Madness Liberates Colored Museum

From the vibrant, oversized posters honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., Satchel Paige and Sidney Poitier to the uplifting final refrain, "There's madness in me, and that madness sets me free," The Colored Museum is a constant celebration. The George C. Wolfe play is not a simple eulogy to the lost generations of African-Americans, nor is it a one-dimensional biting satire. Specifically, the play focuses on the last century of African-American accomplishment, including all the disappointment, suffocation and trials contained therein.

The scenes in the play are diverse, covering the experiences of a dynamic drag queen named Miss Roj (junior Lavell Blackwell) and a saintly soldier (first-year Jason Tompkins) who takes the life of his company members to save each one from the "pain in his future and blood in his path," and everything in between. Attacking the stage in a melange of Temptations tunes, live video feeds and endless melodrama, The Colored Museum is not content to be a straightforward play. For all its ambition, the play seems to work best when one appreciates it not as an exacting documentary, but as a patchwork of the collective struggle of African-Americans.

The play opens with a peppy stewardess for the "celebrity slaveship" who encourages her patrons to "please refrain from call and response singing, because that sort of thing can lead to rebellion." Pointing to a lighted sign that reads "Fasten Your Shackles," Ms. Pat (junior Alyson Cambridge) turns a blatantly negative memory of the middle passage into comic fodder. "With this little item here," she says, reaching for a basketball, "you'll become millionaires!" With her shrill voice in tow, Ms. Pat clearly satirizes the argument about the benefits of slavery on African-Americans. Telling the audience, "You can't stop history, you can't stop time," Ms. Pat then use sthe device of a time machine to catapult action hundreds of years into the future.

One of the next stops was the bourgeoisie couple of "The Photo Session." Dressed in immaculate formal wear Guy (sophomore Jamon Holt) and Girl (sophomore Rosa Hyde) march around the room sporting pretentious smiles and flitting eyes. Encouraging the audience to enter a life where "no one talks" but "everyone just smiles and shows off their cheekbones," the couple offers a paradise of elitist values and sophisticated customs. The only drawback: they must check their past at the door. Though, in a moment of painful honesty, Guy acknowledges that it "feels like we're suffocating - another type of pain," he still invites his African brethren to join him. "Come be beautiful with us," he croons, "I guarantee no contradictions." Smiling mischievously, Guy takes the hand of Girl, and the pair strroll ignorantly into the night.

In a move toward a heightened self-consciousness, The Colored Museum zooms forward to the disco era with a scene entitled, "The Gospel According to Miss Roj." The eponymous drag queen offers an alternative take on the traditionally homophobic American society. Blessed with a pair of lightning-quick fingers, Miss Roj says, "Every time I snap, I steal one beating of your heart." Though Miss Roj is sent to the stage as comic relief, she makes it clear that while gay blacks are often underrepresented, they remain a vital part of African-American culture. While other scenes present a muddled narrative voice, "The Gospel" offers one of the most exaggeratedly funny and honest scenes in the work.

In a moment of divine frankness, Miss Roj shares the personal story of how she locked her drunken father in a closet for spewing the word "faggot." More than anything else, Miss Roj offers a glaringly candid look at the tribulations of being both gay and black in a world where each of those qualities make her a minority. She says, "Child, this ain't no party going on! We traded in our drums for respectability. Now it's just words."

The power of words is one motif that floats throughout the entire Colored Museum. In "The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play," Medea, who attended Julliard, says, "My speech... has become classical and therefore universal." In "Symbiosis," Man (Thompkins) is forced to change not only his musical and fashion tastes, but more importantly his very words - all because "survival depends on it." This means throwing out his Converse All-Stars, his Afro pic, Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice and his copy of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze."

In a very real sense, if he does not adjust his entire persona, he fears that he will become extinct. It is this pounding anxiety about falling behind the rest of America that leads this desperate man to state, quite seriously, "Being black is too emotionally taxing. Therefore, I'll be black only on weekends and holidays." Though this line strikes the audience as humorous, like everything else in The Colored Museum, it should be taken seriously.

Like any other play, The Colored Museum invites the audience to laugh at the ridiculous satire of its characters. Come on, everyone can laugh at the clichéd image of a drag queen, or at a woman giving birth to an egg. But reading beyond these lines is even more rewarding. In the culminating scene of "The Party," Topsy Washington imagines a party scene with all of the innovators, entertainers and heroes of black America: "the whole place took off, defying limitations inside my head." Though Miss Roj said that African Americans traded in their drums, Topsy said, "We still got our drums. I can't live inside of yesterday's pain, but I can't live without it." More than just a satire of all things black, The Colored Museum acknowledges both the anguish and creative talents of African American culture.