Whit Davis

By Whit Davis

This article was originally published in DC Theater Arts here.

Distillation is an experiential, interactive production presented by Solas Nua and Abbey Theatre at Eaton DC, brought to life by creator and performer Luke Casserly. It’s a unique blend of performance art and theater, with Casserly serving as the bridge between them. At the heart of this bridge is the star performer, the Irish bog, symbolized by a circular custom-made table by sculptor Ger Clancy and miniature bottled fragrances to be discovered by the audience. Casserly, in his supporting role, beautifully honors the story of the Irish bogs and his deeply personal relationship with them. In this intimate performance, Ireland’s landscape and history are brought to life, allowing the audience to connect with them through scent and touch.

The recent cessation of the peat harvesting industry in Ireland inspired this multidisciplinary performance, which features Casserly providing oral history, video, sound, and costume design.

Every element of the production is essential. The performance starts with smelling coffee beans to cleanse the scent palate and bring the audience to a place of presence. The organic materials of peat and moss pass from person to person for us to touch and smell. The stage is where the audience sits around the table, and the exchanges occur between stranger and artist and stranger.

Irish bogs, once a vital fuel source that created a significant need for jobs, now serve as a central reminder of our environmental impact. The peat-harvesting company Bord na Móna played a key role in this narrative. Peat harvesting, while contributing to carbon dioxide emissions, also had the potential to hold carbon dioxide within the bogs. However, when extracted, they can emit into the atmosphere, leading to the destruction of the ecosystem. Casserly and his family, living with the aftermath of the decision to start and stop peat harvesting, embody the complex and often devastating consequences of our actions on the environment.

Casserly plays the Irish bog. He gives voice to the material, allowing it to speak for itself. Casserly also uses dialogue from a real-life conversation he had with his father. A random audience member plays the father. The interactiveness of the play is a unique touch. How might the work have benefited from more dialogue and less lecture? What if the bog spoke more? What if the eerie weirdness was a much larger theme? The performance is detailed, calculated, delicate, compelling, and weird. The small moments of strangeness have a way of elevating the work.

Distillation reminds us that storytelling can take many forms and shapes, blending mediums and genres. Theater is still alive and well with experimental creativity.

by Whit Davis

This article was originally published in DC Theater Arts, here.

What happens when life doesn’t turn out as planned? What happens when the promise of always being friends is fractured? Why does it take grief to make us realize what we have? Long Time Since Yesterday by P.J. Gibson, directed by theater student Naynna Hollins, explores these questions through the friendship between six Black women brought back together by a tragic death. The Howard Players revitalize a lesser-known but essential play for their Next Up! Play Festival featuring student-led productions that spotlight the developing artists of the Department of Theatre at Howard University in the Al Freeman Jr. Environmental Theatre Space.

The death of Jeneen (Emil White) reunites college classmates Laveer (senior Jazmine Manfrum), Babbs (Jadah Evelyn Clay), Thelma (Nadira Davis), Panzi (Rebecca Celeste), and Alisa (senior Jayson Roman Broadnax). We find the group gathered together in the home Jeneen shared with her husband. As they reminisce and reflect on who she was or who they thought she was, her suicide unearths deeply held hurts as Babbs admits that she has felt at her lowest despite possessing beauty that people associate with happiness and desirability. She drinks and pacifies herself with jokes and humor, which acts as the thread line through a heartwrenching story. Like Jeneen, Babbs is lonely. Thelma feels ugly despite her achievements. Alisa believes her braggadocious verbosity about her husband and her success cover up her lost sense of self. Panzi is too busy projecting her anger at Laveer to hold space for her feelings about being misunderstood. And Laveer boasts of being a free-spirited artist who is without rooted connections.

Through flashbacks, we learn that the friendship was the strongest between Laveer and Jeneen, but after graduation, a conflict between Laveer and Panzi caused a rift between Jeneen and Laveer. A friendship they both promised would last forever is torn apart. Years later the death of Jeneen’s father brings them back together, back to their promise. The interwoven flashbacks reveal secrets between Jeneen and Panzi, and Jeneen and her husband. The transitions between the flashbacks and the present have perfect timing and are clearly defined so that the story never loses its rhythm, and the audience easily follows the timeline. When the lights dim on the cast, we know we enter a flashback as the spotlight hovers above Jeneen to give her a ghost-like presence.

Who was Jeneen? This question becomes a focal point as each friend except Panzi believes her to be innocent, shy, and childlike. They made little room for her to be big, imperfect, sad, and a 30-something-year-old woman with needs. In an intimate conversation with Laveer, Jeneen reveals the haunting of judgmental voices in her head. She may have lived a life she never truly wanted, while her friends are left to grapple with this truth.

The tension as thick as fog on a crisp fall morning fills the home between Laveer and Panzi until it drowns everyone, and the only way to make it to the surface is to swallow the bitterness of truth. This climatic moment reveals secrets that were ultimately too heavy for Jeneen to live with. These secrets are too heavy for even the living to deal with.

The cast does a fantastic job wrestling with themes of grief, love, and identity in an intimately set black box theater with minimal set design and carefully placed props like a couch and a bookshelf. White’s performance seems to pull from a personal place deep within as she honors Jeneen’s pain. She captures the rollercoaster of emotions felt by Jeneen, moving from joy to despair. Her tears and facial expressions can easily be another character in the story. Celeste’s presence is powerful. With each line she recites, they land eloquently and with ease. She becomes Panzi. Clay has remarkable comedic timing as Babbs. A play this heavy needs humor, and she delivers. The entire cast surrenders to the story.

The Howard Players productions are invaluable because they provide an opportunity for students to explore their talents and gifts. They share them with a community that believes in pursuing art as serious, rigorous, and meaningful work. To be nurtured in a space that values Black stories, Black storytellers, and Black spaces prepares these artists for a career where they may be the only ones. But they will not shrink; they will bloom.

By Whit Davis

This article was originally published in DC Theater Arts here.

I’ve always wanted to sit with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the mountaintop to gaze at the stars, to drink the Milky Way, and to pray silently to our ancestors. The mystery of Martin Luther King Jr.’s inner world has always been of great interest to me. Dr. King was a thoughtful writer. As much skill as he had on stages, in pulpits, in front of cameras, and on streets, he could command a page. His work lives with me like a ghost, gently haunting me to read more and better and then drown in his poetics. So much of his legacy is co-opted, repackaged, and sold by big corporations. They rework his image until he is more cotton candy than fire blazed to sundown towns.

Katori Hall’s play The Mountaintop (now playing at Round House Theatre) is a reminder, a wake-up call to all who think they know or knew King. She asks us to think, look, and listen again. She spars with our imagination. Her words land like Ali vs. Foreman. We’ve got to go deeper; no, we must go higher!

In The Mountaintop,  we find King, played by Ro Boddie, in his hotel room in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel the night before his assassination. He’s alone working on his speech, but only briefly before the arrival of a woman who, at first, seems to be merely a hotel staff member navigating her first day bringing King the coffee he requested from room service. An assumed brief encounter turns into a heartfelt, intimate conversation. Camae (Carrie Mae), as her character pronounces it, played by Renea S. Brown, is utterly hilarious. She’s quick-witted, outspoken, edgy, and lyrically weaves curse words together to tickle your insides. King’s character finds himself in awe of her beauty, her light, and the way she shows up authentically. He unsuspectingly lets his guard down, discards his God-like persona, and allows her to see him vulnerable.

Throughout the brilliantly woven dialogue, Hall suggestively allows us to feel the looming darkness as King keeps describing not feeling well. Camae is never alarmed by his remarks as they share cigarettes and secrets throughout the night. King is frightened of the loud thundering noise from the storm, and Camae is his unexpected comfort. At a critical moment, King’s paranoia raises its head, suspecting her of being a spook, resisting the calling to see her more deeply, more spiritually, out of fear, out of what he knows has been whispering his childhood name, Michael.

King and Camae both take command of the stage, supported by the set design of the hotel room, thanks to Paige Hathaway. The actors are both keenly aware of their mannerisms and the space they occupy. There’s something special about their performance. They share chemistry, trust each other, and know where the other ends and begins. Brown and Boddie are evenly matched in talent and build off each other with each line. The actors have great respect and seriousness for their roles. Boddie as King is powerful yet gentle. He makes King human. He brings him down to his details, to what makes a man, to the heart of what it means to be a person. Both actors are brilliant and deserve our witnessing, celebration, and acknowledgment for giving their all to this production.

TOP: Renea S. Brown (Camae) and Ro Boddie (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.); ABOVE: Ro Boddie (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) and Renea S. Brown (Camae) in ‘The Mountaintop.’ Photos by Margot Schulman Photography.

After the climax, there is a sweet, honest moment between Camae and King, arguably where the play could have ended. Instead, Hall shifts us to a montage of Blackness, a dreamlike passing of the baton by King. This part of the production seems disjointed and whimsically too hopeful. What if Delicia Turner Sonnenberg’s directing deviated from Hall’s ending into something more cunning, daring, and shocking? I love celebrating our Blackness, but I’m interested in narratives that allow minds to travel to an abstract end. I wanted the audience to be responsible for reflecting and contending with going further into our inner world. Finding joy when the darkness King felt is still alive feels forced. I have to ask Hall, who did you write this ending for? America is still America. Yet, as I wrestle with Hall’s creative choices, which are inspiration from her mother, I cannot help but be thankful for her talent. She’s undeniably one of the best storytellers we have now. From the stage to television, she skillfully entertains and seduces our intellect.

The Mountaintop is mandatory viewing!

By Whit Davis

This article was originally published in DC Theater Arts here.

It’s been said that laughter is the best medicine. The Road to the End uses comedy to tell a story of grief and how we can use it to process our feelings. In 75 minutes the play examines themes of loss, grief, memories, friendship, bravery, and forgiveness.

What appears to be a fairly regular road trip to the Grand Canyon for a father and son, Steve and Henry, actually turns into something surprising. They pick up a hitchhiker by the name of Dabria. She helps the characters to peel back the layers of their rocky relationship. In many ways, Dabria and Henry are alike. They’re both travelers with heavy baggage who are looking to escape from the pain they’re feeling. Over the course of their journey, Henry and Dabria help each other make peace with their past and the people they love.

 The play uses two sets of characters for the past and present, which could have made the story difficult to follow, but the actors were very committed to their characters. The actors maintain the relational dynamics between the characters in the present and references to the past, and as a result, we always stay aware of the story.

I left this play reflecting on road trips, a seemingly mundane thing but a shared experience many of us can relate to.

If you’re interested in a quirky heartwarming story that confronts the sometimes complicated relationships between a child and their parent — especially an adult child and their parent — I recommend this play.

By Whit Davis

This article was originally published in DC Theater Arts on July 18, 2023, here.

Can the accents of characters drive a story? I could have set the world on fire, making its debut at Capital Fringe, asks us to consider.

This play is for you if you love hearing a variety of accents and they make you laugh. Unfortunately, the play fails to inspire much beyond admiration for the accents of the performers.

The play centers around Ernest Williams, an American with a posh accent sharing his old stories of working in film from his hospital bed with his Southern belle ex-wife and their daughter. As Ernest recounts his life stories, he embellishes and tries to gloss over the anti-Black roles he felt obligated to accept if he wanted to have a career in showbiz. The play also taps into how anti-Black racism can wreck the body and how the healthcare system experiments on Black bodies.

 However funny the play attempts to be, the jokes don’t find a solid place to land. The accents do a lot of heavy lifting for the play by distracting from the plot’s flimsiness. Lying underneath are strong themes that don’t quite get the support they need. The dialogue doesn’t easily flow between the characters, and the lack of chemistry is evident among them making me wonder if the director and playwright understood each other’s goals. With competing levels of connection to their characters, the play is stuck in rehearsal.

The play could have set the festival on fire but instead does little more than make a case for the playfulness of accents.