By 651 ARTS on April 04, 2011

This blog was submitted to 651 from an audience member who attended the Live & Outspoken event where Ntozake Shange interviewed Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

On my way to 651 ARTS’ most recent Live & Outspoken event, I started getting nervous on the subway ride to Brooklyn. I’m a native New Yorker, so seeing celebrities is a common occurrence. But Ntozake Shange is someone whose prominent work, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, has genuinely shaped me as a woman and artist. The seven ladies in her 1975 play chronicle a wide range of emotions and experiences that I’ve related to in repeated and new ways as I’ve grown up. Shange’s creative synthesis of dance and text has helped me understand dance as a communication tool and vehicle for storytelling. Even Shange’s foreword to her choreopoem has provided me with inspiration. I often reread her description of her passion for dance when I’m looking for motivation to continue developing my own dance skill set.

Basically, I realized I was about to walk into a room with this literary icon and be a total groupie. But luckily, I didn’t seem to be alone. Other audience members and the event’s co-host, performance artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, appeared to share my excited nervousness and awe. There was an eagerness to absorb the knowledge and insight that was about to be shared between these two creative minds.

To me, Bamuthi and Shange both came off as light-hearted, heavy intellectuals. They delivered questions and statements that forced you to think, but also knew how to weave wit into their commentary in ways that made their audience relax and remember that not everything should be taken so seriously. The balance of humor and intellect allowed this Live & Outspoken to touch on a variety of topics. But I was particularly impacted by moments that touched on the importance of performance as a teaching tool.

“Pedagogy as performance,” a phrase I’ve borrowed from Bamuthi, is something he and Shange each practice and preach in the classroom but also through their works. Shange and Bamuthi both performed excerpts from pieces that, on the surface, seem to speak to a specific gender. But, by the end of the event, I understood that their works can be considered successful because they communicate gender issues in ways that resonate and teach across gender lines.

Shange’s acclaimed play has been heralded as one of the most important works in the canon of literature that gives insight into the lives and minds of women, particularly those of color. An interesting moment was when Bamuthi explained how Shange’s celebrated play affected him as a male. He revealed that while reading her work on a Brooklyn-bound subway, he burst into tears. The ladies’ discussion about date rape opened a young Bamuthi’s eyes to the emotional and physical distress that some women are forced to face as they grow up. The rape scene made him feel disappointed in men. He wanted to go out and protect the women he knew from men affected by this “disease.” Standing on the train that day, Bamuthi said he decided that he would be a better man than some of the male figures he read about in Shange’s work. Understanding the struggles of women seemed to greatly inform Bamuthi’s development as a man.

I found myself having a similar experience after watching Bamuthi perform a series of excerpts for his work that explores growing up as a Black man. The first moment that struck a chord within me was when Bamuthi embodied the “Nigga mentality.”  “I am a brown boy’s first and worst enemy. I’m the Nigga mentality,” he said enticingly. Through words and crouching, panther-like movement, Bamuthi personified this dangerous frame-of-mind by creating a character that slyly beckons Black men with its middle finger into a world built on the lingering evils of slavery, oppression, racism, and corrupt capitalism. It’s a world where the highest being is money, the ends do not justify the means, and a Black man is kept running in place. Shortly following this characterization, Bamuthi moved into a more uplifting piece about his dreams for his son. “I know you must move because of the way you move me,” he recited. He obviously believes in his son’s greatness and expects him to achieve that potential.

I attended this Live & Outspoken with a male friend and found myself looking at him a little differently after watching Bamuthi perform that work. It made me think deeply about the pressures my friend has faced and may still face as a Black man. There’s pressure to escape the grasp of a self-destructive mindset that prey on Black men. There’s also pressure to become the man his proud father is certain he can become. These pressures are not new, but for me, Bamuthi’s performance articulated these issues and brought them to light in a new way. I left the event wanting to be a more supportive friend and look for opportunities to help my friend achieve his pending greatness and continue to avoid a mental trap that has kept so many Black brothers back.  Shange further highlighted Bamuthi’s ability to speak across genders when she congratulated him on writing a poem about abortion that she felt should have been written decades ago.

For Shange and Bamuthi, performance is essential in their activism and in their quest to teach and inform audiences of all ages. I wonder, if more people understood the educational power that artists possess, would we have to fight so hard for support? Would the government continue to approve cuts from federal, state and municipal arts funds?  I long for the day when more Americans who are not artists or arts administrators realize that a lot of work emerging from this field can be effective communication, developmental, educational and healing tools.

In the meantime, it was refreshing to be among audience members who did seem to understand what I believe to be the power of performance and artistic expression. This became evident when I found myself at a nearby bar hours later with other young artists and professionals engaged in discourse inspired by the 651 ARTS event we had just attended. The post-conversation—which touched on politics, arts, race, gender music, and the list goes on—was at times as refreshing, uplifting and inspiring as the one that had sparked our discussion.

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