Monologues Celebrate Black Life
By Odell B. Ruffin
A huge empty stage and a lone microphone bathed in darkness offered the only backdrop for a procession of students who used the eloquence of their speech to reflect the nuances of African American life in “The Black Monologues.”
Performed for the first time on February 19 at the University of Maryland Hoff Theatre, eleven students gave voice to issues surrounding race, sex and religion.
Demetrious Colvin
The idea of a single performer offering his or her meditations on a single topic was snatched from playwright Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” where a number of female performers performed monologues on a range of issues including sex, love, rape and birth. A recurring theme throughout the piece is the vagina as a tool of female empowerment.
In early January, the group Verbal Gymnastics presented “Deez Nutz Part 2” at Dance Place in the District. The play was subtitled: Men Speak: An All Male Spin to The Vagina Monologues. A series of black men performed a blend of singing, poetry, and prose about their individual and collective challenges in life.
In keeping with the trend, students at the University of Maryland tested the assumptions of social mores, and pushed the audience to think and re-think about the key issues that affect African American people.
Inside the theatre, 64 percent of the seats were taped off – a real life reminder that 64 percent of black college students do not gradute in six years or less, according to the show’s producer Hayley Haywood.
Demetrious Colvin’s performance, “Where I’m From,” discussed his true life evolution, growing up in a home with a traditional Christian background to self-identifying as a homosexual male. Colvin addressed the stuggles of often being seen as confused, or worse, an outcast among some in society.
“I think that people lose sight of the fact that whatever you’re going through, there is always someone going through the same thing,” said freshman communication major Nzinga Shury, who performed “Out of State Blues,” a poem inspired by Shury’s experience keeping up with her friends and family at home in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Following the play, participants engaged in a question-and-answer discussion that covered a vast array of modern racial issues including a stark rejection of the notion that the country has entered a “post-racial” or “color-blind” era.
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