Black and Blue

By T.E. Kalem

Ordeals of utter agony

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in a letter from a Birmingham jail exactly two decades ago. In that same letter, he also wrote, "Unearned suffering is redemptive."

Two off-Broadway plays, Poppie Nongena, by Sandra Kotze and Elsa Joubert, and Do Lord Remember Me, by James deJongh, amplify King's insights and offer further proof that the human spirit is perdurable in resisting, actively or passively, any force that tries to crush it.

Poppie Nongena, which originally appeared as a novel by Joubert (herself a white), is based on the true story of a black South African woman. It is retold in song, dance and narrative and seems to seal an audience under a black skin with corresponding emotions. Poppie (Thuli Dumakude) endures the trials and manifest inhumanity of apartheid with a tragic valor.

The first view of Poppie shows a young girl living with her mother and grandmother, both played by Sophie Mgcina, who also composed the limpid and arresting music.

At 16 Poppie marries and moves in with her husband's people on the outskirts of Cape Town. There they are set upon by South Africa's cruel catch-22, the pass.

Without a pass, one cannot get a job; without a job, one cannot get a pass. When her husband (Selaelo Maredi) dies of TB, Poppie presses on, a desolate yet noble soul.

Do Lord Remember Me is a remembrance of evil things past recalled from W.P.A. '30s interviews with old ex-slaves. Some of the revelations possess a stark and simple poignance: "Praise God, my little son has gone to Jesus. Dat's one chile you ain't never gonna sell." Whippings and slave auctions abound; a woman of 86 (Frances Foster) recalls how, when she was a little girl, her mistress deliberately mutilated her face under a rocking chair because she stole a piece of candy. Despite its undertow of violence, Do Lord Remember Me, which originated at the American Place Theater and is now at Manhattan's Town Hall, is astonishingly rich in folk humor, bold in pride, luminous in its faith in Jesus and its knowledge that adversity strengthens as many as, or more than, it breaks.

--By T.E.Kalem This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.