The family of the leader in civil rights is roasted in a new game: NPR

AimA new piece now on Broadway has all the external signs of the classic family drama: a powerful and aging patriarch, capricious sons, a strategic wife and a vigilant foreigner. It could be monarchs.

Instead, the latest work of the playwright of Tony Branden Jacobs-Jenkins trains its objective on a black family with deep roots in the American movement of civil rights struggling with the impact of this story even on them and on society as a whole.

“I was interested in this common phenomenon that I saw historically in two generations, a kind of reversal of fortune that occurs, in particular with regard to black political families,” said Jacobs-Jenkins to Michel Martin from NPR.

The production, led by the award -winning actor Phylicia Rashad, is funny, difficult and even disturbing in turn. During a preview performance, the public responded with a mixture of shock and fear, broke out laughing at certain times, panting the others, or whispering “Amen” and “it’s true”.

Aim immerses in the hypocrisy of a family led by a very imperfect religious-political leader. The Jasper family is no different from that of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, although Jacobs-Jenkins is wary of drawing parallels. Directed by the aging patriarch Salomon, or “Sonny” (Harry Lennix), with his wife Claudine (Latanya Richardson Jackson) by his side, the jaspers come together to celebrate the liberation of the eldest junior son (Glenn Davis) of the prison in front of his wife, Morgan (Alana Arenas), unavoidable of her own sentence.

A younger son, Nazareth (Jon Michael Hill), is a disappointment for his family for other reasons, but serves as an empathetic narrator and knowing the drama on what happened and why and how the family should go ahead. The patterns, manipulation and exploitation are on the menu of what quickly becomes an explosive family dinner fed by the disapproval of parents of the life choices of their sons and a shocking revelation brought by the Visitor Aziza (Kara Young).

A slap, a non-divulgation agreement and lots of disapproval follow, with parents who were just as congress as they have been celebrated in the past for their achievements of civil rights.

“One of the difficulties in being a black American in this culture is that so much work is done culturally for police officers what you are authorized to feel,” said Jacobs-Jenkins. “Why not humanize these superhumans? We do not need to be the purest souls on the planet to speak in the face of injustice, because injustice has nothing to do sometimes with what I do in my own house. Or maybe this is.”

The whole game is located inside the Jasper lounge / dining room, which has a giant and almost smiling portrait of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

“This is really what it is: in a family, the patriarch of emblematic status, and how does a successive generation find its objective?” said Rashad. “The problem is that they do not have something to merge. They have no movement of civil rights to merge. So what do we?”

Rashad directed the play after decades on stage herself in theater – including in A raisin in the sun And Jewel – and television, where she is best known for her turn under the name of Clair Huxable The Cosby Show.

“Some of the best theaters are family drama,” she said. “You look at people as we live, and that’s what the theater is doing. And for having written it so well with twists and turns and surprises that come, you never get ahead of yourself by reading it, you never move forward by looking at it.”

Rashad first joined production before his first race in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theater Company last year. When she signed, the second act has not yet been written, then she worked closely with Jacobs-Jenkins to bring the play on stage.

“It all starts with the script … and reading the text, wanting to discern the intention of the playwright, because that’s all,” said Rashad. “If you don’t understand that, you just superimpose thoughts and ideas about something, and you never get to the heart of what has been offered to you.” It was only after having read the text several times that Rashad said that she was starting to work with the actors.

Rashad, who made his director’s debut in 2007 with the production of the Seattle Repertory Theater of August Wilson JewelSaid that she closely observes the way of each individual actor to express himself by their voice and their body to help guide the interpretation of the room.

His approach involves “a lot of problem solving, and also discern the language of the actors,” she added. “In fact, a lot of things that come to my mind by directing a piece come from what I see an actor doing.”

The realization, for Rashad, consists in “holding a creative vision and galvanizing all the creative energies, the designers, the actors, the crew – everyone – galvanizing all the energies to evolve in alignment with a vision while leaving them space to contribute what I have not seen.”

Jacobs-Jenkins said he had written Aimwhich takes place until July 6, while repeating in 2023 the rebirth of his play AppropriateWhich earned him a decade of Tony after these works originally. He sees the pair as cousins ​​in a way. Appropriate presented an entirely white distribution exploring the heritage of the old family planting house.

“My big occupation in a creative way is the way in which history forces shape emotional relations and psychologies and people,” he said, stressing how his parents benefited from the 1965 law on the primary and secondary education of Lyndon B. Johnson who sought to offer better educational opportunities to disadvantaged students.

“I always believed that it is normal to recognize that the race is part of the way we analyze in the world, for the better or for the worst.”

The released version of this story was produced by Barry Gordemer. The digital version has been modified by Majd al-Waheidi.