On Dec. 18, playwrights, spoken-word artists and actors gathered to talk about race at Victory Gardens Theater's "We Must Breathe" event. The one-night-only performance aimed to add an artistic component to the national #BlackLivesMatter movement that has erupted in the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner ( and non-indictments of those deaths ). In addition to playing to a sold-out house, the performance was live-streamed to viewers around the world.
While Garner's final words, "I can't breathe," have become a rallying cry for outraged protestors, We Must Breathe aimed to create a space for healing through artistic expression. The 11 original pieces ranged from traditional two-person scenes to poetry to call-and-response songs. The event palpably charged the young but diverse crowd; they regularly snapped, clapped and cheered along with performers.
Several pieces dealt directly with the deaths of Garner and Brown as well as the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Calamity West's "No Knock, Or Thanksgiving In Saint Louis, 2014" featured two young white women somewhat awkwardly discussing race during a tense family holiday, while Kristiana Colon's "3-Piece Meets Shay" followed the chance meeting of a Ferguson looter-turned-protestor and a shopkeeper.
Marcus Gardley's "Schizophrenia Americana" required actor Robert Cornelius to portray six characters of various races, genders and ages. Gardley painted a complex picture of good intentions and internalized biases, never letting any one charactereven a white police officerbecome the villain of his piece.
Artists also spoke to larger issues of racial inequality. Nambi Kelley's visceral "Dead Of Night: The Execution of" described how police too often see a Black victim as a threat. Artist/activist Nikki Patin tied the oppression of Black people to the oppression of rape survivors. And before beginning his piece, prominent Chicago activist and poet Malcolm London called attention to We Charge Genocide's demand for reparations for survivors of police torture during the brutal reign of Police Commander Jon Burge.
But the stand out moment of the night came early when spoken word artist Javon Smith, who performs under the name Black Zygote, ended his piece by asserting that trans, queer, female, gay and poor Black lives matter because all Black lives do. The audience burst into thunderous applause that lasted well after Smith had taken his seat.
Following the performance, Congo Square Theatre Company's Samuel Roberson led a somewhat stilted post-show discussion. "Are we preaching to the choir?" one person asked via Twittera question Roberson posed back to the audience. He asked who in the room had attended a Chicago protest. Only about a fourth of the audience raised its hands. "If we're preaching to the choir, we're not preaching to a very active choir," he noted.
Those words seemed to galvanize the crowd. Following a final song and toy drive, attendees took to the streets. Led by members of the Ferguson youth activist group Lost Voices, the audience members-turned-protestors moved to the intersection of Fullerton Avenue, Lincoln Avenue and Halsted Street, where they blocked traffic for about 20 minutes in a peaceful demonstration and "die-in." Protestors then linked arms and walked back to Victory Gardens' Biograph Theater. A night of healing inside a theater ended with a protest outside of one. During the group's final chant, the words "We have nothing to lose but our chains" rang out over Lincoln Park.