The main characters in Welcome to Braggsville (Alabastro Photography) |
Welcome to Braggsville
Book-It Repertory Theatre
Through July 2, 2017
The book, Welcome to
Braggsville, by T. Geronimo Johnson, is branded as a sharp, incisive, and
funny satire. The play, as adapted by Josh
Aaseng and Daemond Arrindell for
Book-It Repertory Theatre, is not particularly funny, though it keeps appellations
such as sharp and incisive, and it is definitely challenging. It is extremely
current, especially given the newly tragic death in “liberal Seattle” of
another black person at the hands of the police. As much as we want to believe
in some kind of post-racial society, we keep being shown that we have a long
way to go to become what we may wish.
The topic at hand is whether our white, liberal conceits are
pierce-able by reality on the ground and whether we can allow ourselves to
learn and grow after setting aside our self-congratulations. The community that
is teased the hardest, in the novel and play, is Berkeley college students. It
begins with a diverse group of freshmen going to a party where one is supposed
to put a dot “where you’d like to be touched.”
When they all put the dot in the middle of their foreheads,
other party-goers excoriate them as lacking the sensibility to realize they
were mocking Indians (the dots that are used to denote married or single) and
after they are sent packing, they declare themselves the “four little Indians –
from different tribes.” The four are: small-town Georgia white boy, D'aron (Zack Summers), feminist, white woman, Candice
(Sylvie Davidson), the “kung fu
comedian” Asian-American, Louis (Justin
Huertas), and the black inner-city Chicagoan, Charlie (Dimitri Woods).