POETIC LICENSE
Tines, ART turn Hughes’ ‘Black Clown’ into rich spectacle
Langston Hughes' 1931 poem “The Black Clown” chronicled 300 years of African-American history in under 400 words. Davone Tines' 75-minute stage adaptation, which runs through Sept. 23 at the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, adds nearly a century to that history. If you've been thinking about Hughes lately, it might be for his poem “Kids Who Die.” In that work, the leading Harlem Renaissance poet wrote, “This is for the kids who die/Black and white/For kids will die certainly/The old and rich will live on awhile/As always/
Eating blood and gold/Letting kids die,” somehow foreshadowing our mod- ern gun violence epidemic. But, sadly, too many of Hughes' words resonate today and “The Black Clown” provides an ideal frame for an exploration of the ongoing racial injustices in America. With only a handful of lines to build upon, Tines and composer Michael Schachter extend “The Black Clown” into a minor epic. The Harvard alums turn Hughes' stanzas into blues verses, call-and-response work songs and freshly invented gospel hymns. They also drop in fragments of traditional compositions such as “Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” — all handled by Tines and an ensemble of a dozen equally skilled at modern dance and huge, chilling vocal harmonies. Schachter, possibly influenced by Charles Mingus' LP “The Clown,” lets the band stretch out over long instrumental passages that pull from ragtime, swing, organ-driven soul jazz and New Orleans second line (and wink at '60s R&B and hip-hop beats).
“The Black Clown” doesn't follow a traditional narrative structure — artistically it sits somewhere in a triangle marked by vaudeville, opera and performance art. But through dance and movement, staging and costumes, the ensemble makes plain the passing of history. We know we are in the antebellum South because Tines' deep, profound baritone/bass rings out a spiritual as the cast behind him, just shadows projected on a screen, pantomime slaves in chains or beneath the whip. We know we have jumped a hundred years forward when the cast don T-shirts or jeans and alternately raise their fists in solidarity or put up their arms with futility against an invisible police nightstick.
“The Black Clown” features jubilant dance numbers fueled by a hot combo playing as if they sat on the Cotton Club bandstand in 1935. But it often resolves those jams reverting to, as Hughes wrote, “suffer and struggle.” Mirroring the songs' swing from joy to agony, the imagery rebounds between painfully plain to slight and delicate. At one point, with huge grins, the ensemble jumps rope with a noose and sashays with chains standing in for feather boas; later a single dancer struggles with a parasol against an unrelenting wind.
Tines and his team, which includes director Zack Winokur and choreographer Chanel DaSilva, have created a work of art, not a piece of entertainment.
“The Black Clown” is the first production in Diane Paulus' 10th anniversary season as the ART's artistic director. And the show fits her vision of theater: A progressive piece of art that is brave, engaging and immersive, without being alienating to casual theatergoers.