[On April 29th, 1992,
civil unrest erupted
in Los Angeles after the four officers who had beaten Rodney King on video
were acquitted on all charges. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy King himself and
other contexts for and representations of the LA riots, leading up to a special
weekend post on the narrative
of “race riots” itself.]
On two one-woman
shows that are just as evocative on the page as on the stage.
In this era of
tablets and smartphones (which Word doesn’t identify as a spelling error, just
to drive the point home), there’s no reason we have to limit our experience of
literary works to written texts. You can watch a YouTube video clip just as
easily from just about anywhere, and when it comes to theatrical performances,
there’s a lot to be said for doing so, for getting at least a sense of their
performative (that one Word underlines, but I’m going to keep it) qualities. So
I’d be remiss if I didn’t first link to this opening part of Anna
Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror
(1991) and this trailer
for an adaptation of her Twilight: Los
Angeles (1992).
As the first
clip’s introduction notes, Smith works in a very unique and compelling way:
interviewing hundreds of people in response to a particular historical event (New
York’s Crown Heights riot for Fires,
the 1992 LA
riots for Twilight), and then
turning their words and voices into a crowd-sourced document that she performs
herself in their various characters (although the above-linked Twilight adaptation uses multiple actors
instead). Smith is as talented a performer as she is a writer, and so again
there’s much to be said for watching and hearing her take on these voices and
stories, as you can do (if you have an hour and some good wifi) with all four
parts of the above-linked version of Fires.
But if you’re attempting
to engage these literary works without internet access or a high-tech 21st
century device? Well, I was introduced to Smith through the
published, textual version of Twilight,
and I can say with certainty that she makes these voices and characters and
communities come to life just as powerfully in that form. Indeed, there’s
something to be said for the opportunity to hear them all in our own head, with
no performance choices filtering them, distinguishing them from one another,
perhaps rendering one or another sympathetic or annoying to our ears. Their
subjects are the height of divisive and violent controversies, moments that
pitted Americans against Americans in the worst ways—but the texts offer us the
chance to hear all sides, and, as
Walt put it, “filter them from your self.” Pretty good way to spend some
quality reading time if you ask me.
Last King
context tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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