Earlier this month, Ta-Nehisi Coates appeared on “The Late Show,” where he seemed to rattle Stephen Colbert by refusing to say that he had hope for the United States. As Coates rightly pointed out, he’s not the guy to ask for that promise of redemption, instead suggesting that if one needs spiritual balm, a pastor or friends would be a better place to start.
Black Ensemble Theater has long felt like a cultural church, and it’s also one of the most welcoming venues in town. So it makes sense that those seeking hope in the post-Obama era can find some glimmers of it in founder Jackie Taylor’s latest show, “The Black Renaissance (A Musical Resistance Against Racism”).
The title contains echoes of the Harlem Renaissance, but while the show includes shout-outs to numerous African-American politicians, writers, activists and artists, the cast of 13 mostly embodies the story of black people in America who didn’t necessarily make it into the history books. Through several original songs by Taylor (who also directs), “The Black Renaissance” traces resistance and rebirth, from the enslavement of Africans whose labor and pain built the nation, to Black Lives Matter and the disturbing open embrace of white supremacy by our present leaders.
The show opens with a clip of President Barack Obama’s stirring call for unity at the 2016 Democratic National Convention — and quickly shifts to an image of our current president with his “Make America Great Again” cap. This suggests the framework of Coates’ recent collection of essays, “We Were Eight Years in Power,” in which the promise of the Obama presidency was followed by racist backlash — just as the gains of the eight years of the post-Civil War Reconstruction led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and white terrorism as a tool of social and political control.
There is a lot of power and wit and defiance blended together in this show. But as of yet, it feels like Taylor hasn’t quite worked out the balance between historical recitation and musical celebration and catharsis. Some of the observations on racism’s toxic roots and lingering effects on American life feel a tad generic, when specificity might help them land with even more power.
Still, there are also snippets that let us see how the institution of slavery has shaped racial narratives and relationships throughout our history. A section from the memoir of Benin-born Olaudah Equiano anatomizes the difference between his experiences as a slave of African tribes and as a slave in colonial South Carolina. Equiano notes that, while he was kept separate from his African enslavers, he lived much as they did, whereas his life in America exposed him to unimaginable brutality at the hands of the slavers designed to remind black people of their dehumanization.
That dehumanization, Taylor shows, was deliberately crafted to turn African-Americans against each other. One of the most compelling segments finds the cast in conversation about the violent deaths of so many young black people in Chicago. While deflecting the lazy shorthand of “black-on-black crime,” they lay out the complexities of centuries of inequality and despair — what one musical number calls “The Slave Syndrome Blues” that create the “cyclone” of violence. They also provide a short list of practical approaches (from gun control to training in skilled trades) to pulling at-risk kids from the center of that cyclone.
Wendell Jackson’s performance as the elder of the group serves as a reminder of past racial iniquities and as a lifeline to the future. A section where the cast takes turns “breaking it down” by reciting a litany of tone-deaf racist statements (such as “I don’t see color”) has sharp-elbowed sardonic wit to spare, reminding us that even white “allies” have a long way to go in confronting institutional racism.
Taylor’s score, which has hints of everything from soul to gospel to reggae (the latter in the spirited “Pull It Out by the Root”) gets supple support from musical director Robert Reddrick and three accompanying musicians. At times the internal momentum in the show stops to give us, for example, definitions of other “isms” that divide us, which make it feel more like a college symposium on institutional bias.
But perhaps in dark days, a defiant insistence on looking for renaissance is the best resistance going. Late in the show, the words of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — the first woman elected head of an African nation — flash on the rear wall. “If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” Taylor isn’t afraid to dream big, and despite some narrative hiccups, “The Black Renaissance” combines those dreams with some important historic truths.
Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.
Review: “The Black Renaissance (A Musical Resistance Against Racism)” (2.5 stars)
When: Through Nov. 26
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Where: Black Ensemble Theater, 4450 N. Clark St.
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $55-$65 at 773-769-4451 or www.blackensemble.org