www.chicagotribune.com: During this past holiday season, “Lake Song” was an audio drama that centered water and Chicago and came to life with the myriad voices of Chicagoans. Now, the Goodman is featuring “the ripple, the wave that carried me home,” a work by Christina Anderson that won the 2022 Horton Foote Prize for a playwright, in a co-production with the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
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3 comments:
This sounds like a great play! It's such a unique and deeply personal idea for a play, and it addresses themes that I, for one, have never thought about or heard of. For example, what stood out to me was the conflict that Janice faces with her family while returning home, and on the larger scale the conflicts that Black activists and their families faced. And again, desegregation of public pools is a lesser-known story, and for most audience members I suspect that this play will be their first time hearing about this subject. I think that these types of stories is what theater excels at: stories that most people have never heard of or experienced, but that are still real stories. I'm sure that this play is incredibly powerful and particularly meaningful for its creators and performers. I would love to see this play, and hopefully I someday will.
I am highly interested in seeing this play after reading how much the playwright strives to tell the historical stories of those living in America, specifically highlighting the black woman's experience. It is so important to have these discussions because as the playwright Anderson was stating, we have a tendency to "repeat things" within history. Thus, the best way for us to not repeat history is to learn from our mistakes and grow, heal and forgive. Additionally, I love how this play will analyze politics, culture, and socio-economic status from a black woman's perspective. As a black woman, I feel oftentimes we are left out of these discussions within the community because not only are we black in America, but a women. So I am very excited to see these topics executed on stage. Especially because the playwright discusses how they will not just center their characters around their race, but them as individuals with personalities and lives beyond their traumatic experiences.
Overall I quite love the way that Anderson speaks and what of. Their way to hit at what their work is and what it means to them. The way they speak about the cycle of oppression and how it builds upon itself is so true. When we don’t take time to acknowledge our flaws, we don’t give ourselves time to improve. We repeat our mistakes and allow for our biases to remain unchecked, unchallenged, unfixed. This author also follows a similar thought process that I do but could never put words to. There is a lot of tragedy in life but there is humor despite it as well as with the darkness. To laugh along with pain is to survive in my eyes. Sometimes I just need to cackle at what absurdities I encounter cause i’d rather laugh than cry. The way that Anderson applies this thought process to their stories that tend to center black women allows for a more nuanced view of humanity. It allows for stories to move beyond trauma focus and delve into developing people. To see one as solely one thing is to erase their humanity, one that is defined by complexity.
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