Limited Perspective

Before tonight's run of An Incomplete List , one of the Theatre Off Jackson staff let me in and then kept going about their duties outside, hosing down the ramp. So, I was the first person in the theater. And going down the steps into the green room was such a feeling of being home, where I belong, and where shit makes sense. Old basement theaters with their decades-old carpet, and wires, pipes and makeshift whatever, and posters and ghosts and everything else are so special. And being the first one in the space, quiet but vibrant and ready for us to harness the magic that lives in there -- nothing like it. Photo by me, standing on the stage, tonight. 

There is a moment in History of Theater: About, By, For, and Near , now playing for a few more days only (sadly) at ACT, where the protagonist, played by Dedra Woods, faces upstage, away from the audience, and watches a company of Black actors perform a minstrel show. Then when it’s done, she turns toward us, with tears running down her face. It was heartbreaking watching her heartbreak at realizing what past generations of Black actors were forced to endure. The power of the moment, theatrically, was driven by those tears.  The show centers on Woods’ character as she goes back in time, literally, to explore the history of Black theater, and Black theater artists, having been commissioned to bring such a show to the stage in the present day. In this way the character stands in for Reginald Andre Jackson, the playwright, and Valerie Curtis Newton, the director of History of Theater. It’s upsetting what she finds, but she makes it into a history of endurance, creativity, and triumph,...