Photo by Liz Lauren
The
blisteringly hot subject matter of We Are
Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as
South-West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 is
about as tricky to navigate as its absolutely untweetable title. The racially
charged play by Jackie Sibblies Drury, centering the meat of its conversation
around the theatrical form, returns to Victory Gardens where it was last seen
as part of the 2010 IGNITION Festival.
In
the larger Začek McVay Theater, We Are Proud, which opened Monday night, is much more than a droll
lecture on an unfortunately ignored, century-old world event, but a lively and
powerful conversation on our theatre and on our world in this moment.
Chicago
has gone through a steady parade of race-themed plays this season: Bruce
Norris' ultra-chic Clybourne Park at
Steppenwolf, Ayad Akhtar's problematic Disgraced
at American Theater Company, and David Mamet's loudmouthed Race at The Goodman, among several others.
What
lumps these plays together more specifically though is that they all deal with
race as a discussion topic – delivering lofty theses through
downtrodden characters – and attempt, with inconsistent
capability, to bring to light etched prejudices on the human subconscious.
We Are Proud soars where all the others face
plant. Sibblies Drury,
rather than hammering home the inevitability of racism, keeps asking questions –
an onslaught of pressing questions – through the
visage of twentysomething actors. Though We
Are Proud crosses into some awfully pessimistic territories, there is an ever-present
belief in progress – progress, the play implies, we must
together work towards.
Often
theatre becomes a daycare for feathery soft reassurance. Affluent audience
members lounge in donated thrones for two hours while they are soothed by a
chorus of what they already know – that they are
the enlightened ones. Ignorance has no place on either side of the proscenium
arch, right? Wrong. Sibblies Drury has built We Are Proud around the idea that there is still a great deal of
learning to be done, especially by theatre audiences and theatre makers. Which
is why the play is appropriately framed by a group project.
Six
characters take the stage: Black Woman (Tracey N. Bonner), Black Man (Kamal
Angelo Bolden), Another Black Man (Travis Turner), White Man (Bernard Balbot),
Another White Man (Jake Cohen), and Sarah (Leah Karpel). Purposefully generic,
the archetypal quality of their personalities allows the issues to take
precedence over trite domestic character traumas. The sparse detail on their
individual backgrounds, the reason for the presentation, and their lack of real
names shroud the play in a welcome mystique, allowing the focus to fall where
it belongs.
Black
Woman acts as the self-elected leader of the group and gives an awkward pre-show
speech. She makes a few gaffes, aiming for an organic, colloquial feel –
but ‘cut it with a knife’
awkwardness is a confusing beast to stage. While an improvised quality is
reached for, it all still feels mighty rehearsed. Little genuine humor is
elicited by the meta theatrical devices, but they are nonetheless necessary to
the subsequent drama.
The
audience is first treated to a farcical retelling of Namibia's grotesque
genocide during the late nineteenth century, dishing out base facts as
projected bullet points with the overplayed, hyper physical hilarity of
Commedia del Arte. It’s truly funny sketch comedy staged
with choreographed precision by Eric Ting.
But
in a trend that maintains throughout the play, that farcical tone shifts instantaneously
with the simple use of a repeated bell noise – first a cutesy sound
signaling a ‘scene change’,
and then to a bell tower on the eve of execution as the years of genocide are
ennumerated. We Are Proud is rightly
reliant on such unwelcomed surprises.
Break!
The skit was, in actuality, a rehearsal. And there is still much rehearsing and
writing to be done on Brian Sidney Bembridge’s deceptively
simple set. This leads into the most relevant and intriguing underpinning
conjecture of the play: the question of history's place in the theatre. Is it
ever possible to truthfully portray an event with historical accuracy? And more
acutely, is a dusty list of facts historically accurate?
As
the group struggles to tell the story of the Herero genocide, they discover two
distinct camps exist: the Germans and the Herero. Both are integral to the
retelling, but who deserves more stage time? The victims, we assume, but there
is little or no written documentation of those peoples’
lives at the time of the genocide; only German letters to wives at home.
“Are we just gonna
sit here and watch white people fall in love all day”,
asks Black Man, enraged over the prevailing depiction of the ravaged continent –
Out of Africa.
Without
any primary sources on the Herero, they must stray from the path of literal
history and discover something deeper. What ensues is a series of rules-be-damned
theatre games, seeking to uncover the Herero’s hardships on an
innately primal level. The games are wacky, occasionally musical, and, at their
sharpest, sickening.
The
acting is always proficient and appropriately heightened, if occasionally a bit
rigid. This is not a piece that facilitates virtuoso performances by any means.
It encourages a brand of ensemble that fills the periphery rather than settling
on a single solitary person. And when it does settle on one person, the choice
is specific and hard-hitting.
As
an ensemble, the cast blends together nicely, but individually Angelo Bolden
and Turner own the evening. Angelo Bolden and Turner, as Black Man and Another
Black Man respectively, share the most probing argument of the play. They spar
over whether or not we are defined by and must be forever connected to our
cultural heritage. Black Man says yes, Another Black Man says no, having been
raised on opposite sides of the track. Two people fighting over unthreatening differences
in lifestyle has frightful paralells to the genocide these actors are trying to
present, and such hypocrisy becomes a major roadblock in their efforts.
Turner is probably the least
showy of the actors onstage. His Another Black Man is allowed to fade upstage
for much of the play. He participates in the games, of course, at one point
depicting a highly stereotypical African warrior, but his opinions are still just a touch less asserted than all the others. Turner’s face and breathy inability to
speak in the play’s final moments, however, speak louder than he ever could. In
his tear-filled eyes, I saw the Herero, gagged and oppressed, embodied in this one
easily dismissed person. There is much to be said about the last twenty minutes
of We Are Proud, but his look says it
all.-Johnny Oleksinski
‘We Are Proud to Present a
Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South-West Africa,
From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915’ runs
through April 29 at Victory Gardens Theater
