Review: Next Act's Riveting TWILIGHT Opens Milwaukee's Eyes, Hearts and Minds

Milwaukee's Next Act theater needs to be filled to overflowing and sold out each performance this winter for their new production: Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. Artistic Director David Cecsarini co-directs the play with Jonathan Smoots in a compelling evening where 37 characters, individuals, appear on stage courtesy of a spectacular theatrical company The six actors represent the diverse human milieu affected by the Rodney King beating, and then the subsequent looting and riots devastating Los Angeles in 1992.

This intense and riveting production compiled by Anna Deavere Smith from actual interviews collected over several years features multitudinous cultural attitudes that resonate through ordinary human conversations. Delivered through this straightforward but often heart wrenching approach, Korean men and women, African-American men and women, and finally, white men and women comprise the interviewees such as LA police chiefs, Korean store owners, a Princeton University Scholar, and a policeman acquitted at the Rodney King trial, along with a real estate broker. Each person speaks frankly about the events surrounding their personal lives using intimate stories during this horrendous LA event in America's history.

In the production the immensely gifted actors--Rammel Chan, Marti Gobel, Angela Iannone, Andrew Mowonge, Andrew Perez and Ryan Schabach--fearlessly change ethnicity and gender in split seconds as well as move the sparse scenery that complement the minimal, yet effective costumes designed by Elsa Hiltner. The quick changes offer the audience a fleeting yet realistic glimpse of the characters they portray. On stage, a screen designed by Cecsarini and Lighting Designer Aaron Sherkow identifies the person and illuminates their perspective and theme of their conversation to clue the audience to whom is speaking, a significant design and theatrical element.

This captivating format produces Gobel's Elaine Young, a Beverly Hills real estate agent secluded in a posh hotel yet devastated by the terror surrounding her. Or Ryan Schabach's victimized Reginald Denny, a semi-truck driver who was pulled from his vehicle and beaten, while bystanders stood by and recorded the event instead of rescuing him. Then listen to Iannone's beautiful African American opera singer, Jessye Norman, who speaks to her art and position when trying to understand the senseless destruction, and these ongoing racial inequities. Each actor on stage contributes in memorable moments too numerous to mention here in a meaningful way that humanizes this tragedy, which continues above and beneath the surface of contemporary culture, that again sparks into various levels of tension throughout American society 20 years later.

In one segment, A former LA newspaper editor recalls covering the riots when one of his stringers from Beirut calls the LA office and asks, "Are you all right there?" He questions the audience and asks, "What does that say when someone from [war-torn] Beirut calls and asks if you're all right?" When will these prejudices ever be considered "all right and stop producing war-like conditions?

Throughout this evening of poignant, provocative and thought-provoking dialogue, Twilight revisits memories of Milwaukee's past and recent racial tensions.--which persist in various degrees across the country and cause the audience to "open their eyes, hearts and mind" to what America will become in the future.

Alice Waters offered her own take on these challenges, as a restaurateur who revolutionized locally sourced and seasonal food along with vegetarianism at her California Chez Panisse eatery and establishment. She related while setting a table with candlelight, "Tables are where people learn community...a civilizing place...and nourish people... Today, over 85 percent of kids in the U.S... don't' eat a meal with their family." A statistic she believes contributes to the breakdown in helping understand another person and viewpoint, humanizing each other. Perhaps breaking bread with others outside our ethnicity when sitting around a table instead of experiencing racial breakdowns might personally ease these tensions, one small place to begin change in personal lives.

One of the last interviews in the production, Princeton scholar Cornel West believed "despair can produce hope--where a leap of faith creates new possibilities for being human."

Cornell continued and mentioned, "We are too eager to skip over the sadness [of these and past events, prejudice, poverty and racism] and we need to let it linger and let the sorrow sink in."

When the sorrows can sink in, perhaps this might inspire change---"A commitment, " as Elaine Brown, former leader of the Black Panthers, claims, "Based not on hate but on love that takes your entire life to change."

Absolutely attend Next Act's all consuming performance. Milwaukee needs to sell out every show. Reflect during this timely and timeless, beautifully constructed and stirring production to consider exactly where Twilight lies in a person's life, An ambiguous place between light and darkness, day and night, home and community, hope and despair that inspires opened eyes, hearts and minds to envision a better future in Milwaukee and throughout America.

Next Act presents Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 at 255 South Water Street, Milwaukee through February 21. For special programming, information or tickets please call" 414.278.0765 or www.nextact.org.

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