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Citizen: An American Lyric
Reviewed by Myron Meisel
The Fountain Theatre
Through October 11
RECOMMENDED:
Citizen: An American Lyric by poet Claudia Rankine, was published to great acclaim last year, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry. In this theatrical realization, it represents an uniquely valuable tool not merely for a keener awareness of the ubiquity of everyday racism but for the precious need of every human being for self-examination, if any of us is ever truly to become whomever we truly are.
Notwithstanding her own distinct lyrical voice,Rankine’s perceptions contain an astonishing universality, articulating the death of a thousand searing paper cuts experienced as the consequence of the often unrecognized racist suppositions rampant in all echelons of society and from all levels of “enlightenment.”
Squarely in the tradition of Ellison and Baldwin, Rankine compiles the toll of unremitting slights which reduce the sense of self and obliterate individual identity; the perception of color alone is sufficient to render invisible even the physical presence of an American black person. The inevitable anger and corrosive habits of self-repression essential to survival, both actual and emotional, exact a spiritual price that has persisted for centuries, unabated even within the smug, dismissively prejudiced presumptions of the gross lie of a “post-racial” society.
Indeed, it should be argued that the general public’s shock and surprise at the revelations of recent, trending police brutality and repression are as perniciously denialist as protestations of “colorblindness.” The only thing new about any of this is how our cellphone cams have forced what had been conveniently ignored into general consciousness. This work may appear to be topical, but its timeliness has been unceasing throughout our entire history of violence punctuated by avoidance.
Rankine’s intellectual achievement becomes even more impressive, and useful, because she concentrates so intensely on the most quotidian examples of poisoned interactions. The smaller she gets, the more piquant the sting of unnerving culpability: She seeks to convey the blinding relevance that equips us to witness with awareness, to actually see.
While a most daunting task to undertake the translation of poetic language (with no little commitment to pedagogic purpose) to the stage, adaptor Stephen Sachs deftly selects, edits and organizes Rankine’s words (every of them hers, he professes) into something that while pointedly not a play, indubitably comprises a transcendent theatrical experience.
We have, no doubt, already far too many plays, too much dramaturgically upholstered character development through arcs toward strategic revelations that serves ultimately to reassure us of the progression of the universe toward order, which we all know not to be true.
What our society, our polity, our lives and our art require would be steadier exposure to works of this ambition and modesty, that illuminate our blindness, that wake us up from the destructiveness of our willful cluelessness with the transforming power of word, movement, reality and fancy.
Questions of authorship here may be obscure, which only enhances the rich personality of the mosaic here. Surely, director Shirley Jo Finney and her company of actors and craftsfolk have contributed in full measure to the subtle interplay of elements that gives this never pedantic production its special fluency. It sears while being light on its feet, delivering devastating jabs with grace. I can’t imagine a more impressive ensemble arising this season, intending ensemble in the most inclusive and extensive senses of the word.
Ultimately, the issue here may be less about race, which itself is a concept imposed to exploit the powerless and inflate the insecurities of the powerful, but about the necessity for a rational discourse concerning it, perhaps the most neglected of all areas where progress is most required. In a larger sense, raising mindfulness, in however small increments, is the fundamental business of becoming more human not merely with one another, but with ourselves.
Citizen: An American Lyric, in both its incarnations, contributes persuasively and provocatively to that elemental endeavor. Its urge to disturb takes such beautiful form here that to accept responsibility becomes purgative, a higher epiphany.
The Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave, Hlywd.; Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 & 7 p.m.; Mon., 8 p.m. (no perf Aug. 16 or Sept. 7); through Oct. 11. (323) 663-1525, www.FountainTheatre.com
