Marc Bamuthi Joseph in Joseph’s the break/s. Photo by Umi Vaughan.
The most surprising aspect of last weekend’s run of Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s the break/s was the brevity of the engagement. I suspect that the three-day run at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Novellus Theater came nowhere near close to exhausting the local audience for this inspired venture into hip-hop dance theater.
No, it is true that the break/s, described by its creator as "a mixtape for stage," is not, formally, intended for dance audiences. Movement is not the center of Joseph’s concerns, and the choreography by a local person, Stacey Printz, will not stand alone; isolating the steps wouldn’t get you very far. But, in this case, in contrast to all the other theater folk avid for attention by the dance crowd, who brand themselves as choreographers, Joseph really does seamlessly integrate the two disciplines. I can’t image reading his texts on the page and getting the kind of buzz I experienced at the second performance Friday (June 20). This was the West Coast premiere date; the piece was unveiled last March at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, KY. And this is a YBCA co-commission.
Joseph, an Oakland resident, is a master of his chosen style. He is a mesmerizing, though congenial presence, and he writes and delivers his work with a wonderfully ironic twist that elevates the break/s far above the dreary, earnest efforts of so many local monologists. Following Joseph’s train of thought for 75 uninterrupted, multimedia infused minutes adds up to one of the great theatrical journeys of the season. The subject is the fate of hip-hop, an African American mode of verse and movement, in a world slipping ever more into globalization.
Dressed throughout in an orange Henley shirt and khaki cargo pants, assisted by beatboxer Tommy Shepherd a.k.a. Soulati and turntablist DJ Excess, backed by a triptych of screens on which interview subjects periodically hold forth on the subject of hip-hop, Joseph discourses like a Rip van Winkle figure, awakened after a long slumber, who gazes with a mixture of dismay and bemusement on the devolution of his cultural heritage. Only, Joseph summons a more vivid metaphor than I can.
He imagines himself on a series of airplane flights (maybe, he really took them); he arrives at his destinations in a jet-lagged stupor (the fuzzy photos of these locales provide the right touch), and he gravitates the landscape in a state of wonder. First, there’s Haiti and participation in a voudon ceremony. There, the narrator faints away at the sight of blood.
Everywhere else Joseph stops, he finds hop-hop either ignored, or incorporated into the local culture to the point of dilution. So, a trip to a dance festival in France yields the sight of an African artist performing a number in which she kisses every member of the audience through a layer of plastic wrap (this writer has seen that performer and she merits all the contempt Joseph showers on her). He attends a club in Tokyo and finds himself ignored, although he is the only black guy in the joint. "Authenticity is in the building" is Joseph’s glorious, almost desperate response.
Then, in a monologue that floats free like a great jazz number, our narrator finds himself in Minneapolis, in the presence of the one and only Prince. What follows is a raunchy fable involving the Mona Lisa in her guise as a waitress and a fellow named Leonardo da Vinci and it generates an episode of simply delicious storytelling. Joseph’s vocal imitation of that pretentious rock idol may be worth the price of admission.
The message here, and it is not slow in coming, is that every artist must fashion a personal narrative and make himself the center of his universe. Joseph descends from a Caribbean background, and, will, he seems to tell us, play out his own mythology. The movement vocabulary ranges from arched backs, descents to the floor and a profusion of floating arms and rhythmic attacks on the stage. It is more than enough. The most compelling movement here is the trajectory of Joseph’s mind. Some guys get all the, yes, breaks.
