In “Strange Fruit,” Billie Holiday’s protest song from 1939, the jazz singer evoked the gruesome imagery that haunted her: black bodies hanging from trees after being lynched by angry white mobs. Originally written as a poem by Abel Meeropol, Holiday’s rendition became an anthem of sorrow and anger, but from its endless pain also emanated a soulful wish, that the spirits of these wronged bodies would find solace in the world to come.
One might draw a line connecting Holiday’s lament to the transcendent “Skinfolk: An American Show,” a play with songs by the writer and performer Jillian Walker and a co-production of the National Black Theater and the Bushwick Starr (where it’s currently running).
Three black spirits, or perhaps nymphs (Walker allows audience members to interpret each character and symbol as they see fit), transport us to an underground cave where happiness and pain coexist, unable to distance themselves from each other. Here, they guide us through vignettes that retell Walker’s family history — and by extension, the history of America — in the hopes of reclaiming the joys of blackness in all its complexity.
Walker plays one of the nymphs, a character inspired by her own life whom she calls Me. Me is a gracious host, using poetry and song (Walker wrote all of the songs with her co-composer, Kasaun Henry) to share her complex personal story and her views on the African-American experience.
“An experience that no one has asked the right questions for,” exclaims Avery (an ethereal Tsebiyah Mishael Derry), who, along with the Smiling Tuxedoed Man (an impish Lori Sinclair Minor), helps Walker convey a sensuous evening filled with the promise of mutability, an existence without the restraints of what our skin color binds us to.
That potential transformation is implied by the performance space itself. Scenic designer You-Shin Chen transforms the Starr into the cave beneath a tree, brimming with smaller alcoves filled with curlers, lotions and other domestic accouterments that create a sense of homeyness. But those small details also establish an atmosphere that this is a place where people have been stuck for a long time, waiting to leave.
And Tuçe Yasak’s warm lighting, which sometimes peers from the ceiling from among the hanging roots, suggests cracks leading to the surface; the nymphs, along with their “skinfolk” — wronged black souls and their mortal descendants — might finally break through.
The insightful writing and the play’s free-form structure have a jazzlike quality. Walker layers dialogue and songs so that the two engage in a multipurpose dance, filled with both conviction and questioning, while always staying grounded. A scene in which the trio sit one above the other, recreating the process of getting their hair braided, becomes a metaphor for the hierarchy in a matriarchy as well as a visual nod to the choreography of girl groups like Destiny’s Child or the Supremes.
The director Mei Ann Teo cleverly balances the varying moods: When Walker recounts the brutalities of slavery and segregation, she conveys a sense of unearthing ancient artifacts while still maintaining the kind of urgency that makes the audience want to jump from the seats to demand justice.
It’s in this duality and unwillingness to let audiences off the hook that “Skinfolk: An American Show” plants its seeds of hope. Although we never leave the cave under the tree, we have been granted a vision of the forest above. If we could only get there.
Skinfolk: An American Show
Through March 14 at the Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn; thebushwickstarr.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
