‘Exodus’ at the Attucks goes for process over product
NORFOLK — “The play’s the thing/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” — Hamlet
In the play “Hamlet,” the protagonist tells the audience that he’s getting the traveling players to help him expose King Claudius as Old Hamlet’s murderer. The play’s the thing. It means that the drama on stage is essential, vital as a work of art and, for Hamlet, as a means to trap his low-life uncle. When the planet’s preeminent playwright says the play’s the thing, most folks listen.
But not Zhailon Levingston, a former director of two Broadway shows and a “playmaker” for “Exodus: Homecoming,” by In(HEIR)itance Project, which is being performed through May 7 at Attucks Theatre.
Levingston is conveying the very different principle behind devised theater, the type practiced by In(HEIR)itance and similar organizations, including Virginia Stage Company.
In devised theater, a type of community-based theater with its own vocabulary, the process is the thing — what people learn from one another before, during and after the show. Devised theater practitioners place process over product, or, even more radically expressed, process over the play.
This is because the goal of devised theater is not to create a polished play but to catalyze a community to leave the theater better human beings.
It’s why ticket prices are “pay-what-you-can” to encourage everyone in the community to attend.
So how does the In(HEIR)itance Project foment its brand of good trouble?
The answer is with “salons.” Salons were fancy literary get-togethers held by the likes of Madame de Pompadour for
Voltaire and his buds. The In(HEIR)itance Project’s “salons” were community discussions held throughout the 757 starting in 2021 and included high school students, civic leaders and groups such as Teens with a Purpose, WHRO, Zeiders
American Dream Theater and Virginia Opera.
Through the salons, 10 actors were cast for a play that was in formation — a play that would arise from the Biblical themes of Exodus reimagined for Hampton Roads. We’re familiar with the Israelites, the Ark of the Covenant, the Promised Land. The In(HEIR)itance founders recycle such terms (also using Genesis and other texts) into a “hyperlocal” story meant to examine communal agreements and explore a future-oriented “aspirational space.”
These notions became the “skeleton” of a threeact play with the salons providing “meat” for the bones. Simple? It’s anything but. Remember the special vocabulary? The solitary “playwright” (Shakespeare) becomes a collective of “playmakers”; a “fundraising” trip becomes a “friend-raising” trip. Partners (The Virginia Arts Festival, Hands United Building Bridges, United Jewish Federation of Tidewater and the Robert Nusbaum Center for the Study of Religious Freedom) brought the company in, and groups such as Virginia Humanities, the Covenant Foundation, Hampton Roads Community Foundation and others, funded the effort. Any money made by the production goes to community actors and artists.
So what does this process-driven play end up being? Wild, woolly, and yet worthwhile.
Act One best illustrates the idea. Seven siblings (equal the seven cities) come home to their mother’s aging, endangered house, located somewhere here in the quick-to-flood 757 area. Paula Bazemore plays the all-important mother, the source of strength to her various grown children — six girls and one boy (the versatile Jason Kypros) — plus a niece to represent the rising generation.
As the seven siblings socialize and squabble, certain themes arise to the point of becoming clichés. Everyone is late to the family get-together because of tunnel
congestion or a bridge lift or street flooding. Conversation is periodically drowned out by the roar of jets overhead. The siblings pipe up in unison, “The sound of freedom!” They’re clichés, yes, but they are our clichés, shared signs of life in this small corner of the multiverse. The siblings chatter about whose boulevard is most congested, Hampton Boulevard or Virginia Beach or Warwick — you get the idea. They sing, dance, smoke an illicit substance and, yes, squabble some more. The family house will soon be taken by eminent domain, leaving the aging mother to her own devices. There’s an ominous leak in the bathroom. The basement floor is wet and getting wetter.
The evening’s most effective bit of theatricality is a periodic lighting effect. The soon-to-be-displaced mother walks hauntingly back and forth outside her house’s windows — as if she were already one of the wandering ghosts of the place. Scarier still is a projection on the house’s interior walls suggesting water — more each time — rising to submerge all human life in this place.
Act Two tightens the play’s focus right down to the Attucks stage. We get a welcome glimpse of the famous fire curtain depicting Revolutionary War hero Crispus Attucks. There’s mention of the building’s history including everything from corny vaudeville to the top Black musical jazz artists. A
temporary lobby exhibit about the building’s history has been assembled by Kelly Jackson of Virginia Wesleyan University and others.
Act Three moves us into a hard-to-identify future, meant to represent a post-apocalypse-by-water or perhaps something else. Neither Act Two nor Three has the cohesion of Act One. Did I mention that the threatened house in Act One goes by the name of “The Promised Land”?
If we judge The In(HEIR)itance Project by the amount of love, the number of new partnerships and the waves of awareness generated by its 40 salons, it may have had a category 4 (brainstorm) impact. Perhaps Levingston (“The play doesn’t really begin until after the play”) and Shakespeare were both right. We just need to modify some of the Bard’s vocab: “The devised play’s the thing, in which we’ll catch the conscience of the community.” Let’s hope so.
Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya. yale.edu
IF YOU GO
When: 7:30 p.m. May 6; 2:30 p.m., May 7
Where: Attucks Theatre, 1010 Church St, Norfolk Tickets: Pay what you can with a suggested donation of $35. All proceeds go to local artists and arts organizations working with teens.
Details: vafest.org; 757-2822822