At the top of Dominique Morisseau’s Blood at the Root, teens burst onto the stage in a blast of energy and music, reciting lines filled with wild rhythms and formations coming every which way, bodies in a cacophony of movement, stopping in a freeze to elucidate salient points about their lives. They are exuberant teens, jiving each other, finishing each other’s truncated sentences, pushing, shoving, jostling for space while staying in the flow. They’re in full self-discovery mode and territory, all systems go and all bets are off as to how each will turn out.
What the talented cast shows us throughout the play is each character’s yearning to fit in, somewhere, need for family, bravado to hide their fear, self-consciousness, with sometimes loud uncensored reactions to being thrust into events not of their own choosing. They are caught betwixt and between kiddie land and adulthood, dealing with themselves, culture, race, and life-altering decisions and their consequences.
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Billie Krishawn and Molly Shayna Cohen play Raylynn and her bestie, Asha who share everything about each other’s lives, food, gossip, tidbits and guy-gazing. Krishawn is gaining notoriety in the metro area for her depth and sparkling portrayals and Cohen, who shows she can sashay and pop with the best of them, portrays Asha as an honorary sistah who wonders why things have to turn ugly over meaningless mess.
The two seem joined at the hip in all aspects of their lives in the sleepy Louisiana town where nothing of any consequence happens and everything chugs along with boring monotony. That is until Raylynn takes it upon herself to try something new and sits under a large oak tree where white students usually congregate. Why? Who knows. What did it “mean?”
Nothing except perhaps wondering why not enjoy some shade instead of always slinging some. Her actions spark tensions, confusion and distress which might have lain still except – there’s more.
Emmanuel Kyei-Baffour, Raylynn’s football player brother, De’Andre is blithely on a trajectory of getting a football scholarship and already planning his future. When the usual morphs into the unusual, tensions mount, gaggles of kids take sides in name calling, gender shaming, side-taking, and racial taunts and before you know it, there’s pushing, shoving, fist-fights, and – wait. What happened?
The sequence of events unfolds so quickly that we’re all reeling, wondering how did it get to this? What did we miss? Where were the clues?
The script skillfully hints that the seeds of oppression are deep-rooted. In the beginning everyone is playfully living their own individual lives, tethered to their personal devices, capturing images, taking selfies, just plucking through life until the chain of events turns everything on a dime and we’re all breathlessly cascading into a new reality where nooses are hung from the tree and six students are charged with attempted murder.Is this how stuff happens? How does the atmosphere of a safe place become threatening in an instant?
Morriseau also includes a fascinating interchange where Deimoni Brewington as the overly cautious student newspaper editor and Stephanie Wilson as the insistent, obnoxious, anxious student writer clash in their dueling objectives to broadcast the truth or deny and dismiss, hoping the disturbance will go away. Their interaction – her insistence and his denial steeped in oppression and fear, brings down the house.
Raymond O. Caldwell, new Artistic Director of Theater Alliance, directs with a strong and deliberate hand, beautifully presenting the shifting realities while Tiffany Quinn’s choreography blasts through with super fresh intensity.Recently featured in American Theatre as one of the “new wave of Black Playwrights” Morisseau is becoming known for presenting issues with clarity, spot-on precision and heart. Here, she sets up bewitching questions about who we are, our choices, unspoken seething anger and shows the devastation when friends refuse to be outraged by injustice, discounting flagrant displays of racism and threats as harmless “pranks.”
She’s well supported in this production by designers who “get” it. The set design (Jonathan Dahm Robertson) looks initially like a large two-dimensional backboard with the image of a tree on the front, but then converts into rows of lockers for the bustling students and hides stealthy messages. Projectionist Alexandra Kelly Colburn works double time with all the images that cascade across the set, while the lighting design (Alberto Segarra) nearly cackles with bright bursts of energy then subdues to menancing, hostile shadows.
Inspired by the 2006 Jena Six assault case in Jena, Louisiana, Blood at the Root shows how gestures can trigger unexpected reactions that escalate into dreams deferred, dashed and punt kicked off the field. Even though we’re stung by the insanity of everything that happened, and is still happening, we’re left with hope that with enough talking and wondering, and listening and bits of caring, tentative threads of justice might just emerge, sprinkled with teeny tiny specks of hope.
Blood at the Root by Dominique Moriseau . Directed by Raymond O. Caldwell . Cast: Molly Shayna Cohen, Billie Krishawn, Stephanie Wilson, Emmanuel Kyei-Baffour, Deimoni Brewington, Paul Roeckell, Imani Branch, Charles H. Franklin IV, Jordan Clark Halsey, Maria Mainelli, Alex Turner . Assistant Directors —Aria Velz and Timothy Thompson . Choreography—Tiffany Quinn . Scenic Design — Jonathan Dahm Robertson . Lighting – Alberto Segarra . Costumes –Amy MacDonald . Sound – T.W. Starnes . Projections –Alexandra Kelly Colburn . Stage manager – Thomas Nagata . Produced by Theater Alliance . Reviewed by Debbie Minter Jackson.
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