“There may not be many of us but enough to make a difference,” Devorah Major says in the persona of Mary Pleasant in one of the powerful poetic critiques on the displacement of Black San Franciscans in the new beautiful theatre work Classic Black showing through Sunday, June 7th as part of the San Francisco Arts Festival.
Classic Black is directed by the visionary creative hands of artist Ellen Sebastian-Chang and features spirit-filled, deeply powerful former poet laureate of San Francisco Deborah Major and actor Brian Freeman both playing so many fluid roles it was like a dream or a prayer. From revolutionary enslaved African like Archie Lee to elegant businessmen and businesswomen like Mary Pleasant who ran several businesses and bank-rolled the insurrection of John Brown and William Alexander Leidesdorff, one of the first treasurers of San Francisco and his rival, “colonel Folsom” the white man who stole the Leidesdorff estate from Leidesdorff’s African mama by using the white-supremacist korts. But of course thats how Amerikkka works, then and now, doesn’t it?
All of the beautifully drawn characters weave delicately in and out of poetic commentary between the 19th-21st centuries, at once commenting on the white supremacist similarities of now to then and the overt and covert struggles of pre-civil war racism in the so-called “free state” of California and San Francisco.
From Po’Lice Terror to gentrification to kangaroo courts of then to now, we are drawn in to the collective Her-Stories and his-Stories as though listening to a song. All of these power-FUL story/poem/monologues/prayers are underscored by the amazing work of the Destiny Muhammad Trio.
I would highly recommend this theatre for all historians, revolutionaries, teachers, art -lovers and school -age children alike to help un-pack the multiple mythologies and truths on Black Herstory and all history of California for that matter, often written, owned and archived by the settler-colonizers and chattel slavers who originally stole the people and this indigenous land and then get the privilege of being believed without question.
Where: Southside Theater, Fort Mason, Marina Boulevard and Buchanan Street, S.F.
When: 8:30 p.m. June 4, 7 p.m. June 6, 5:30 p.m. June 7
Tickets: $20-$25
Contact: (800) 838-3006, www.sfiaf.org