Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (Gate Theatre)
This was FANTASTIC. Like, startlingly good. It’s a period of history that interests me culturally (from a privileged white British perspective obviously, growing up with Rage Against The Machine albums and, more recently, absolutely lapping up that massive OJ documentary series and the NWA biopic) so I was always going to be pretty interested in a verbatim show about the LA riots and everything that came before and after.
In my excitement, I’d almost forgotten that I was going to see a show. That time is a cinematic time for me. I mean, I’ve never been to LA and I was 8 in 1992, so it’s a time that has existed through music and news footage up till now. But this production is startling. First of all, it’s all performed by one woman — Nina Bowers — who does everyone from black civil rights leaders, to Korean shop owners, to white jury members. There’s not much physical shapeshifting (instead, she moves around the space, sits in different positions, is lit at surprisingly angles) but a lot of work has gone into the accents, which present everything that needs to be done re race and status so so simply, and so so well. The whole thing is set up like a community meeting or support group session, with name stickers and teas in the break, so when she jumps from position to position, we’re required to move ourselves — twisting our arses and craning our necks round, forced to see everyone in the space while we look at her, and hear all the hurt and anger as if she really was 19 different people. It’s such simple, Empty Space-style theatre, which so rarely works because Peter Brook was actually full of shit — it needs a whole load more than an empty fucking space, like actors who can act, and a story that demands to be heard, and also preferably some really awesome sound and light.
Luckily for this, that is all here. The light is primarily rainbow strip lighting, changing from pink to blue to green and all sorts, and doing that cool scary flickering thing when it needs to too. Plus there was the bit when it all went totally dark — the first full body horripilation moment — as a juror spoke of being contacted by the KKK. I mean, Anna Deveare Smith is named as the author of the work, but it’s 100% verbatim, an editing job really, and moments like that — like the KKK bit — were a physical reminder of why she had to make the work. It felt like a cold sweat.
When the riots arrived, it was also FUCKING EXCELLENT. Plastic curtains had been holding back the smoke, but then it was sent billowing out, with the strip lighting acting like flames but also like police sirens. There was a big word RIOT projected on the smoke (which it probably could’ve done without tbh) and Fuck Tha Police LOUD. And then this other bit with Busta Rhymes’ Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See (which is slightly out-of-time, came out 5 years later, but a quick google just showed me that the beat I’m talking about was a sample from some geezers called Seals and Crofts in 1976, so there ya go), but while it was playing Nina actually moved around the room in the smoke and coloured lights JUST LIKE THE UV BIT IN THE VIDEO and I was like YES! Honestly, if all theatre was just Hype Williams video pastiches forever more I would die a happy, happy woman.
I’m making it sound like it had somehow dissolved into something silly, but I promise you, it never ever did. This was one of those shows where they did mega cool tech stuff but because of the performance, and the intimacy of the Gate’s space no doubt, and the total fucking brutality of the text, it remained so focused and so intense. It’s the first thing I’ve seen which addresses these issues by specifically considering the tensions between the Black and Korean communities, and the first to really pull out individual experiences, beyond those of Rodney King or Reginald Denny. The bit that really hit hard was a woman talking about how she was shot in her pregnant belly, which I won’t spoil for you here but which was one of the most incredible, astonishing stories I think I’ve ever heard told. The kind of story you feel in the weight of your limbs.
So simple, so brilliant, so completely essential.
