Performance: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Performance: It's the seductive lure of the warm spotlight and the heady rush of thunderous applause, but it's also the thrilling experience of stepping outside of yourself to become something or someone you're not. At its best, performance is communication that imparts truth and humanity; but when people are swept up in its irresistible and threatening momentum, the results can be devastating.

Performance rears its ugly head in filmmaker Tony Kaye's riveting new documentary Lake of Fire, his epic quest to shine honest, balanced, and unapologetic light on the fraught issue of abortion.

Show Business Weekly review: Lake of Fire

As he proved in the raw American History X, Kaye isn't afraid to expose the ugly underbelly of the American experience, and this seminal work features interviews with the many of the main players in the abortion battle. Most frightening to me was witnessing the indomitable powers of mob mentality, particularly when animated through the proselytizing and chanting of members of the Far Right.

A documentary, of course, is a performance of its own, and Kaye splices together clips in subtle (and not-so-subtle) patterns, but the most horrifying performances come from the Pro-Life protestors who unblinkingly pronounce that those who don't believe what they do (in many cases, conservative Christian tenets) will land in the Biblical anti-promised land, the eponymous "lake of fire." Mugging for the camera and swaggering with pseudo-authoritative bravado, these (mostly) men seem keen to perform their roles to the very tips of their fingertips.

As terrific as the film is, Kaye gets a bit swept up in the act of performing himself, and I agreed with Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum that many of his overly dramatic and artsy cinematic flourishes threaten to take the film from dedicatedly intelligent to blatantly kitsch.

Performance also permeates the subject of Max Sparber's fantastic play Minstrel Show, or the Lynching of William Brown, currently playing at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, NJ. In this brief, two-character study, he sets the story of two fictional black minstrel performers against the very nonfictional story of William Brown, a black man who was lynched for the alleged rape of a white woman. The murder took place on the steps of the Douglas County courthouse in Omaha, Nebraska in 1919. (Eerily, it just so happened that the night we attended the show, September 28, marked the 88th anniversary of the unspeakable tragedy.) Peter Filichia provides an insighful review in the NJ Star-Ledger.

Under the deft direction of Rob Urbinati (who also directed a recent production of the show at Omaha's Blue Barn Theatre), Spencer Scott Barros and Kelcey Watson give lively, focused performances that brim with intensity and grace. Called back to the courthouse one week after the lynching, the men tell the story about the fateful evening, when they were also being held at the jail. Of course, they (literally) dance around the story, frequently lurching into their vaudeville routines--these performances, set to jovial music with racist undertones, provide them with an escape from reality. Eventually, they stop singing, wipe off the coal-hued makeup that covers their faces (African American performers during the period performed exclusively in blackface), and quietly tell the harrowing story.

The power of performance is an obvious theme, from the song-and-dance routines behind which the men initially retreat, to the crazed lynching mob that they witness. Controversy had erupted earlier in Long Branch in protest of minstrel-themed posters that advertised the show. Despite the NAACP's threats to boycott the production, the sold-out crowd was completely attentive.

A talkback followed the performance, and one audience member commented that he was swept up in the actors' powerful telling of the story and now had a much better understanding of the terrifying momentum of mob violence. Another man commented that, in its use of blackface, the play "appropriates an image to show its ugly face."

I grew up in Nebraska but had never heard of William Brown. Clearly, given the recent spate of deplorable race-related crimes across the country, it's important to keep telling--and retelling--these stories so that these performances no longer repeat themselves.