Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s new audio play SHADOW/LAND is a heady if unsteady tower of juxtapositions

• By drediman
• April 14, 2021
• No Comments

This week, The Public Theater dropped shadow/land, a new audio-play by the much-lauded up-and-coming playwright Erika Dickerson-Despenza. Ms. Dickerson-Despenza was recently awarded the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Award for playwriting for penning cullah wattuh, another new play which takes on the Flint water crisis. shadow/land addresses another national tragedy – Hurricane Katrina. In fact, the work is the first in a sprawling 10-play cycle (shades of August Wilson, perhaps?) that explores the devastation wrought by and racial implications of Katrina (the second play in the series, [hieroglyph], has been filmed and was streamed last month via the San Francisco Playhouse and the Lorraine Hansberry Theater).

shadow/land, which begins during the imminent onset of Katrina, focuses on the story of Magalee and Ruth, a mother and daughter who debate the fate of the family-run establishment known as Shadowland. During the neighborhood’s heyday, it was a chic and upscale entertainment complex and hotel (the building even had air conditioning!) for Black performers and their Black patrons. Struggling under the weight of the responsibility and burden of maintaining the sagging operation, the pragmatic Ruth lobbies to sell the property to a real estate developer and reboot their lives. However, Magalee – whose tendency to dip in and out of delusional states complicates conversations – is adamant about holding onto the building in order to keep its fading legacy and history alive.

Enter Hurricane Katrina, which explodes this family drama into other realms, quite literally. Katrina is used here as a catastrophic device to jumble and disorient. Indeed, once the full force of the hurricane starts wreaking havoc on the character’s physical and psychological worlds, phantasmagorical juxtapositions (as suggested by the play’s title) start emerging from the play’s peripheries – gritty survival drama vs. elaborate poetry, reality vs. hallucinations, present vs. spectral past. It’s a precarious tower that the playwright has built, and I’d argue that the 75-minute play’s structure is a bit too slight to completely steady it. And although many will be drawn in by the flowery grandeur of Ms. Dickerson-Despenza’s heady language, others may be overwhelmed by its thickly applied imagery.

The cast, however, is top-notch. Each handles the play’s arguably overwrought language admirably, giving performances of great conviction and clarity. As Magalee, Lizan Mitchell balances lucidity and madness with great skill, while still creating a comprehensive character. Especially effective as Ruth is Michelle Wilson, who grounds the production with an unswerving portrayal of a woman caught between her needs as a modern woman and her identity as a Black Woman. As the play’s narrator (the “griot”), poet Sunni Patterson imbues the language with a sense of purpose and gravity. Director Candis C. Jones and her crack (sound) design team do admirably to maximize the play’s momentum and punch. Is shadow/land perfect? By all means no, but it’s an ear-catching introduction to an important and ambitious young voice in American theater.

RECOMMENDED

SHADOW/LAND
Audio Play
The Public Theater
1 hour, 15 minutes
On-demand through April 13, 2022