Series of one-minute plays an intense experience
The Every 28 Hours Plays, a menagerie of one-minute insights that underscore the harsh reality of black people killed by law enforcement, security or neighborhood vigilantes in that time frame, began with a counting from 1 to 28.
Whether that statistic represents a real number remains hotly debated as naysayers employ distraction, a sort of take eye off ball social subterfuge, 54 approximately 60-second plays inside McCarter Theater’s Matthews Theater, delivered mental pictures, fractured and framed by violence.
Directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian, the first play entitled “Life by Number,” created by Rasheedat Badejo and Heidi Van, served as a startling attention grab for hundreds of guests.
Co-created by Claudia Aleck of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Dominic D’Andrea of the One Minute Play Festival, the performances by professional actors, Princeton University students and Middlesex Vo-Tech Performing Arts students, The 28 Hours Plays free event forced balcony opening seating.
Attendance came with a price as audience members served as eyewitnesses to pain, suffering and illegitimate death. The emotional mix included several ensemble members who still dreamed, survived and navigated systemic violence.
Mostly, we were voyeurs to violence, face-to-face Diversity mattered as mixed crowd attended McCarter Theater’s “The Every 28Hours Plays. The event included 54one-minute plays about disproportionate police killings of black and brown-skinned people.
with blood, destruction and loathing as one female actor mother paid homage with a vow to kneel in her dead child’s blood.
The McCarter Theater website explained how this project evolved.
“Last October, Theater makers from around the US traveled to Ferguson and St. Louis to listen, learn, and create a theatrical response alongside local artists. They met with historians, high school students, police officers, community organizers, and other residents of the city before crafting one-minute plays around the theme of police violence and inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.”
The Black Lives Matter effort remains an incendiary topic as many critics disregard the message.
Regardless, no doubt exists
thatblackandbrownU.S.residents die disproportionately than whites from police interventions. Cincinnati officials this week braced for another police shooting trial as University of Cincinnati police Ofc. Ray Tensing faces a firstdegree murder charge for the killing of black motorist Samuel DuBose.
The Every 28 Hours Plays provided police perspective as an on-duty officer peered down his drawn revolver and engaged the crowd. “You got two seconds,” he said, to make a best decision about a suspect.
Then his admonishment. “You try it. You think it’s so f**king easy.”
The whirlwind evening strainedemotionbeforethefinale “Unknown Thousands”, a historical accounting of estimated numbers of people killed throughout U.S. history by police. High school and college student actors joined a professional cast in McCarter Theater production of “The Every 28Hours Plays.” Monday’s free event almost filled the Matthews Theater.
Initial accounts were just numbers but one 1990s entry personalized the “The Every 28 Hours” production.
The roll call offered Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 22-year-old Guinea. West Africa immigrant gunned down by four New York City police in February 1999. Four officers fired 41 shots toward an unarmed Diallo who held a cellphone and wallet.
All four officers were acquitted of second-degree murder but musician Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band memorialized Diallo and other like him with “American Skin (41 Shots)”.
Released into the theater air, Diallo’s name caused audience inhalation, as guests seemingly sucked up all oxygen.
We held our breath for an open floodgate of named people killed by police under all sets of circumstances and subsets of situations.
Anthony Dwain Lee, Marsean Scott, Alfredo Cerna Palacios, may not reference as household names but they were victims of police violence and exist no longer.
Real impact occurred when some familiar identities caused crying both on and off stage.
We were riveted by those people killed in our lifetime, some names mentioned with such regularity that they have become part of our personal life history.
The list includes 12-yearold Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Eric Garner, Bernard Moore, Korynn Gaines, Lavall Hall, Miriam Carey, Jonathan Ryan Paul, Jamie Croom, Terry Garnett Jr., Tanisha Sanderson, Monique Jenee Deckard, Tony Terrell Robinson Jr., Tyrone Ryerson Lawrence, Shelly Frey, Naeschylus Vinzant, Andrew Anthony Williams, Dewayne Deshawn Ward Jr., Ledarius Williams Yvette Henderson, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Yvette Smith, Malissa Williams ..... and thousands more.
The evening ended with audience insights about the play, followed by a panel discussion which featured Ruha Benjamin, Susan Fiske, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Hilary Herbold, Ali Michael, Peter Moskos and AsanniYorkwhovoicedexperience, strength and hope for improved community-police relations.
Panelists offered numerous avenues to engage this national issue, including accessing www.every28hoursplays.org and www.mccarter. org/e28.