Color lines
Playwright Dael Orlandersmith cuts through life's bullshit to get down to cases.

By J.H. Tompkins

I THOUGHT OF playwright Dael Orlandersmith when I stumbled across the synopsis for the Jan. 20 episode of the UPN comedy One on One: "After a freak accident, Dwayne starts hearing the thoughts of white people. Can this strange new power help Flex at work?"

I don't know how Flex feels, but Orlandersmith might get a laugh out of it, I think, even though she's outspoken about the fate of black TV writers and black people in general. And anybody else, for that matter. One should consider Yellowman, which opens Jan. 28 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, an exploration of the hellish human interiors warped by internalized racism. Believe it or not, Orlandersmith can be as upbeat and friendly as she is fierce.

I first saw her from a ski lift floating slowly down the face of a Utah mountain. It was July 23, 2001, my first day at the Sundance Theater Lab. I was in an elevated state that had nothing to do with altitude. The terrain was a picture of extremes; the violence that drove huge rock formations up through the densely forested hillsides was palpable, lending the view a kind of terrible beauty. The home of Sundance founder Robert Redford, surrounded by fir trees, was visible on a ridge across a narrow valley; Sundance Village spread out below and to the left. My eye was caught by the taller of two women walking down a gravel path as she nodded her head several times before extending an arm forward from her body. Then, with a sharp, short motion, she brought it down, as if to make a point. I wanted to know what she was so agitated about.

At lunch two days later, I heard someone giving a short history of South Carolina's Gullah people in a voice that betrayed New York roots and gave no ground to anyone. I walked to her table, overcame what I politely call near-crippling stage fright, and introduced myself to the woman I'd spied on from the ski lift. "Hey," Orlandersmith said. Uninvited, I sat down and listened.

The plays being worked on that summer were satisfying and very different, making it impossible to privilege one above another: Julia Cho's 99 Histories was passionate and poignant; Carl Rux's sprawling, intellectually adventurous Talk took a demanding walk through uncharted territory. I sat in on a reading of Charles Mee's absurdist comedy Wintertime that ended when the cast dissolved in laughter along with the audience. And then there was Yellowman, grim, fatalistic, and absolutely riveting; I saw it one night and thought about it every day after for months.

Dark end of the street

I grew up in a family of writers and painters, but music was at the center of my world. Over the years Aretha Franklin and Esther Phillips became singularly important to me. So when I say that Yellowman grabbed me like Franklin's Sparkle, or Phillips's From a Whisper to a Scream, you'll have an idea of its lasting impact. Allow me to point out what may be obvious, that there are so many things Yellowman was not to me: my life story, for instance; a description of events or forces I had to struggle through; a voicing of painful feelings I'd stuffed down inside me. The play was not offensive in its honesty, to me anyway, nor overly serious; nor was it unbelievable. There are many experiences I haven't experienced, and many feelings I haven't felt – including those created by the wounds that result from being marginalized because of race or gender.

For this reason and many others, I don't really know if Yellowman is real in the way that seems to matter so much to people these days, nor am I familiar firsthand with the feelings triggered by racism. But I know and respect the power of an album of songs that I have to play again and again. I know about art that stirs the swirling, inchoate, emotionally true forces that lurk in my heart and – if the moment and the art is right – burst out of hiding and let me know I'm alive. Yellowman, about good lives doomed for no good reason, did nothing less than that.

Is it true that only absence can make one taste presence in all its myriad flavors? Or that self-hatred can steer even the most promising life into despair? Sometimes, when I think about Orlandersmith's play, I listen to the title cut from All Eyez on Me, my favorite album by Tupac Shakur, on which the late rapper – spitting venomous lyrics like a man possessed – casually declares war on thugs, playas, wannabes and, you've just got to think, himself, when he raps, "Say money bring bitches, bitches bring lies / One nigga's getting jealous, and muthafuckas died / Depend on me like the first and fifteenth / They my homies for a second / But these punks won't get me / We got four niggas, and low riders, and ski masks / Screaming Thug Life every time they pass."

What is one to make of Yellowman's dark, disturbing undercurrent, the forces that carry two children infected by the madness around them to a bad end? Is the bone-simple, inexorable march of internalized hatred destined forever to eat these children alive? Is there any ceiling to the pain father and child must feel before men conditioned to stuff the feelings that come from family ties stop running away from their families? Or is it that the pain and self-disgust spawned by loss and the shame of not stepping up are goals all by themselves? When is a story that is just a story more than just that? And how can that story be told in any way other than the way provided in Yellowman?

Says who?

If I posed this question to Orlandersmith, she would probably flip me off and ask me why I'm asking her. She didn't seem to warm up to efforts to provide her with a pre-scripted identity – a response I encountered at lunch the following day while filling up my plate with food and deciding which table seemed to promise the best conversation. I heard this coming from a table behind me: "What, because I'm black I can't like rock and roll? That's what people seem to be saying." I didn't have to turn around; Orlandersmith's voice is unforgettable. She continued, "I grew up on Lou Reed. And Love, too, that was a band. I mean, Arthur Lee is incredible."

At the mention of Lee's name, I forgot about Yellowman, black men, white men, and everyone else. Because I love Arthur Lee and Love, and I love anyone who shares my passion. I went to her table, sat down, and joined the conversation; maybe we talked about other things, but if so, I don't remember what they were.

I won't forget when Orlandersmith, as Alma, and Chris McKinney, playing the doomed Eugene, delivered a workshop performance that was so powerful the audience dripped sweat like they were suffocating in the heat and humidity of a brutal South Carolina summer. When it was over, we stood up and cheered like Mets fans after a victory at Shea Stadium.

Half-life

It's difficult to write about Yellowman without turning solemn and deadly serious – there's no need to, though, because Orlandersmith covers that base pretty well by herself. But consider a few lines from Alma's opening monologue as a way of entering the play.

"Always my mother / her mother before her praised God not for living / not for happiness / they did not live / they were not happy – they existed and they praised Him not totally sure whether or not He existed. They did so because they were taught to / had to and that there had to be some love somewhere if they prayed long enough / hard enough. There was no love for them on this plane / earthly plane so they praised and prayed in their Gullah / Geechie / voices for a space – no matter how meager in heaven."

If suffering through earthly life puts money in heaven's bank, the men and women of Yellowman will one day pass to the other side and live in great wealth.

'Yellowman' runs through March 7. Previews Fri/23-Sat/24 and Tues/27, 8 p.m.; Sun/25, 7 p.m. Opens Jan. 28, 8 p.m. Runs Tues. and Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m. (also Jan. 31, Feb. 5, 7, 14, 19, 28, and March 4, 2 p.m.; no show Feb. 6); Wed. and Sun., 7 p.m. (also Sun., 2 p.m.), Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk. $10-$55. (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org.