You can't understand a man, the proverb goes, until you've walked a mile in his shoes. But who, among us, has tasted the paranoia, dread and loss from gun violence that is, shockingly, common to urban high schoolers and their families? "The Death of a Black Man (A Walk By)" by William Electric Black suggests the experience poetically, using using hip hop verse, chanting, songs and poetry. The audience walks through a variety of uniquely-designed theater spaces and environments suggesting the events before and after a shooting in an urban playground. It's like a day lived with urban gun violence, complete with a candle lit memorial service, police investigations, protests and the actual shootings. This is the third in a series of five plays by William Electric Black, collectively called "GUNPLAYS," that address inner city violence and guns. Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave (East Village), will present the work June 2 to 19, 2016 directed by the author. The piece was scheduled for June to support Gun Awareness Month.
It's an immersive experience allowing the audience to see and feel what affected kids are thinking through their own poetry and rap. Too many kids go to school today carrying pistols instead of books in their backpacks. While we are focused on their test scores, they are focused on surviving. In this play, the audience will feel what it's like to be a kid in the schools, or to be in their neighborhood and experience their life. We witness black kids and white kids speculating on what each other are thinking. A young girl soliloquizes about a police tower--a source of lights and surveillance--that is supposed to keep them safe. Media reports are flashed with stories of gun violence from the news (tragically, there are so many to choose from). The production also employs strobe lights, live drums, moving projections and an array of sound effects. It's all called "A Walk By" because the audience experiences the grief of gun violence through walking by it.
The plot is carried in a series of vignettes, some of which are sometimes intercut and played out of order for dramatic effect. A girl named Teela and her friends encounter a secretly armed tough named Sweets in school and "diss" him. At noon time, he seeks out the girls, looking for Teela, and shoots the wrong one, Nina. The school cancels after school programs and everybody goes home. But Teela's protective brother, Boo, gets a gun and goes looking for Sweets. Teela also gets a gun, fearing for her life. A shootout ensues in the playground. Two other girls fall as well as Teela, Boo and Sweets. The toll is six kids in one day. The play includes not only these events, but also the police investigations, funerals, deliberations by school administrators and reactions of neighbors and families. There are projections of inner city buildings and police cars; the playground is suddenly assembled with fences on wheels. Church Pews on wheels glide into the playing area to suggest the location for a funeral.
William Electric Black's record with "activist" plays like this one is admirable. In 2009, he directed Theater for the New City's sensational and serious "Lonely Soldier Monologues: Women at War in Iraq," a staged series of monologues based on a book by Helen Benedict. The play earned widespread notice and significantly helped the issues of America's female soldiers to be widely recognized for the first time. In 2014, Black launched his GUNPLAYS series (
www.gunplays.org) at TNC with "Welcome Home Sonny T," a play that spotlighted two significant forces driving the current epidemic of gun violence: the social impact of alienation and unemployment on young black males and the declining influence of black ministers as a force of stability in affected neighborhoods. It was followed last season by "When Black Boys Die," a drama about a teenage girl's journey as she tries to understand the madness of gun violence that has killed her brother and consumed her mother. The latter play was explicitly targeted toward teenage audiences.
There has never been a more urgent time to address inner city gun violence, a force that our society has been helpless to resist. The Children's Defense Fund reported that between 1963 and 2010, nearly 60,000 black children and teenagers have been killed by guns. This is more than 17 times the number of black Americans lynched between 1862 and 1968. Medical academics consider gun violence a public health issue, challenging the assumption that individual behavior and mandatory sentencing for unlicensed firearms will sufficiently address the problem. However, since the 1990s, a lobbying effort led by the National Rifle Association has prompted Congress to effectively cut off funding for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research on the epidemic's causes and effects. The Obama administration took steps last year to restart this research, but it will take years to complete studies so that lawmakers can implement evidence-based legislation. Wholistic understanding of the issue will require sensitivity to societal factors that may not appear in the data for a long time.
The actors are Chriz Zaborowski, Natasha Velez, Levern Williams,
Damon Trammell, Carleton King, Brittney Benson,
Brandon Mellette, Nestor Carillo, Sebastian Gutierrez, Dominique Koo, Scarlett Elizabeth, Sarah Shah, Caroline Banks, Kaylin Reed and Marjolaine Goldsmith. Set design is by
Mark Marcante and
Lytza Colon. Costumes and props are by Susan Hemley. Lighting design is by Alexander Bartenieff. Technical design is by Alex Santullo. Percussion is by Chriz Zaborowski.
William Electric Black, aka Ian Ellis James, is a seven-time Emmy Award winning writer for his work on "
Sesame Street" between 1992 and 2002. He also wrote for Nickelodeon's "Allegra's Window" and LancitMedia's "Backyard Safari." Theater for the New City gave him his start in theater, presenting his earliest work, "Billy Stars and Kid Jupiter," in 1980. Now, TNC proudly continues its tradition of supporting and developing Black's unusual and energetic theatrical work.
In a series of multimedia projects, Black has campaigned for exercise and good nutrition for young children, prescription drug awareness and obesity prevention. He has received a Bronze Apple (National Educational Video Award) for directing. He has also received several Best Play Awards and has been published by Benchmark Education, The Dramatic Publishing Co. and Smith & Krauss.
He is a faculty member at NYU's Tisch School (Dept. of Dramatic Writing/Open Arts, and NYU's Summer High School Program). He has also taught at The Collegiate School, The Riverdale Country Day School, Southern Illinois University,
92nd Street Y, Teachers & Writers and TheatreWorks USA.
Beside socially-conscious plays like the Gunplays series and "The Lonely Soldier Monologues," Black creates delightful musicals for family audiences. These have included "Betty and the Belrays" (TNC, 2007), in which three white female singers challenged a racially divided society by singing for a black record label, "My Boyfriend is a Zombie" (TNC, 2010), which was like Grease with a zombie twist, and "American Star!!!" (TNC, 2013), a satire of adolescents' obsessions with celebrity idol TV shows. The last of these, on its serious side, shone a canny light on magical thinking in minority youth, where lack of opportunity gives rise to "pie in the sky" dreams like instant TV stardom. Black has also written, produced and directed a series of plays and musicals for La MaMa, where he runs the Poetry Electric series.
He is writing, directing, and producing animated videos on stroke prevention with the National Stroke Association and childhood obesity prevention for Hip Hop Public Health under the direction of Dr. Olajide Williams featuring music by
Doug E. Fresh, Chuck D, other rap artists. He has completed three short films to educate the Black faith-based community and the Hispanic faith-based community on stroke awareness. Last fall, he published an early reader, "A Gun is Not Fun" (
www.agunisnotfunthebook.com) for children's education as part of a national campaign to save lives in cities across America.
Staff for "The Death of a Black Man (A Walk By)" includes Megan Horan (Stage Manager), Randy Simon (Production Coordinator), Jeff Pennington (Stage Coordinator), Erikka James (Graphics/Poster Designer) and
Jonathan Slaff (Press Representative).
