San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
What’s new in the arts
‘Spittin’ Truth to Power’ at La Jolla Playhouse
Society, indeed a world, cannot be understood in only 10 minutes. But it can, with all its crises and complexities, be placed in powerful perspective. In Alyce Smith Cooper’s and Shammy Dee’s “Spittin’ Truth to Power While Light
Leaping for the People,” three short videos composed of storytelling, poetry and music coalesce to make an urgent intergenerational statement about where we are, where we’ve been and where we’re headed.
The three-part video experience is a La Jolla Playhouse commission and part of the theater’s virtual Without Walls (WOW) programming. Each three-minute-plus video was filmed around the University of California San Diego campus, which is home to the Playhouse.
The origins of “Spittin’ Truth to Power” trace back to the early months of 2020, a year that has seen not only a global pandemic but rallying cries for racial and social justice.
“We conceptualized this right after the beginning of the COVID shutdown,” said Cooper, who is a poet, storyteller and community activist. “The summer helped us shape a lot of what we were doing. The recognition of what we were seeing happening in our social climate was not something we hadn’t seen before, yet here we were again.”
Added DJ Shammy Dee: “In relation to the social fabric of society, these problems have (long) existed. It’s just been an accelerant of things people have already known. They’ve exposed things to a boiling point to create an explosion that would not have existed otherwise.”
Each video can be appreciated in its own right, but watch them in sequence, for there’s a strong connection.
“The conception of each piece was very individual with a theme: sermon, communion and fellowship,” said Shammy Dee. “They all stem from church. This comes from Alyce’s background in ministry.
“This is our offering as artistactivists, something for you to take in and hopefully see something different. As long as you walk away with one thing that might shift your view even one degree from how you normally see things, our job is done.” lajollaplayhouse.org