to Fit In is playing at the Argonaut on July 16 at 10:30 p.m., July 17 at 4:15 p.m., July 23 at 3:15 p.m., and July 24 at 4 p.m.
