Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – No rest for the weary: The provocative, unabashedly personal BLACK EXHIBITION finds playwright (and actor) Jeremy O. Harris working overtime

• By drediman
• November 21, 2019
• No Comments

Jeremy O. Harris in “Black Exhibition” at the Bushwick Starr. Photo by Maria Baranova.

As they say, there’s no rest for the weary, as exemplified by playwright Jeremy O. Harris’s uniquely busy fall. One of the unlikeliest sensations of the Broadway season thus far has been his breakout play Slave Play (which is currently playing for a limited time at the John Golden Theatre). Simultaneous to the exposure on the Great White Way, the playwright is also represented way Off-Broadway in Brooklyn in Black Exhibition. Originally written under a pseudonym (@GaryXXXFisher), Mr. Harris’s latest also thrusts himself forward as a performer, alongside four other black actors. And like Slave Play – as well as the sprawling Daddy, its messy, less successful follow-up – Black Exhibition is a controversial and uncompromising work that demands one’s attention via its uninhibited audacity.

So what exactly is Black Exhibition all about? In short, the show at the Bushwick Starr is an unabashedly personal and frankly graphic dissection of what it means to be black and gay through the lens of a restless and paranoid artist (specifically one with writer’s block on Fire Island and beyond). The play takes its cue from Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf (a superb revival of the seminal show is packing them as I type at the Public Theater) in that it marries poetry to movement and choreography to animate its hallucinatory portrait(s). Although it’s not clear to me whether the play’s vignettes are autobiographical, there’s a commonality in the assaultive, confrontational tone imparted that suggests that each character onstage represents an aspect of Mr. Harris’s psyche.

Despite the fact that not all the segments work as well as others – there’s no lack of subtlety throughout – Mr. Harris and his small band of players are nonetheless rather compelling to watch. Indeed, there’s no shortage of provocative, naughty behavior onstage to shock and awe. As a performer, Mr. Harris, who is working overtime this fall as an actor, is a very fascinating stage presence – both in his seductive Mephistophelian glee, as well as his frustrated vulnerability. The production has been expansively and stylishly directed by Machel Ross, who impressively utilizes pretty much every inch of the Bushwick Starr’s tiny playing area (the staging even extends to one of the venue’s restroom). Although the choreography is more movement-based than full out dance, it nevertheless effectively highlights the centrality of the body and unbridled sensual sensation to the piece. Altogether, the heady hour-long production beautifully services Mr. Harris’s script, giving it a theatricality that’s compulsively watchable.

RECOMMENDED

BLACK EXHIBITION
Off-Broadway, Play
The Bushwick Starr
1 hour (without an intermission)
Through December 15