“It used to be a time when the movement was spearheaded by young people….putting their lives on the line. Now, they just put their lives online.”
It’s a line in “Good Trouble” by Anthony T Goss, one of the catchiest lines among the six short plays presented this weekend at Harlem9’s 13th annual “48 Hours in Harlem.”
As in past years, participating writers, directors and actors were given just 48 hours to conceive, rehearse and mount a half dozen short plays, each inspired by a specific prompt. For the first time this year, the inspirations were not classic plays or other literary works, but memorable speeches by Black leaders.
“Good Trouble” is inspired by John Lewis’s speech at the 1963 March on Washington. Lewis was just 23 years old when he gave the speech.
The clever “on the line/online” line is uttered by Mrs. T (Thursday Farrar), a no-nonsense supervisor at a security firm talking to two young security guards in her employ, who are ironically assigned to protect property during a protest. But it’s a strength in this ten-minute play that it depicts the two young men as trying in their own ways to make a difference, Malachi (Maleek Rae) through his raps. “This is how we protest; we ain’t got to march no more.” The effort by Avery (Xavier Scott Evans) is more self-sabotaging: He punched out a man who was threatening a mother with her child. Mrs. T disapproves his action (“Use your skills to diffuse the situation. Alert the authorities”) but she recognizes a noble impulse in Avery: “I see someone who cares…It’s time for you to get out there and demand more for yourself. More than this job. It’s time for you to start some good trouble” – which of course is John Lewis’s most famous saying. (albeit not something he said in the speech six decades ago.)
“Good Trouble” was among the plays most clearly inspired by its prompt, and also among the most effective as a work of theater.
In Sophie Tegenu’s “Election Night,” two catty seniors running on a slate as student body president and vice-president (Mya Ison and Jehan O Young) taunt their earnest opponent (Ahman K Simmons), who is concerned that the honors classes are segregated and that the biology teacher abuses animals. “I love this school. I want to make it better.”
“Sorry but this school does not love you back, clown.”
The two young women win. The earnest young man congratulates them. This baffles and unnerves them.
“If he’s not upset about losing, what was the point of us winning”
It’s a well-acted comic turn, which gains resonance because we know it’s inspired by Stacey Abrams’ 2022 concession speech upon losing the race for governor of Georgia for the second time. “Election Night” ends reflecting the hopeful fighting spirit of Abrams’ speech, with the losing candidate convincing the new student body leaders to embrace his cause of stopping the biology teacher’s animal abuse.
“Rest” by Kay Kemp, inspired by Jesse Jackson’s “Keep Hope Alive” speech, pictures Jesse (Christiana Clark) trying to figure out with his wife Jackie (Tshiwela Maangani) the slogan he’ll use for his campaign, never quite landing on the actual one. They try Keep Hope Awake. Keep Hope Aware. It’s not a sympathetic portrait. At one point, Jesse says: “I’m going to have to change. I’m going to have to make concessions. I’m going to compromise. Build coalitions, embrace bipartisanship, wheel, deal. It comes with the job, everyone says it comes with the job. I’m going to lose track of my values. I think I already have.”
The prompt for “The Knocking from Inside the House” by Ben Holbrook was Shirley Chisolm’s 1983 lecture at Greenfield High School, but the connection was not clear to me: The play is a comic sketch about a young man whose fiancé has moved out of his house in Harlem because it is haunted by his dead father. (I suspect the playwright was loosely riffing on a metaphorical passage in Chisolm’s speech: “Our coalition still has miles to go. The bad, old days may be dead, my friends, but there are still plenty of ghosts roaming around…. We are a bunch of Rip Van Winkles, quiescent.”)
The prompt for “Praydalor” by Marissa Joyce Stamps, was Barack Obama’s 2008 speech “A More Perfect Union.” The playwright was more obviously inspired by the amusingly mangled prayer from her childhood: “Now I lay me down to sleep/I praydalor my sodakeep.” Two sisters staying over at their grandmother’s house are at odds. Kiana (Anastasia Locke) resents that her sister Drew (Abigail C. Onwunali) falls asleep easily; Kiana is an insomniac. But Drew sees her sleeping as her only escape from a waking life beset with a long list of problems (“the realities of student debt.. if dad remembered to wear his marine corps hat so he and mom have a higher percentage of surviving a potential pull over) In this case, the inspiration of Obama’s speech was clear to me: His speech was a plea to move beyond move beyond black anger and white resentment to address shared social problems.
In “American Dream, Deferred,” by Morgan Barnes-Whitehead, was given the prompt of Kamala Harris’s speech kicking off her “Fight for Reproductive Freedom” tour. But it’s Harris’s run rather than her speech that drives the play. Three office workers on Election Day 2024 try not to talk about the race, since their company has sent an email warning that such discussions would hinder productivity. But they can’t help talking about it. There is a hint of a generational difference, with the young intern Elijah seemingly less enthusiastic – because, the other surmise, his first time voting was 2020, so “It’s never been fun for you.”
The older two reminisce about 2008. “Not that it’s the same at all. It’s just funny how history rhymes….Half-Black, where was she really born…Hope….Do you think they’l try ad tell us racism has ended again?”
“Maybe if she’s re-elected.”
