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A-A-America
- by Edward Bond
article in SF Weekly by Karen Macklin (March
19, 2003)
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- Despite its title, Edward Bond's A-A-America! is hardly a bastion
of U.S. patriotism. Produced by Crowded Fire Theater Company, this stateside
premiere, composed of two one-acts penned by British playwright Bond, is
an aggressive exploration of racism. Both plays take place during the years
that immediately followed abolition, a gruesome chapter in our nation's
history in which the brutal practice of lynching left thousands dead.
- The first play, Grandma Faust, is a dark burlesque about a grandmother-devil
who promises prosperity to a white man -- appropriately named Uncle Sam
-- in exchange for the soul of Paul, a black man who is to be sold and
made into "nigger foot pie." The Swing finds the same character,
Paul, falsely accused of attacking whites in Kentucky, and facing a horrific
fate.
- The two pieces, first produced in London in 1976, are intense but not
without humor, as Bond paints scathing caricatures of white folks who sell
slaves as if they're pies at a bake sale, and who carry out deadly lynching
ceremonies in the same fashion as they would neighborhood picnics. But
Faust and Swing are also unnerving and inflammatory, which is why Christine
Young was compelled to direct them. "There's a lot of unresolved business
between blacks and whites in this country," says Young. "This
country exists because of slavery, and we still haven't made reparations
for it."
- Young hopes that theater can open a dialogue about race in the United
States. And while A-A-America! may sound bleak, the transcendent character
of Paul finds a way to muddle through the muck -- and survive. In the production,
he sings, "Wise man said a long time ago, no man step in the same
river twice." Somehow that same river keeps popping up, and the footprints
in it are neither new nor shallow.
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