I visited the Cambridge area on the evening of the 26th April to watch Black Odyssey in the Central Square Theatre. Directed by Benny Sato Ambush and written by Marcus Gardley, Black Odyssey repurposes Homer’s epic poem within the black expressive tradition, tracing the black experience within America from the Middle Passage all the way to present day police brutality, making many stops along the way. Whether it be the poignant reminder about the loss of Emmett Till and the four girls at 16th Street Baptist or the catalogue of black musical traditions we are taken through, Black Odyssey is a performance that could make you laugh and cry all in the same minute.
It’s hard to analyse just 3 aspects of such a spectacular piece of art. Nevertheless, I have endeavoured to do so through analysing the music and dance which is integrated into everyday life, the Greek mythology and African-American Oral History from which it draws and finally the social, political and cultural messages embedded within the performance. Each of these performance elements work together, it is Ulysses’ journey home to his wife and son through the music, the dance and the mythology which enable him to complete his ancestral pilgrimage in which he is exposed to the different social, political and cultural elements across decades that he is able to link to his present day. I think it is important to recognise each of these elements as working together in order to understand the complexity of the performance and the message it aims to deliver.
Furthermore, with the play performed upon a traverse stage and with audience participation encouraged particularly in the musical and dance aspect of the performance, I believe these combining elements call the audience to realise the importance of understanding their own ancestry, but also to recognise the continued injustices within society and a call to action to go and do something about it. This is particularly evident in the opportunity to donate to the Front Porch Arts Collective at the end of the performance, a collective who examine the interaction between race, economics, culture, gender and sexuality from a black and brown perspective, in order to promote this perspective as part of a global conversation.
Music and Dance opened and closed the performance and were interwoven throughout, I grouped them together as they constantly seemed to be in conversation with each other. The most memorable moment came during the performance of Ulysses wife, Nella Pell’s water breaking. Great Aunt Tee also known as Calypso (Ulysses’ sister) comes to support Nella while her brother makes his journey home. She helps Nella breath as two other female characters gradually pull a blue cloth from Nella’s skirt in unison with the music climaxing as we hear the baby’s heartbeat. Akili Jamal Haynes, a multi-percussionist, opened and closed the play. In the opening his instrument and the shells on his shoes moved the actors on stage and by the end of the play he had the whole audience on their feet clapping and dancing along. These lighthearted moments were also felt during a skit which had the audience singing along to Tina Turner.
Another key performance element was the Greek mythology at the heart of the play. When Great Grand Daddy Deus and Great Grand Paw Sidin open the speech of the play they are raised above the audience playing a game of chess, with a mirror reflecting down upon them. The two Greek Gods battle for control of Ulysses fate, reflecting how it is not only important for Ulysses to understand his ancestors but also how his ancestors lives have affected his fate in the present day. The Odyssey is the second most recognised piece of literature in the Western Canon, through repurposing this Greek mythology to express black concerns and incorporate black traditions, the play effectively inserts these into the canon, making black concerns and experiences as part of a global conversation.
However, Black Odyssey is more complicated than this, embedding relevant social, political and cultural references that pertain to the black experience within America. Nella’s son Malachi seems to represent the struggle of a young educated black male who faces discrimination from police for no apparent reason, shouting a poignant line at his mum in the play when she asks why the police accused him, “they didn’t need to accuse me, I was walking home while black”.
Furthermore, when Ulysses is transported through time and ends up in 1960s America, the man on the boat that rescues him, who seems to be escaping from something, repeatedly says “it’s taking a while for the government to decide what to do”. It is suggested that Ulysses is caught in a hurricane off the coast of New Orleans, the clear allusions to Hurricane Katrina and the repetition of the government being indecisive, calls attention to the lack of care applied to predominantly black neighbourhoods and the devastating loss of human life as a result of this. In addition, through merging the 1960s narrative and that of Hurricane Katrina, it is highlighted that there is no general change in the black experience within America.
Overall, Black Odyssey melds together these three key performative elements, the music and dance, the Greek mythology and African-American oral tradition in order to make important social, political and cultural comments on our society now and to explore the ways in which tracing our ancestors can reveal how far we have and have not come. When the little girl reveals that she is “the last ancestor on the journey”, Ulysses is able to return home, whilst this was a touching moment, there was still an element of unease, which was relieved only by the final song.
I felt that the play spoke to many of the things we have been studying in Art and Artifice. Most explicitly was the notion of mastery of form and deformation of mastery, quite literally taking an epic and repurposing it to reveal the black experience within America However, I think it also revealed the liminality of this experience and thus calls the audience to make a change.
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