Kill. Move. Paradise.
A copier. An old copier. It’s one of those from the 80s (or is it the 90s?) that is some strange amalgamation of a typewriter and a carbon copier. It’s printing names, and if you know anything about the context of this show, you know exactly what those names are. The typewriter types. It doesn’t stop. Nothing else is on stage for a while but these names. In carbon copies. They don’t require ink. That is a mechanism already built into the machine.
A white background. An enormous white wall. It slopes into the floor, almost like a slide. A slide that is impossible to climb back up. There are times in theatre where the symbolism is just laid on thick, and this is one of those times. An all white set? In a play about police brutality and white supremacy? Yup. It’s a choice. It’s a set reminiscent of that from Donja Love’s One in Two, which also streamed online last week. The “white void” is trending; Black death is trending. Playwrights are simply reflecting what they see. It doesn’t really matter whether this is purgatory or heaven or a metaphor for individual consciousness. It’s white. It’s inescapable. It’s the only framework that exists to convey these big themes to a mostly-white audience.
Last week, as I was musing on Bryn Carter’s position on Black violence on stage, I was also musing on this very intense conversation about the psychology behind Black violence:
There’s Grif, the first Black man of many to manifest from the trap door at the top of the wall.
Then there’s Daz.
Then there’s Tiny.
They keep coming and coming and coming. The names keep printing and printing and printing. Daz commands Grif, “Read ‘em.” And Grif does. He reads every single name from Michael Brown to Terry Amons (it was 2018 at the time this production was recorded). I wanted to put the list on here, but the scale was far too enormous. Just take a look at this Wikipedia page so you get a sense of it.
There is physical pain imbued in every body on stage as every new name etches onto the paper. Black trauma. It reminds me of what Bryn was talking about when she warned against depicting only Black trauma. It reminds me of the very content my friends are urging everyone not to repost.
There are two recurring questions that have stuck with me:
“What makes me so scary?” -Grif
(pointing to the audience) “Who are they?” -Daz
The first question is one that I feel I, and a lot of other people, have been asking themselves lately. Why is racism so entrenched into our country? Into our individual and collective consciousness? Is it something we were born with? Something we inherited? Can we reverse it? How do we reverse it?
“Is it something that was made that we can’t kill?”-Tiny
I’ve thought about this question almost every day for who knows how long, and I’ll keep thinking about it.
The second question is interesting in a theatrical/meta-theatrical way. Everyone watching the recording knows what the audience looks like. For the most part, they’re white-haired and white-skinned. It makes everything that follows seem exploitative— like everything that follows is meant for anyone BUT this audience. However, it is important to make this demographic sit through it.
And this is what I miss most from live performance: the confrontation. I viewed Kill Move Paradise in three different sittings. It was tough. It was brutal. But at least I could hit pause. I worry that, during this quarantine, many others will opt for the same and never hit play again.
