Viewing a live performance of a play on an iPad is a new experience for me in these pandemic times and, unlike working from home, is something I hope I never have to get used to.
As a lifelong theatergoer, I miss the assembly, the community, the coming together of live theater. Watching Donnetta Lavinia Grays’ spellbinding play Where We Stand made me lonely and aching for theater in a real space in a way I don’t feel, for example, as I watch the new season of the PBS series “Call the Midwife.”
With filmed theater performances, I want so to be there. That is very much the case with Where We Stand. That said, this social and emotional isolation we are currently experiencing actually works in favor of this one-person piece about loneliness and what makes up a community.
Using the age-old technique of storytelling and the structure of a fable, Grays both comforts and confronts us with truths about society and behavior. The heightened language, the use of poetry and song, turn this 70-minute piece into a magic spell, an incantation about human faith and foibles and how we cling to illusion and doing things the way they always have been done.
Grays also performs her play (alternating with David Ryan Smith in rotating performances), and the gift of her supple voice and shapeshifting talents manage to populate an entire town plus one very charismatic stranger.
The spare set—a platform, a chair—minimal lighting, and one costume are simplicity itself, enhancing the storytelling motif. The camera work is fluid and subtly circular, circumventing that flatness you often encounter in a filmed live production. But when the camera swings to the rows and rows of empty seats and the darkened lighting, it is like a punch in the gut.
Where We Stand tells the tale of Man, a sort of griot figure, living and toiling on the edge of a town. People barely acknowledge him or even wave to him as he does monotonous, back-breaking work on the plot of land his mother left him.
Where We Stand is available through April 26, 2020. Details and pay per view tickets
Loneliness and a desperation to connect lead him to succumb to the warmth and excellent company of a Stranger, a buttery-tongued gent in a gold suit who comes to Man’s home for a cup of tea and some “chitter-chat,” and, before departing pre-dawn, leaves Man to consider a proposal that offers “ease, joy and peace.”
Who wouldn’t jump at that, Man pleads to the audience and the unseen townspeople. This is a bluesman Robert Johnson, man at the crossroads moment, and the price to pay costs more than one soul.
Every story turn is punctuated by the incantation “A moment. A breath.” as the man’s life—and the community he so longs to be a part of—changes, seemingly for the better.
Where We Stand asks us to confront our aloneness and what we are willing to risk to become part of a family, a tribe, or a society. It also talks of what isolation does to a person over time and how we are, at our core, social creatures with an imperative to connect. And when that doesn’t happen, who do we become?
The play also poses significant questions about the true definition of a community and some places that appear to be humming and supportive are actually illusions built on the wishes of what the citizens want their neighborhood to look like from the outside, rather than what it is—exclusionary and judgmental.
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Our sense of community changes daily during this time of social distancing and isolation due to the coronavirus. Where We Stand gives us powerful food for thought as to where we want to be when this pandemic is over. One thing we know is that we can’t go back.
Where We Stand . Written by Donnetta Lavinia Grays . Director: Tamilla Woodard. Performances by Donnetta Lavinia Grays and David Ryan Smith . Scenic Design: Claire DeLiso. Costume Design: Ntokozo Fuzunina Kunene.Lighting Design: Christina Watanabe. Musical Director & Musical Dramaturg: Nehemiah Luckett. Production Assistant: Tori Ujczo. Small Stage Manager: Norman Anthony. Produced by WP Theater and Baltimore Center Stage . Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.
