Painful Art

Sitting in the theatre, lights shining on the stage stretched out in rectangle between two sets of spectator seating, the stage not elevated, us – the audience – elevated instead. And in a sea of whiteness, almost exclusive whiteness, my feelings were a mix between rage and confusion. 

Last night, We are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrkia, Between the Years 1884 - 1915 , a play, disoriented me, bouncing between silly laughter and the slaughter of thousands in a lattice of humor and disgust not easily reconciled. It was more than the crafting of a complex story; I applaud a complicated journey that does not cater to neat packaging of extremes. But I’d entered the play with thoughts of a genocide- assumptions that no one could talk about a genocide with anything other than gravity. 

The first few minutes were wrought with humor- laughter emerging unexpectedly from myself and the people seated around me. I got comfortable. A purposeful positioning by the director I’m sure. I was lulled. Lulled myself into thinking there could be humor in the decimation of the Herero people of Namibia. 

My fault. 

I wasn’t diligent enough. I didn’t hold onto the horror of it long enough. My brain didn’t ache from the strain of carrying the Herero atrocity at the forefront of my mind.

The play went on, veering into stories of German-ness – whiteness. Soldiers writing home too their loved ones. As if this story of the Herero should be told – could be told- through the love letters of the soldiers that slaughtered them. 

The anger welled like bile in my throat. I clutched my fists and looked around – surreptitious glances at the audience. The people laughing at all the “right” places. The people properly quiet and chaste when the script called for that too. 

There erupted some fiercer emotion for me. Overly sensitive to the depiction of Africa and its many varied inhabitants, I tried to weigh my internal reflex reactions against the possible satire or deeper meaning I might be missing. I struggled to ignore the subtlety (or maybe not so subtle) typing of an angry black man, neurotic white woman.

In fairness – the play finessed the white-lens default on genocide…the idea that every genocide was in some way related to the holocaust. The assumption that anything before the holocaust was simply a rehearsal, anything after, a gross mimicry. As if human suffering is a competition. As if only the “winner” matters.

The thing is, we never got to the Herero. Prominent in the name of the play, they are all but absent from it. Their story is the hook it all hangs on and yet they are only the background – talked about but never talking. Even the conversation about their voicelessness only amplifies their silence. With a little space to sort through my feelings from last night I can consider that maybe that was the point. At least one of the points of the play. Either way, what do I do with that?

The part of the play that resonated with me – whether by my own fabrication or possibly purposeful intent – is the idea that no one can be/can see themselves on the wrong side of history. We don’t want to admit we could be – could have been. No one wants to be a slave owner, a genocidal solider. No one wants to see that kind of darkness and recognize it as their own reflection. And yet we are apt to thrust ourselves into the victim role- the survivor. See our horrors buoyed on the horrors of another.

The idea of who we are and who we could be is brought up again and again and again. Black isn’t the same as African. White doesn’t translate into a German soldier. Pennsylvanian coal miner stories are not universal stories…except when they are. The truth is that we are all pieces of the same story, capable of the same atrocities, of suffering the same cruelties. Maybe not the literal all…not every single person…but enough of us. Enough of us in the world so that we continue to recreate our most brutal histories. Creating genocides even as we argue that we could never do that…I could never do that.

The final blow of We are Here to Present… had me seething with rage that it had gone there. That, without warning or clearly defined trail, the story shifted and transported us to American soil. All of a sudden the Herero man became an American one. The soldiers became police- German law became Jim Crow (and its ancestor laws we have left nameless but enact brutality on present-day brown bodies just the same). All of a sudden the fear wasn’t the Namibian dessert, instead it was the noose.

The scene was frenzied. A terrified black man bound and bullied from all sides, “n!&&er” floating from white lips on deep voices. Feet pounding a rhythm like a hammering heartbeat. This man’s terror both visceral and visible – on display for us to marvel at his inability to escape the mob. Feet pounding, bodies constricting his movement. Feet pounding directing him toward scaffolding and a familiar end. Feet pounding and the noose around his neck.

A noose around his neck.

I wasn’t ready for the noose around his neck. Wasn’t ready for a grown man bent and crying. Wasn’t ready for the veneer of civil discourse ripped so brutally apart.

He yanked off the noose and ran screaming and crying from the stage. The black woman followed.

Silence.

Four people remained on stage. The white actors chuckling in a nervous fashion. Deeply uncomfortable. Laughter born of fear or shame. The lone black man bent to pick up scraps of paper that had fallen and been dropped throughout the play. Single minded of purpose, he didn’t speak, didn’t make eye contact, looked only at each scrap of paper, tidying the space around him with a fierceness that was palpable. 

Picking up pieces…picking up the pieces of a failed attempt to tell a story of an atrocity elsewhere when we are unable to tell the stories of our own atrocities.

The stage emptied one person at a time and we were left with silence. A few moments passed and the applause began. People standing, an offering of their appreciation.

But I didn’t stand. I couldn't clap. 

For me this was not a therapeutic flogging of the horrors done so many in 1915. This was a vivid visceral painful reminder of what horrors are done every day. This was not Namibia this was Sanford, and Oakland, and Cleveland. This was not history this was my today…and I don’t know how to applaud that.