1619 Project One-Act Festival @ Bishop Arts Theatre Center
Photos by Danielle Maggio
—Jan Farrington
If you’re looking, there’s a telling visual clue even before the 1619 Project One-Act Festival gets going. A man onstage stands with his back to us, painting a small section of the large mural that covers the back wall of the stage. The mural is an ocean view of the ships that carried the earliest Africans to America and enslavement 400 years ago, with the number “1619” shadowy but visible through the colors of the painting.
As the audience at the Bishop Arts Theatre Center waits for the show, he carries his ladder offstage, then his paints—but keeps returning to the same spot in the mural, adding more.
The picture is never finished. The story is still being told. And we are a part of it, by being in this theater, on this day, in this year. Now.
BATC commissioned playwrights to produce short (about 10 minutes each) plays linked thematically to Nikole Hannah-Jones’ breakthrough study, which itself had many contributing writers.
The resulting plays are directed by Gabrielle Kurlander with assistant director Zetra Goodlow, who give the production a unifying energy that impacts both mind and heart, from the opening declaration that “We are all the children of 1619” to thematic lines and elements that weave through these short works. (For a complete list of participating playwrights, actors, and creatives—some very fine work is being done here—view the playbill at: 1619ProjectPlaybill )
In the first play, Janelle Gray’s “The Origin of Freedom,” two church-lady-ish Black women sit down (is it the Fourth of July?) to hear a reading of the Declaration of Independence, but find themselves challenging the costumed reader line after line. So King George was evil because he burned our towns? What about Tulsa, Rosewood? He put troops among us who brutalized the citizens? We fear the police among us. “I declare,” says one of the church ladies to the reader, “that our freedom is no longer yours to give. It is ours to take.”
In the works that follow, different issues and situations expand the scope, each play providing quick, hard-hitting moments. In Jared Glenn’s “The Repass,” a mother’s will leaves the family house to her son, not her daughters (she’s helped them in other ways) in the hope of breaking a generational cycle, giving him the sense that as a Black man he has a place in this world, a legacy and future….A Black woman knows she can stand up for herself, and both loves and resents her white sister/friend who jumps in to defend and protect her in Terrance Brooks Boykin’s “The Stand.”…Aaron Zilbermann’s “No Blacks, No Jews, No Dogs,” takes on the longstanding and tough relationship between Jews and Blacks, with Mirian and Gabriel sharing a park bench and hashing things out in increasingly resentful terms. “Never again,” says Gabriel over a history of outrages toward African Americans. “Never again?” says Miriam. “You know that’s ours.”
In Erin Malone Turner’s science-fiction comedy/drama “Ingrained,” two aliens with a sunny view of Earthlings go through the DNA of a Black woman and are horrified at the memories it holds: “People stole other people? They took your babies? They stole your music, your whole culture?” The extraterrestrials back off on their plans for Earth’s future: maybe this world needs a few centuries….Anyika McMillan-Herod’s “They Would Not Be Butchered” is set in the sugar-cane fields, where an enslaved Black boy and girl play games and dance (striking choreo from AyaTola Wash, danced by young Chatyra Miller and Ethan Newell), but are caught up in brutality and struggle….In Jackie Salit’s “Call Me Shirley,” racist Governor George Wallace (after he is shot and paralyzed in 1972) is surprised by a hospital visit from Black Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, who is running for president that year. She tells him he’s “unforgiveable”—but she came anyway. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she says. “I know what hurt is.”
There’s more, and each piece in this strong lineup is worth seeing and hearing. In her notes on the production, director Kurlander takes the story out of the theater and into our everyday world: “Here in Texas, there are ugly, politicized fights about what history we should teach our children. In my view, the American people are strong enough to face all the dimensions of our history, even its cruel and dehumanizing chapters. This theatrical production explores conflicts, wrongs, and hurt, as part of moving away from racism and hatred toward a just society.”
WHEN: Through February 26
WHERE: Bishop Arts Theatre Center (Oak Cliff)
