![]() This is a play about stereotypes, tropes and labels…the term was purposely used.”Įach actor talks about initial reaction to the script, a role he imagined himself playing, and the extraordinarily experience of portraying these men as both a learning experience and service to audiences. As to the word, “I’ve always been a history buff. Timing is everything, Scott concurs.This iteration took five years to mount. Do you feel you made it to Broadway now because the runway is open? Do you think The Great White Way is ready to compromise that name? When you called it this (utilizing the word ‘colored’), did you wonder whether you might alienate people?” he asks playwright Keenan Scott II. “ Colored Man started as an undergraduate play 16 years ago. There isn’t a weak link in this ensemble.īrotherhood is emphasized in an after talk to which we were privileged. Acting and direction (almost choreography) are master classes. Whatever you might thing about its balanced view (or lack thereof), Thoughts of a Colored Man is unequivocally wonderful theater. There’s a one-upmanship contest of how poor were we, a mother who got raped and a mother who tricked, an understandably nervous soon-to-be father, a long line for trendy new sneakers… Without extremes, Scott has illuminated bonding at a deep level and sets an example for navigation. The day we talked about the scene I went to a barbershop, not my own salon. “The thing is we don’t know what we don’t know,” actor Dyllon Burnside later shares. “I grew up too white for my white friends and not Black enough for my black friends,” the newbie says. (We learn this in an absolutely delicious piece of stage business.) When the barber/coach refers to the outsider as “you people,” (Those taking advantage of urban renewal? Well heeled? Emulating whites?), we see how quickly sides are drawn. In walks the new-to-the-neighborhood, upper middle class runner – having sourced the place on YELP – about which the room is sarcastic. ![]() (One of the few ways, it’s pointed out, Black men congregate “acceptably” is on teams.) The second chair is manned by a school basketball coach. An older proprietor demands respect and decorum. Everyone hangs at Joe’s Barbershop, cliché but authentic. A teacher fondly says he has 126 kids he’s trying to teach integrity and safety. The gentle poet wants to get to know a “sister,” while his crass friend (a Rhodes Scholar) prefers white girls. Homeboys that grew up together talk about women. ![]() Amazing how a different norm is established. On the right, the cheerful man in running clothes boasts of two bedrooms, two baths and “not sayin’, but there’s an island in my kitchen.”Ī Whole Foods box boy turned down an MIT Scholarship to support his mother and siblings. On the left, struggling neighbors are described. The other asks his mate whether to pick up anything on the way home. One, using slight vernacular and percussive gestures, admonishes what we assume is a relative for sleeping in doorways. This appears to be a group of mostly educated, articulate men despite varying backgrounds and outcomes.Īt either end of the stage we see two characters on their phones. Personally experienced mistreatment gets late-in-show mention. There’s barely mention of abuse-by-cop or protests, though a drive by shooting occurs. Not a single player lives the kind of anger of which we see results almost daily. Grudging history of race is just a shadow. The piece takes a kaleidoscopic look at contemporary Black men in gentrifying Brooklyn. “Who is the colored man? Is he the king…or a slave, a forced laborer…” Each, however, is easy to follow from vignette to vignette maintaining attributes, reflecting situations, adjusting to circumstances. In fact, we never do learn the men’s names. Like Stephen Sondheim’s using words of one syllable in Pacific Overtures, writing in the style influenced by Haiku, playwright Keenan Scott II has challenged himself. We’re never conscious of who’s ostensibly epitomizing what. Fortunately, monikers don’t reveal themselves until the end of the play. The seven characters in Thoughts of a Colored Man are named Love, Happiness, Lust, Passion, Depression, Wisdom and Anger.
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